Today I’m talking about my dog over at the SleuthSayers blog for mystery writers. Writing about one’s pet probably does’t strike you as having anything to do with the mystery genre, but allow me to blow your mind with a few things. The Doberman breed, in particular, has strong ties to the military and law enforcement, in real life and fiction.

That’s one reason I hope you’ll stop by to check out my post.

The other reason is, yay, cute dogs! Ours is just over a year old, which means he is still very puppy-like in his looks and behavior, though growing fast…

This will date me. I majored in magazine journalism in college, intending to work for big glossy magazine back when they were still relevant. The biggest and richest still are. The smaller ones struggle, or have evaporated. Still, I’m amazed by the variety of publications I see when I open the Apple News app on my phone, or scroll the magazines available via my Magzter app. I love browsing the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble, or Hudson News when I’m passing through airports. But seriously, how many of us know where we can find a solid newsstand anymore? They used to be ubiquitous when print was king.

About a decade after I went freelance, my old writing professor asked me to speak to his class of magazine journalism students. We kept trying to find time when I’d be able to fly up from North Carolina to Syracuse. I never did. But I did write the following memo, which I sent, and he distributed to his students. I offer now because beyond that one sharing, it’s never seen the light of day…

When writing short stories, I focus on the plot, characters, and the setting of the world I’m creating. I tell it as well as I possibly can in the moment, and devote time afterward “polishing” that first draft.

On most stories, it typically takes me two to three days to reach the second draft phase. From there, it depends how much more time I’ll tinker with it.

Am I completely satisfied with it? If yes, then I stop and submit the piece to a market.

If not, more tinkering…

When visitors come from out of town, we ALWAYS take them to Hole Doughnuts. They create beautiful hand-made doughnuts that are imperfect, delicious works of art. Every time I go, I spend a lot of time photographing the whole scene, but until now I’ve resisted compiling an ultimate post on the experience. But when Hole took the No. 2 spot on Yelp’s Top 100 US Donut Shops list for 2023, I realized I had to take the time to put my photos in one place.

Why go?

• Because you’ve have never had a doughnut as strange and as gorgeous as what’s about to hit your face…

My novel Murder on Book Row is live and available for purchase in the Apple audiobooks store! This is the fifth book of mine to go live for readers who prefer to consume books that way. It’s the second of my novels to become an audiobook.

You can check out the book right here, and buy it outright for $4.99. It’s a traditional mystery in which a bookselling sleuth known as the Book Lady solves murders. Some people would call this a cozy, but I don’t think it’s nearly as sweet as modern cozies are expected to be. It’s inspired greatly by the original Nero Wolfe mysteries. I have a soft spot in my heart for the book, considering it is one the first books I ever wrote…

So—yay!—it’s Constitution Day, a little-known federal holiday during which all good Americans are supposed to celebrate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia back in 1787. I’d venture to say most Americans don’t know the holiday even exists, and rarely celebrate it if they they do.

Some reasons why:

• Fourth of July is more fun.

• Fourth of July falls in the middle of summer, not the waning days of summer.

• Americans love to give their opinions on the Constitution, but they don’t really know much about its origins.

Here’s how you can rectify that sad state of affairs right quick…

Our friend Erin is in town, so we went to dinner last night with her and her mom. It was a sumptuous dinner with plenty of appetizers and dishes to choose from. Loved it all and will be back.

Only one of our party had been here before. Andaaz opened in 2021, but we haven’t been. The location the spot formerly known as Rezaz’s, which was a favorite mediterranean eatery of ours for years since coming to the Big Town.

I was naturally concerned when I saw the recent articles about the proliferation of crap books impersonating established authors. Jane Friedman did a great post on this. And Chris Fox revealed another twist on the scammer problem. Fox predicts that these kind of quality control issues will hurt Amazon in the long term.

I believe I have them all beat. What I’m reporting here is not a scam issue. At least, I don’t think it is. I do think it’s just an egregious example of nonexistent quality control.

I looked at one of my self-pubbed books the other day on Amazon, and discovered this. Yes! I am an author not of books, but PANTS!

I used to think I could march my way through all my daily to-dos in an orderly fashion. But I soon realized that if didn’t write them down, I’d forget the one or two things I thought were important, and that would slowly drive me crazy. (This is aside from the fact that I never really complete everything on my to-do list. As soon as I cross off three things, another four or five take their place.)

I used to think I could keep track of these tasks digitally. I spent a lot of time and money on software applications. Probably the best I’ve found is called Things, and I still use it, though not as much as I used to.

Then I tried the Bullet Journal thing. That worked for a while, until I got tired of rewriting all the tasks at the end of the month. My wife loves the system, and still uses it religiously. Me, I grew to dislike carrying a large hardcover notebook everywhere I went. At $25 a pop, the price wasn’t doing me any favors, either.

So I regressed—back to the world I lived in the 1990s, when I first went freelance. This is what I use to organize myself these days…

My novel Jersey Heat is live and available for purchase in the Apple audiobooks store! This is the fourth book of mine to go live for readers who prefer to consume books that way. It’s also the first of my novels to become an audiobook.

You can check out the book right here, and buy it outright for $4.99. It’s a crime caper not unlike those of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen.