Kiss The Bricks Release Countdown: Week 2 Giveaway!

I'm so excited about the release of my 5th book, Kiss The Bricks, that I'm doing 5 weeks of 5 giveaways each week! Lucky you!

This Week's Prizes
This week is for writers and readers. For thinkers who like the feel of pen on paper and want to make sure they capture their thoughts.

• Grand prize: two notebooks (one large and one more portable) for recording your thoughts, a print copy (slightly used) of my 2nd mystery (Braking Points), an advance copy of my 3rd mystery (Avoidable Contact), a book to record who you've loaned your books to, and a bag from Left Coast Crime 2016 (the Great Cactus Caper).
• Runner-up prizes: assorted caps and a commemorative tile from the Monterey Sports Car Championships in 2006 (ALMS race at Laguna Seca).

How to win? 

By 12 midnight on Wednesday, April 12, do one of the following:

• Comment on this post.
• Comment or share my Facebook or Twitter posts.

I'll announce and contact the winners by the end of each week. And if you don't win this week, there are three more weeks of prizes ahead, so stay tuned!

Kiss The Bricks Release Countdown: Week 1 Giveaway!

I'm so excited about the release of my 5th book, Kiss The Bricks, that I'm doing 5 weeks of 5 giveaways each week! Lucky you!

This Week's Prizes
In honor of the Grand Prix of Long Beach (happening next weekend, also the site of my 4th book, Red Flags), this week features a Long Beach and racing theme.

• Grand prize: Long Beach day pack, Long Beach cap, personal cooler, IndyCar Nation seat pad (for those hard stands), a rain poncho (just in case), sunscreen and other track essentials, and an advance copy of my 3rd book, Avoidable Contact, to read between on-track sessions.
• Runner-up prizes: assorted caps and a commemorative tile from the Generac 500 in 2006 (ALMS race at Road America).

How to win? 

By 12 midnight on Wednesday, April 5, do one of the following:

• Comment on this post.
• Comment or share my Facebook or Twitter posts.

I'll announce and contact the winners by the end of each week. And if you don't win this week, there are four more weeks of prizes ahead, so stay tuned!

Bouchercon Roundup

Last Thursday through Sunday was the annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was in attendance. Here's the view from my hotel room.

I was prepared to be a very, very small fish in a very large sea, but I wasn't prepared for how much I would still feel a part of the proceedings. Part of the reason is that mystery writers are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. (That's me with Julie Hyzy (Anthony winner!), Sheila Connolly, and Rochelle Staab.)

And part of the reason is that I was on my first Bouchercon panel, "It's a Job," about protagonists with unusual occupations. We had a full house, as you can see below!

So there I was, a published author at Bouchercon! That was a blast. And I even signed a few books for people.

But the best part was the conversations I had with other authors, writers, readers, and fans (sometimes those descriptors were all one person). We chatted over breakfast, between panels, during lunch, in the bar, over dinner, and in the bar again. All day talking about our backgrounds, interests, writing, challenges, and successes. It was fantastic.

We got to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for an opening/awards reception.

And we got to hear from luminaries such as Mary Higgins Clark (boy, is she a true storyteller!).

Plus we had a great Sisters in Crime breakfast, at which Hank Phillippi Ryan was invested as the new president (receiving the [stuffed, white] seal of office) and many of us sang the SinC song ... "Sisters in Crime, boys, Sisters in Crime/You show me your gun, I'll show you mine...." (Full text.)













In short, a great time was had by all, I think. I'm home and excited to feel like I know more of these people who are already my Facebook friends. I have a TBR pile that threatens to be taller than I am. And I'm energized to get cracking on another book in my racing mystery series.

See you all at the next convention!

A Heartbreaking Day in Racing

(cross-posted from Two For The Road)

I write fiction. Murder mysteries set in the racing world. Which means that I cheerfully plot how and why someone dies. Sometimes it's someone who deserved to die. Sometimes it's not. Typically, the bad guy who did it is caught, and always in mysteries, readers have the satisfaction of knowing why it happened.

We say truth is stranger than fiction. The racing world today knows it's significantly more heatbreaking than fiction, too. A very good racecar driver died Sunday in the opening minutes of the last IndyCar race of the season. He won this year's Indy 500 (his second win). He'd tested the new 2012 IndyCar chassis, and one tweet I saw said he was excited about its safety measures. He was 33 and leaves behind a wife and two children.

Racing's an extremely dangerous sport and business. And sometimes there are no reasons why, bad things just happen. One such happened Sunday.

Rest in peace, Dan Wheldon.

A Very Different Kind of Interview

Not long after the publication of Dead Man's Switch, I had the opportunity to talk with a friend of mine (thanks, Shane) who collects conversations with interesting people for the Web site Travels of John. No amount of protesting on my part that I couldn't compete with the likes of George Steinbrenner, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, and other real notables would dissuade him. And I'm very grateful, because it was a fun interview and I'm honored to be part of a group of fascinating people featured.

Here are an excerpt and links to the post:

Whodunit? Danger, murder, paranoia and… race car driving?

Tammy Kaehler is hardly the first to divine career direction in a corporate hospitality suite. It’s near-certain that many a deal has been forged amid the celebratory clinking of complementary beer bottles, hands shaken only after proper removal of wing sauce via Wet-Nap. She may, however, be the first for whom the glad-handing and overwhelming noise of a professional auto race served as inspiration—for a version of the Great American Novel.

Was your writing career destiny or coincidence? 

The writing itself was destiny. The racing part of it as subject matter was coincidence. I mean, I can’t draw a thing, I can’t paint, I couldn’t design a birthday card for the life of me. I understand the value of visuals, but I don’t have that skill; I am intellectually formed by words. Words create the pictures; they create the shapes; they create, I don’t know, memorization for me. In college, my mother suggested I become a writer for TV or something, and I remember looking at her and wondering where in the world she would have come up with something like that. It just didn’t make any sense at the time, but I look back now and think, “Well, of course.”

Read more at http://travelsofjohn.com/interviews/general/tammy-kaehler/.

Final Cover Art!

Not only are my books at the printer (this very minute), but I also got a copy of the final cover. Love it!

Playing Catch-Up

You make your lists, you plan your week, and then something silly turns everything upside down. Or many somethings. It’s been a strange last ten days….

On the disappointing and mildly annoying front: technology has not been my friend. My computer contracted a virus so terrible that it needed a week with Dr. Geek Squad to recover. So I tried to keep up with everything I was supposed to be doing using my husband’s decade-old, backup machine, crammed into a corner of his office. What’s more, the iPad I ordered, which should have arrived two weeks ago, was snatched away a mere three miles from my house! (OK, it was recalled; something to do with an ID hardcoded into the device.)

And then it rained in Los Angeles this morning. In JUNE! I’m not sure where summer’s gone, though I hear Texas might have found it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out the message in all of this: the universe is stating clearly: “Step away from the machines, Tammy. Step away, and read a book.”

At the same time, some very good things have been happening, on both a personal and professional front. My husband and I made a new friend (an old college acquaintance of his who we ran across recently), someone I hired at my day job is off and running in a very satisfactory manner, and there are exciting possibilities afoot for book promotion.

Most exciting is a new blog I started with fellow author Simon Wood (www.simonwood.net). Simon writes books that keep you up at night. He has an eclectic professional background, he’s British, and he’s a kick in the pants. He’s one of those guys who starts insulting you fifteen minutes into a conversation (and expects to be insulted right back). We get along fine.

The relevant bit is that Simon, too, has a mystery about a racecar driver coming out this year (it’s already released in Britain, but we don’t get it until September, which I don’t mind, because it means mine comes out first). So we started a blog together, all about racing. Or at least our opinions on it. I’ll blog Mondays, he’ll blog Wednesdays, and we’ll compare and argue about our opinions on different topics on Fridays. We hope you’ll join us and chime in at Two for the Road: twofortheroadblog.blogspot.com.