On Navigating the Murky Middle

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I love beginnings—in life and on the page. Anything and everything is possible whenever a blank slate appears before me. That momentum can last for days, weeks, months, and sometimes even longer.

At least, that’s what I like to think whenever I begin a new writing project.

A linear pantser, I write brief character sketches, plot the first three chapters and the last, and then let the words flow. At some point, usually around Page 80, I encounter the murky middle, that nebulous place where I find it difficult to continue or sustain the tension of the novel. In short, I’m lost with no clear trail or direction in sight.

Continue reading on the Sisterhood of Suspense blog.

All About the Mesdames of Mayhem

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome the Mesdames of Mayhem. Today, Madeleine Callway shares the history of this group and their new anthology, In the Key of 13.

Here’s Madeleine!

In 2012, my writer friends and I faced a new and challenging publishing world. What to do about social media? Some of us were comfortable with computers and software, others were pretty expert at digital marketing. Many of us though knew nothing at all.

My friend, publisher and author, Donna Carrick and I came up with an idea. Why not pool our strengths and share our skills with our friends? That’s how our two writing groups came together to form The Mesdames of Mayhem, because at the time, we were all women.

The way we came up with our name is lost in the mists of time, but what I do know is that we voted on it. We operate as an autonomous collective (thanks, Monty Python!) and vote on all important decisions, like the themes, book titles and covers of our anthology.

As a retired management consultant, I knew that to keep the Mesdames motivated and going as a group, we needed a goal. What better way than to give our readers a sampling of all our work? Readers could discover new favorites, especially since we all write mysteries ranging from comedy to cozy to noir.

Our first anthology featured 13 writers. Since our launch coincided with Halloween, it seemed logical to have a scary title. We called our book simply Thirteen. And indeed thirteen has become our lucky number!

Our anthology received two Arthur Ellis nominations for best short story. Thus encouraged, we published a second collection, 13 O’clock, with the theme of time and our third, 13 Claws, featuring animals: cats and dogs, of course, but also snakes, animal crackers and even a dragon!

Our stories have since been honoured with several Arthur Ellis nominations and in 2018, Catherine Astolfo’s story, “The Outlier”, won the Arthur Ellis Best Short Story award. Cathy’s story is truly one of the scariest I have ever read!

Donna and I often ask each other: what would we have thought seven years ago if we could have seen what the Mesdames have accomplished together? We’ve given numerous talks on Canadian crime fiction and the art of writing and met hundreds of new fans. More importantly, we’ve all been there for each other, through triumph and tragedies, illness and good health.

We now number 19 crime fiction authors, with members as far away as Fort McMurray. And we even have two Monsieurs.

Last year, at one of our library events, a young filmmaker approached us about doing a documentary. Her passion is supportive communities especially ones that are a little unusual. The filming proved to be an amazingly rewarding experience for us. Cat Mills’ film is due to be released on October 25th by the CBC and should be available for viewing on GEM.

In addition to GEM, the film may be available here:

CBC Short Docs Website | CBC Short Docs Facebook Page | YouTube

Blurb

Our fourth anthology, In the Key of 13, has a theme of music, mischief and murder.

Music from Mozart to Beethoven to Elvis is a sweet accompaniment to sin in 19 wicked tales, ranging from cozy to noir, by 18 acclaimed Canadian crime writers and one talented newcomer.

Can you hear the violins? They may be plotting your demise. Are you an opera lover? Take care, your passion means a revenge served cold. And that tune that refuses to leave your mind? That brainworm will truly drive you mad.

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Bio

Madeleine Callway (M. H. Callway) is one of the founders of The Mesdames of Mayhem. Her thriller, Windigo Fire, was short-listed for the Debut Dagger, the Unhanged Arthur and the Arthur Ellis for Best First Novel. Her short crime fiction has appeared in several anthologies and zines.

To learn more about the authors who belong to the Mesdames of Mayhem, please visit our website.

Mesdames of Mayhem Links

Website | Facebook | Twitter

M.H. Callway Links

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Spotlight on The Monday Book

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome author Shari Ramming. Today, Shari shares her new release, The Monday Book.

Blurb

In the midst of pain, Shari Ramming saw an opportunity to learn and create The Monday Book to help others find themselves in their brokenness. With personal evaluations, she guides you to wholeness. Shari lays out steps to finding the treasure in the trauma of life: Acknowledge, Honor, Connect, Practice, and finally, Open to receive the gift of the lesson. Her simple straight-forward advice for fixing whatever feels broken is “begin and continue.” It seems hard in practice, but in showing up for yourself, you’ll find small ways to daily love yourself and become the cure for your own brokenness. Her message puts your problems outside so you can interact with them in a productive way. By seeing everything and everyone as a reflection of yourself, you’ll become more compassionate toward yourself and everyone else. Open yourself up to the true and best you.

Excerpt

Imagine this. A woman seemingly without doubts about her life. A wholesome and satisfying life filled with family, travel, friendships, children, and social activities. Her focus is on accomplishments, security, and home life. A life that is fast and full. Caught up in the way life seems to zoom when it is bursting with an abundance of three children, a few businesses, multiple homes, a crowded travel and social schedule, and the usual day-to-day duties.

I believed putting my family first was important, that coming in second (or third) for myself worked out okay. With that belief I lost myself and my own power. My passion and my uniqueness.

Life showed me where I was powerless, and also where my power was. My life, until that point of reckoning and painful loss, was ostensibly satisfying. What had guided me was being challenged.

What I had used previously needed some serious updating. I was being tested and I was being shown my darkness. I was meant to understand that I needed to let go of previous held beliefs that kept me going but were not evolved enough for where my life’s journey was taking me. All the change, death, disease, and dishonor was a fierce way of being shown a new path.


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Author Bio and Links

Shari Ramming writes on a broad range of subjects. She feels there is a great intelligence that is not of the mind. Loving her three grown children fiercely she uses verve and wanderlust to make her home in Austin, Texas. She is still learning.

To learn more about Shari and her books, go to http://www.shariramming.com.

Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon

Giveaway

Shari Ramming will be awarding a $15 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

Follow Shari on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

Chia Seed Power!

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

From the start, I loved the sound of the Mayan word “chia” and its meaning: strength. Originally grown in Mexico, these seeds were valued for their nutritional and medicinal properties. Runners and warriors used chia seeds as fuel while running long distances or during battles. Aztec warriors claimed that one spoonful of chia seeds could sustain them for 24 hours.

Recent research has found even more benefits. An excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, protein, and antioxidants, chia seeds support the heart and digestive system, build stronger bones and muscles, promote healthy skin, and can help reverse diabetes.

Definitely a superfood and one that can be easily incorporated into our daily diets. A reassuring fact for non-foodies who don’t like to cook.

Continue reading on the Soul Mate Authors blog.

It’s Time to Let GO

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

I receive a daily dose of inspiration from bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff.

Here’s a thought-provoking segment from last week’s email:

Twenty years ago, when Marc and I were just undergrads in college, our psychology professor taught us a lesson we’ve never forgotten. On the last day of class before graduation, she walked up on stage to teach one final lesson, which she called “a vital lesson on the power of perspective and mindset.” As she raised a glass of water over her head, everyone expected her to mention the typical “glass half empty or glass half full” metaphor. Instead, with a smile on her face, our professor asked, “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?”

Students shouted out answers ranging from a couple of ounces to a couple of pounds.

After a few moments of fielding answers and nodding her head, she replied, “From my perspective, the absolute weight of this glass is irrelevant. It all depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute or two, it’s fairly light. If I hold it for an hour straight, its weight might make my arm ache. If I hold it for a day straight, my arm will likely cramp up and feel completely numb and paralyzed, forcing me to drop the glass to the floor. In each case, the absolute weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it feels to me.”

As most of us students nodded our heads in agreement, she continued. “Your worries, frustrations, disappointments, and stressful thoughts are very much like this glass of water. Think about them for a little while and nothing drastic happens. Think about them a bit longer and you begin to feel noticeable pain. Think about them all day long, and you will feel completely numb and paralyzed, incapable of doing anything else until you drop them.”

Think about how this relates to your life.

If you’ve been struggling to cope with the weight of what’s on your mind, it’s a strong sign that it’s time to put the glass down.

It’s time to let GO…

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

Movie Review: Hustlers

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

The brain-child of writer-director Lorene Scafaria, Hustler is based on the real-life tale about a group of high-end strippers who found creative ways to drain the bank accounts of their Wall Street clientele.

Told from the perspective of newbie stripper Destiny (Constance Wu), the early scenes focus on the budding friendship between Destiny and veteran stripper Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Both Wu and Lopez delivery Oscar-worthy performances.

Lopez dominates those scenes as she performs a showstopping pole dance routine, demonstrates a repertoire of moves, among them the “Fireman” and “Peter Pan,” and later envelopes an adoring Destiny in the folds of her fur coat.

The 2008 recession brought this campy fun to a halt.

Down but not down for long, Ramona concocts a drug-and-fraud scheme and then persuades Destiny and several other strippers to join her new venture. Ramona’s justification: If stripping simplifies relations between men and women, why not do whatever it takes to get payment at the end of the evening?

From start to finish, the focus is on the diverse group of women who populate “real” strip clubs. Scafaria cast women of all shapes and sizes, steering away from the usual Hollywood versions. As for the scam victims, their looks and personalities could be described as forgettable. White, wealthy, and vain, these men evoke little sympathy.

When caught, Destiny repents, but amoral Ramona stays true to her principles.

While the story dates back over a decade, many of its themes still resonate. In a recent interview, Lorene Scafaria commented, “I’m hoping that the conversation outside of the movie is about gender and the economy—what it is that we provide, and what we get back. It’s not quite the fair trade.”

A thought-provoking film!


Book Blast: Wait

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome author Rebecca Brewster Stevenson. Today, Rebecca shares her new release, Wait: Thoughts and Practice in Waiting on God.

Blurb

What are you waiting for?

Everyone has endured the endless traffic light, the queue that goes nowhere, the elevator music piped through the phone line. But what of those periods in your life when everything seems on hold? When you can’t do the next thing in your professional or personal life because you can’t get to it?

Waiting—be it for health, a life partner, a child, a job—can be an agony. The persistently unrealized goal feels like an endless road. And hope’s constant deferment can be exhausting. A firm answer against the thing you’re hoping for—”no”—might be easier than this constant lack of closure. It might be easier to give it up.

But what if waiting means to be something else? Waiting doesn’t have to mean idleness. Our prolonged state of need might teach us to look beyond the desired goal to something infinitely better. We find lessons on this throughout the Bible and, if we are paying attention, in our own lives.

Rather than fostering frustration, periods of waiting might have great truths to tell us. It might show us that hope is worthwhile. Waiting might even be a gift in and of itself.

Excerpt

The first lesson of waiting is that we are on the outside. Like the boy on the sideline; like the not-engaged friend who pins wedding gowns on Pinterest; like me squinting for lines that fail to emerge on the pregnancy test; none of us–whether or not we are actively waiting– is where we want to be. This might not seem true, of course. This actually might seem patently untrue. You might be happily ensconced in a loving family, a marriage, a tight-knit circle of friends. You might belong to a country club or a sorority, a church, a civic group.

But, like that of all who wait, the human condition is actually a condition of being on the outside, an unhappy state that writers and poets have noticed since time out of mind. It’s true of all of us, but we manage to obscure it from ourselves with all manner of distraction: accumulated wealth and possessions, meaningful or frivolous activity, even what is truly good and beautiful.

The problem is that you can’t contend with something if you simultaneously ignore it. And the fact of our exile–the fundamental state of all human existence–is not going away.

Waiting can teach us this.

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Author Bio and Links

Rebecca Brewster Stevenson is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has a master’s degree from Duke University and has lived in Durham, North Carolina for over 20 years with her husband and three children.

Before dedicating herself to writing full time, Rebecca worked with Trinity School of Durham and Chapel Hill to develop the curriculum for their humanities department; she also worked as an English teacher at public and private middle and high schools in Durham and Pittsburgh.

Rebecca’s debut novel Healing Maddie Brees was published in 2016 to literary acclaim. Her beautifully crafted personal essays on her blog “Small Hours” have earned her a strong audience of readers who enjoy her explorations of themes relating to family, marriage, faith, writing, language, literature, and film.

“Rebecca Brewster Stevenson’s writing is consistently powerful, complex, honest, and hopeful” (Andy Crouch, author, Culture Making and The Tech-Wise Family). Rebecca’s writing has also been called “exquisite” (Stephen Chbosky), “thought-provoking” (Barbara Claypole White), and “gorgeous” (Kirkus Reviews).

Website | Blog | Light Messages | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Giveaway

Rebecca Brewster Stevenson will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

Follow Rebecca on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

New Contract!

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

20014660_sI’m happy to announce that Senior Editor Debby Gilbert of Soul Mate Publishing has offered me a contract for No More Secrets.

Loosely based on the immigrant experiences of my friends and relatives, this standalone novel can be described as multicultural women’s fiction.



Blurb

Angelica Delfino takes a special interest in the lives of her three nieces, whom she affectionately calls the daughters of her heart. Sensing that each woman is harboring a troubling—possibly even a toxic— secret, Angelica decides to share her secrets, secrets she had planned to take to the grave. Spellbound, her nieces listen to an incredulous tale of forbidden love, tragic loss, and reinvention that spans six decades across two continents. It is the classic immigrant story upended: an Italian widow’s transformative journey amid the most unlikely of circumstances.

Inspired by Angelica’s example, the younger women share their “First World” problems and, in the process, revisit their relationships and set themselves free.

But one heart-breaking secret remains untold…

Coming September 2020!