Murder for Christmas?

by guest blogger Krista Davis


Some people might think it’s peculiar to write about a murder that takes place around the holidays. After all, it’s the hap-hap-happiest time of year. I love Christmas. The decorating, and shopping, and baking -- the whole thing. I even like stringing lights outside with fingers stiff from the cold. I look forward to feasting on roast goose with friends and family and curling up by the fireplace with hot chocolate and a good mystery.



As we grow up the joys and disappointments of the holidays no longer come from the packages under the tree. They move up to a bigger and less predictable source, the behavior of our families and friends. We look forward to the warmth and pleasures of family, but we dread dealing with the mother who drinks too much or the husband who is having an affair. Competent, respected adults shudder at the thought of the holidays with a parent so critical that they’re reduced to insecure, angry adolescents again. How does one cope with a parent who says not to come home unless the daughter has lost weight?



Earlier this year I was walking along a street in Charlottesville, Virginia with Liz Zelvin. She told me (and I hope I’m paraphrasing you correctly, Liz) that one of the first things her clients have to learn is that they can’t control other people. I think it can take a long time for us to reach the point where we understand that. We can’t make someone love us, or force them to stop drinking, or lecture them to a size two. All those things have to come from within the other person.



Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from trying. For some reason, the holidays seem to amplify our expectations of perfection. None of those problems are new. The husband’s affair, the mother’s drinking, the poor relationship between mother and daughter all existed long before the holidays, perhaps for years. Yet we still expect people to be the way we wish they were when it comes to the holidays.



Add the stress of finding this year’s must-have toy, sewing a costume for a pageant, baking cookies for the office cookie swap, attending boring parties with a spouse, cursing at tangled lights, and dealing with a turkey everyone forgot to thaw, and it’s amazing that there aren’t more yuletide murders. Of course, mystery writers love the combination of unrealistic expectations and stress!



In The Diva Cooks A Goose, domestic diva Sophie Winston has a chance to relax because her brother and sister-in-law, Lacy, are hosting the big family celebration. Lacy is a perfectionist, the type who makes lists for everything. She planned ahead and has everything under control until Christmas Eve, when the Christmas presents are stolen right out from under the tree. Poor Lacy. That’s only the beginning of holiday disasters for her family. When her newly separated father arrives with a date, more than one person is ready to commit a merry murder. While Lacy copes with parents she can’t control, Sophie is on the trail of a killer, and when she finds him, she plans to cook his goose!


I wish you and yours a warm and loving holiday season. May your celebrations be festive and may the only murders be properly confined to spellbinding mysteries.


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Krista Davis writes the Domestic Diva Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. The first book in the series, THE DIVA RUNS OUT OF THYME, was nominated for an Agatha Award. Her most recent book, THE DIVA COOKS A GOOSE, launches on December 7th!

To Blog Or Not To Blog

by Krista Davis

* Winner! Winner of Krista's new book, The Diva Runs Out of Thyme is Pat G. Pat, send me your mailing address (darlene at darleneryan.com) and we'll get it in the mail to you. Thanks for visiting, Krista.)

Krista Davis is the author of The Diva Runs out of Thyme, the first in a new series, available this coming Tuesday.

I confess that I have been remarkably slow to come to blogging. Websites make sense to me. Websites are like store windows, except the wind isn’t blowing snow in my face and my legs aren’t exhausted from running all over town.

But blogs. Oof. Posting every day. I had visions of spending more time on the blog than on my next book. However, I recently listened to a lecture by attorney Richard Levick that gave me pause and forced me to reconsider my thoughts about blogging.

The lecture was actually about crisis management in big companies but he emphasized blogging in a way that I hadn’t considered. He pointed out that the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal was driven by a blogger. Indeed, we all know the name Matt Drudge now. News organizations hounded his
blog for updates on the Lewinsky matter. It wasn’t a bigwig reporter who kept that story going -- it was a blogger. And that changed our world in more ways than one. Today, television news networks haunt the blogosphere, looking for news. Bloggers are actually a source of news!

Big multinational corporations are beginning to blog and sell themselves through social networking. Blogging has become such a powerful marketing tool that even the big guys are jumping on board. Did you know that publishers send boxes of books to influential bloggers? Did you know that there are perfume blogs and that some perfume companies, unnerved by the influence of perfume blogs, are beginning to invite bloggers to press events?

The number of people reading blogs is staggering. There are several interesting surveys, with all sorts of stats, but the bottom line is that blog readers number in the millions. What that means to us is that for once, we don’t have to pay for marketing. We can do the same things that big companies are doing. There is no ridiculously unaffordable fee and anyone can play -- the internet is fast becoming the great equalizer. Of course the field is crowded with blogs, but
standing out from the pack is another topic.

Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder of BlogHer, likens the blogosphere to the kitchen table, where we can sit down and converse about the things that matter to us. I love that analogy. How many times did you type a couple of keywords into a search engine yesterday? So did millions of other people. Millions.

A blog is an opportunity to reach out to consumers in a manner that’s shaking up corporate marketing. Even if a person hits on your blog only once, that’s one more bit of exposure for your book.

Corporate America has realized that the future of marketing lies in the internet and more specifically in the blogosphere. If you’ve been balking about blogging, it might be time to make use of this tool -- it’s free and it’s right at your fingertips.

(Ask a question, share your blogging experiences, or just say "Hello" in comments and you could win a copy of The Diva Runs Out of Thyme. Check back Sunday night to see if you've won.)