Olympic, side-splitting cozy: Murder on Ice, by Alina Adams

Want some novel reading to go along with your Olympics watching? As the women's figure skating finals come into view, read up on the world behind the scenes in Alina Adams' hilarious and entertaining mystery, Murder on Ice.

Granted, Murder on Ice is set at the world championships, but close enough. For those of us who follow figure skating once every four years, this is all a fun new experience.

Full disclosure up front: I happened to tell Alina Adams on Twitter (I think? It was awhile ago — I am anything but prompt!) that I loved her book (the paperback version) and was going to review it on my blog, and she offered to send me the multimedia Kindle version as well. So this isn't a sponsored post, but I did get a free enhanced e-book out of it!

So, this all makes me want to review Murder on Ice first as a reader — and then as a writer. It's an inspiring book in both categories!

Reader's review

Bex Levy is a researcher for the TV series 24/7, and she's in charge of knowing everything — absolutely everything — about the figure skating competition that the famous commentators might need for their patter and that the show might need for choosing camera angles and interview opportunities.

I came across the term micro-niche, and I love it. As a reader, it means you can find something written specifically to your interests: In this case, you can enjoy a peek into the world of figure skating and the world of being a professional TV researcher, as well as enjoy a cozy mystery along the way. I suppose some readers choose interests that already align with what they know; I actually love opportunities like this, where I get to see into a life I've never led.

It's not enough just to have an intriguing setting, though — fortunately, the book comes through with a clever mystery and plenty of funny. An Italian judge is murdered — and Bex's boss decides that, as a researcher, Bex is the perfect person to find the killer in time to reveal on air at the finale! But no pressure.

Bex, underpaid and generally beleaguered, sees no choice but to agree. She does already know all the players and quickly becomes adept at nosily sussing out their secrets.

One of my favorite passages is when Bex considers the lengthy and detailed descriptive travel passages in mystery fiction. I've often wondered about the same thing.

"As a reader, Bex had assumed the technique was nothing more than filler. […] However, now that she was a sleuth herself, Bex decided to give all those poor, maligned writers the benefit of the doubt and guess that the interminable itinerary listing was actually a sensible way of organizing their thoughts in a linear fashion, the better to make sense of the knotty puzzle before them."

She decides to give it a go:

"She noted that they seemed to be driving down Nineteenth Avenue. The street was … street colored. Concrete colored. Gray.
[… ]

And, anyway, now they had left Nineteenth Avenue and were driving through Golden Gate Park, which was pretty and green, as parks are wont to be. Finally, they pulled out of the park and alongside the Pacific Ocean. It was blue and big and, presumably wet."

How to increase your Facebook page fans and interaction

In the past year, I increased my fan count on Hobo Mama by over 1,000 fans, from 3,500 to more than 4,900. (Don't bother looking at my Lauren Wayne page. I'm concentrating on one page at a time. Yeah, that's it.)

Here are my ideas for increasing your Facebook page fan count and interactions, for what that's worth (with all the Facebook changes making it harder for pages to get views, it might be worth less and less…). I'm indebted with gratitude to Jennifer of Hybrid Rasta Mama and Laura of Authentic Parenting, who have a gazillion followers each (ok, 11,000+) and mentored me, passing along most of the following tips.

• Post at least daily. Some people post every hour, some once a day. When I am being hardcore at building my fan base, I post about 4 times a day, with at least 2 hours in between posts if possible, and keeping them all within daytime hours in U.S. timezones. (This depends on your audience, of course, so you can experiment and see what your FB insights tell you about when the most engagement happens on your page.)

• Ask questions! Ask silly, goofy things, like "What did you have for lunch?" I kid you not. I thought this was so dumb, but I swear you'll get a million people responding. Ok, maybe I don't swear it since I'm exaggerating. But it's funny how the banal questions tend to get the biggest response.

• Do roll calls: "Where do you live?" "How old are your kids?" "I'm looking for new pages to follow. If you have a Facebook page for your blog, tag your page in the comments!"

Shop through a blogger's affiliate link to support your favorite writers!

As you buy the items on your holiday list this year, keep your favorite bloggers in mind!

If you're shopping online, particularly at Amazon.com, you can shop through your favorite writers' affiliate links and give them a little holiday gift, too!

Buying through an affiliate link works just the same for you as shopping by going directly to the Amazon (or another shop's) site. You don't pay any more than you would otherwise, but the store itself funnels a few cents over to the blogger as a thanks for the referral.

Do you know bloggers who are struggling this season to make ends meet? Are there writers you'd love to reward for being particularly timely and touching in what they share with readers? Do you just want to spread the holiday love and cheer?

Then make it a point to shop through an affiliate link this season and throughout the year!

To make it easy for you, we have a linky list of bloggers' Amazon affiliate links, as well as a linky of affiliate links to other popular online stores.

If you're a blogger, sign up with your links!

To help you remember to shop through an affiliate link, bookmark a few! Teresa shows how in her innovative tutorial. Simply drag two or three into your bookmarks bar, and name them "Amazon." Now anytime you want to go to Amazon, click on one, and you'll be set to give that blogger a little tip for being awesome!

#NaNoProgMo Profile: Crackerdog Sam

This is one in a series of profiles of our National Novel Progress Month authors and their works in progress. If you'd like to submit your own interview, please fill out the form, and I'll be in touch!

Today's author is Crackerdog Sam (that's his hobo name), my own dear partner and co-parent and a fabulous writer. I interviewed him over pizza with the kids — any insight and hilarity in wording are his, and any errors in transcription are mine.

Sam hopes he finishes his WIP in time to read it to the kids.

What project are you working on?

I am attempting to flesh out or "write" [quote marks his!] the second half of my novel that is currently only outlined. Basically, I'm trying to get a draft out of it. It will be spotty with chunks missing or places that are rambling on too long, but just to get something concrete on the page.

What's the tentative title?

I'm not telling.

What's the genre?

I guess it's a mashup of old-time high adventure with modern conveniences. It follows the same rules as The Princess Bride, but it's set in modern day, which is to say it's romantic and adventurous and has a lot of fantastical creatures, but it doesn't have magic or the paranormal. I don't know what genre that is. There is also no villain, so it's kind of a mix of The Princess Bride and Spirited Away.

What's the target audience?

It's for 8- to 14-year-olds.

National Novel Progress Month: Join me in making progress!

I don't know about you, but I could use another National Novel Progress Month.

I've decided once again to skip National Novel Writing Month, though I'm a huge fan and would love to encourage you if you're participating — as well as National Blog Post Month — since what I need right now is not more writing but more finishing, if you know what I mean.

Last time I hosted NaNoProgMo with the lovely Teresa from Spirit Grooves, but she's busy with holiday sales, so for this month, we're going to keep it low key and my husband, Sam, is hosting it with me. I mean, he's not blogging or anything (unless he wants to guest post), but … I dunno, we're just both doing NaNoProgMo, so that totally counts as a co-host. Tree and I would like to host an all-out ProgMo in January, so hang on to that if these next two months are not your style.

We started NaNoProgMo to support writers who need to finish, edit, research, polish, or publish a novel. I'm also totally happy to embrace writers who are working on non-fiction books, ebooks, articles, or blogging. If you need to make some writing or editing progress this month, come along!

I'd like to offer you some support as you work on your writing in November, in whatever form it takes!

Where to find free images for blog posts

You know that punching up your blog articles with pictures lends a thousand-plus words to your text — but you also want to make sure the photographs and drawings you find are legally yours to use under copyright law and ethical guidelines. You generally can't just grab a photo off Google Image Search or someone else's blog without permission.

There are many stock sites that will allow you to purchase photos, but bloggers rarely want to spend cash for their frequent and frequently ill-paid postings.

So: Here are my top 10 resources for royalty-free, payment-free, copyright-legal, fair-use images for your blog posts.

New Mummy Episode from Castle!

New Mummy Episode sighting:

Castle's Episode 110 from Season 6, "Time Will Tell," deals with oh-my-gosh-are-they-really-real time travelers.

Is this guy really from THE FUTURE?! Spoooky!

You can watch the episode online, so I won't spoil it except to say:

CLASSIC Mummy Episode. Classic.