Big Blend Radio
Bylines, Shine & Wine - Writers and Authors Happy Hour Hang Out
This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Happy Hour Hang Out" Podcast features writers and authors, mostly of the mystery and crime genre, along with some historical fiction, travel writing and editing expertise to round out the discussion.
FEATURED GUESTS:
* Author Matt Cost who inspired this episode - https://www.mattcost.net/
* Travel Writer and author Katy Walls - https://katywalls.com/
* Writer and editor Eva Eldridge of Tucson Sisters in Crime https://evaeldridge.com/
* Author Lori Pollard-Johnson - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001KH8ES2/about
* Writer and author Erynn Leigh - https://erynnleigh.com/
* Author DR Ransdell - https://www.dr-ransdell.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Duration:
- 1h 9m
- Broadcast on:
- 21 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(keyboard clicking) Welcome to Big Blend Radio's Virtual Cafe. Pull up a seat and let's find out who we're having a Happy Hour conversation with today. Hey everybody, welcome to our new Big Blend Radio Happy Hour Show. Now for listeners who have been with us over the 16, 17 years that we've been doing this Big Blend Radio podcast and know us from our live podcast days, we did a number of Happy Hour Shows and Champagne Sundays. No, we're not alcoholics. We do like to imbibe here and there, but it's really about having fun. So it's not all about alcohol, but we can't have wine on these shows or whatever we want, whether it's Coke or Coca-Cola, I should say, or water or wine or whiskey, whatever it is. You can enjoy it here. But these shows were very, very popular. And actually some of our audiences were nagging us going, "Hello, bring back champagne Sundays." We're thinking, "Happy Hour, so Happy Hour is coming back." And it's really about getting people either of like interests together or completely opposite together and talk about their success, talk about their craft and career. And I'm gonna say that this was inspired by Matt Cost, who's on the show off their Matt Cost. We were talking about him doing another podcast and then we're like, "Well, do you wanna bring somebody else?" He's like, "Bring a party on, I like a party." So we're like, "Okay, well here it is." So today's show is called Bylines, Shine and Wine because we have writers in the house. And a lot of them like to write about mystery, murder, crime, the unsolvable and the crazy, which we like. So welcome everybody. I'm gonna introduce everyone to our audience. So we're gonna start with Matt since he's the only dude in the room and he inspired this. Welcome, Matt, Matt, how are you? - I'm fantastic. - I'd have to say this is not the first happy hour I've inspired. - Okay, there it is. He's on the gym. So how healthy is happy hour for like a previous gym owner? - I think a couple of drinks is good for everybody. - I think it is. Here it is, yeah, and he was a teacher. So yeah, you need something to drink. (laughing) - Any teacher need to drink. - Absolutely. So Matt, tell us a little bit about your books and your writing 'cause you've got different series. So give the audience an overview and I wanna give everyone the website and all the websites for the authors on the show today are listed in the show description in the show notes. So no matter where you're listening or watching, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, all of that is in the show notes. So go to mattcost.net, but give us an overview, Matt. - Like you said, I write many different series. I just had the fifth book in my Clay Wolf Trap series come out recently and that's a former Boston homicide detective who's become a PI in a small coastal main town. I have five books soon to be sixth in my Mainly Mystery series, which is an amateur PI who also owns a mystery bookstore in Brunswick, Maine. And the second book in my Brooklyn eight bellow series comes out in July, which is a historical PI mystery set in Brooklyn, New York in the 1920s. And I also wrote some historical fiction as well, so. - Yeah, yeah, the one was connected with Cuba, right? - To what? - To Cuba, the one was, yeah. - Yes, I am Cuba is about Fidel Castro on the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s. - It's cool, it's a cool book. And I wanna bring Kathleen Walls on. Kathleen is a travel writer and an author of guide books, travel books, nature books, history books. And then she's got this wacky side of her that goes, "I'm gonna write about crime in real estate." So welcome back Katie. So you can go to her website, Katie Walls, and that's K-A-T-Y, Katie Walls. So welcome back Katie, how are you? - Oh, I'm doing fine. And yes, get those get crazy. And the real estate and crime kind of that mixed up during COVID couldn't do a lot of travel writing. So my past experience is in real estate and travel writing. So I have my character who happens to be our property manager at a big rental company in St. Augustine. And she just sort of accidentally happens to get found with her recently shot first and she was trying to be evicted. And it doesn't look real good since it's just her or the gun and the dead body. And she begins trying to figure out who really did it. And ends up traveling to hell in Georgia because the owner of the property that she's managing didn't know much about the guy, but he had told him from Georgia and he lived in hell. So she put that together and came up with hell in Georgia. And I kept me busy during COVID. My latest one, once I could travel again, is my music book, which I had a lot of fun doing. That's an unfiction. It's history of American music because I've always wanted to answer the question, do we influence the culture of music or does the culture of music influence us? Growing up in the '60s, the hot cause of the hot riding, all of that was part of the music, but it was also part of our lives. I was terrible behind the wheel. I mean, you had to stop signing anybody next to me when we were, we were, off we go. How I didn't get killed this amazing. (laughs) And this was in New Orleans and now you live in Florida, in Northern Florida, but this is New Orleans, which we're going to. We're gonna be there in the next two months. I'm excited to get out there to New Orleans. It's been a long time, so. - It's always fun. We'll be able to play some music. - I'll always go hang out in the cemetery. I love cemeteries. Cemeteries. - Who's they rock cemetery for sure? - Okay. All right, I'll call you from there. I'm gonna see if I can contact you or anybody up, you know? - And don't do music. (laughs) That's what you do music for sure. - I'm into the Voodoo Museum. Now you see you're leading off into some of the shenanigans we're gonna have on this happy hour show. (laughs) I'm gonna go to Eva- - My editor-in-law was the one that started it and he was younger about this now, the one that's running it. - Oh, see, well, all right. We're gonna talk about that. Eva's in Tucson, Arizona, and she's gonna head off our connection with the Tucson Sisters in Crime. It's a wonderful organization. And so, Matt, how are you feeling with all these women? The Sisters in Crime, are you nervous? (laughs) - There's the occasional mister and the Sisters in Crime as well. So, I'm one of the few misters and I'm in the New England branch of Sisters in Crime. - Okay, so this is cool. So Eva, welcome back. How are you? - Good. It's so hot. It's hot, so I'm staying inside. - Yeah, there's trouble in Tucson, right? - That's the anthology that you worked on for Tucson Sisters in Crime and Left Coast Crime, too. Am I saying that right? Left Coast Crime? - Yes, yes, the anthology idea came up because we hosted Left Coast Crime last year here. And so, we put out anthology using submissions from all the chapters, Arizona chapters, people from all the Arizona chapters. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun. So, that's still available on Amazon. - Cool, cool. And you can go to twosonsistersincrime.org as well and that'll give everyone the direct link. And you can go to Eva's website, Eva Eldridge. She's also a travel writer. She writes for us as well and so does Katie. And so, you're also an editor of putting that anthology together. And now you've got this whole new thing going on. Tell us about your latest book publishing adventures. - I'm in grad school with Western Colorado University in the graduate program for publishing. And we had two basic assignments. One was putting together an anthology called Bisty Fee Lines and other fantastical familiars, which launches July 24th, but it's available for pre-order through wordfirepress.com. And it is, let me see if I can get my face in there, Bisty Fee Lines. - Yeah, you got it, you got it. - Here we go. - I'm one of the editors on it. We picked out, I mean, we did the stories, we edited it, we did the table of contents, we picked out the images for the cover, we wrote the back cover copy. I mean, so this was our first taste as a class into publishing. And then our thesis project was reprinting a book in the public domain. And I chose the Zane Gray book. So the Call of the Canyon. The Call of the Canyon. I read Zane Gray a lot when I was a kid. And most of his work was too long for what our word count was. But this one was written by him in a woman's point, from a woman's point of view, Carly Burch. And it's her trip from New York, her change from being a New York socialite to being an Arizona rancher. And it's about, about Sedona, the Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon area. It's really a cool book, I like, and I like it. And that is available now. That came out on Tuesday. So I'm very pleased. I got to do the cover and do all the formatting. I got to do like most of that book. So I can say I can publish a book now. Well, cheers to you, happy hour, happy hour. I love this, cheers, cheers. So I love this. So everyone, EvaEldridge.com, you can keep up with her there. Everyone's on social media too. I'm going to bring DR Ransdell on the show. She's an author also in the Tucson Sisters in crime. You can go to DR-Ransdell.com. So check her out there. We've also got some dogs on the show, apparently, barking in the side here, they're part of the happy hour. But DR, tell everybody about your writing and welcome back. 'Cause you've got music in yours, talk about music. - Thanks a lot. Yeah, I started like my first mysteries. I did five with Andy Veracruz. He's a Mariachi violinist. I've done a lot of Mariachi work in Tucson. It's what sort of cemented me to Tucson. I lived in Mexico and then when I came back to the States, it was great to have some like tied in Mexico. I've done a couple of things that are a little bit different lately and one, it's very funny, has a very big New Orleans connection. So I wrote Dervla. Dervla alarms the nannas that actually starts in New Orleans and it has a Voodoo connection. But the Voodoo connection is really interesting because it comes from a story that I heard when I was living in Mexico. And this is like 40 years ago. Stems from an incident that a friend told me about. Seems that her husband didn't like her anymore and was doing some very nefarious things to make her think she was crazy. So I used that story and twisted it around, turned it into this story that is set right there in Tucson. So actually the first time I've said something in Tucson 'cause I have these vagabond shoes. In fact, right now I'm speaking from, we went to Pompeii today and now tomorrow we're gonna go to Paestume. I'm in the middle of Italy. It's like 11 o'clock and I, it's really funny. But speaking of wine, that's what I'm supposed to be speaking about this time of day with you guys, except I hate wine, I know I'm terrible Italian. I have a book called Party Wine and that's interesting too. But it has very interesting wine connection. My cousins who live near Turin in Northern Italy, they live about a kilometer from this set of party houses and a Balmetto, a party house that's in the little structures that people create next to the mountain. It's important because they keep the sellers exactly at 60 degrees naturally by the fishers through the mountains. - Wow. - Perfect temperature for wine and for dead bodies. So you see that was perfect setting. - Oh, done with that. And I use the town where my cousins are from. So that was a lot of fun to do. So those are my two most recent things. - I love it, I love it. I mean, hey, put a body with the cask. You know, oh, here we go. Cask and seller, dead bodies. Oh, it's going to start getting weird. I know. I know about these shows with you ladies. And Matt, I know it's it's all going to get crazy. So Lori Paula Johnson was on our Women Making History podcast recently and also part of the Tucson Sisters in Crime. And now you're in Washington state. Let me just say he was, he was actually in Tucson. So Lori's up up in Washington state and but moving full time to Tucson, right, Lori? - Yeah, yep. Very soon. - Awesome, awesome. So tell everybody about your books and everyone can find you on Amazon is the best place, right? - Yep, or the Wild Rules Press website. They have a list of all the different places you can order it from. So print and ebook. The one that came out last month is called Corpse in the Craftsman Cottage. It is a cozy. - Corpse in Cottage is, here we go. - Yep, yep. And the closet does appear in there in that book as well. It's essentially a book about two best friends who get together and decide that they're going to flip houses in order to get away from their lying cheating exes and established financial independence. And it comes from the background of being a landlord myself and having some interesting houses that we cleaned up and fixed up and houses the whole stories. And boy, there's a lot of imagination that can go into a dark closet where you find things left behind. Let's put it that way. The other book. - So we've got real estate in common here. I'm just going, we've got real estate, we've got New Orleans. We've got desert. This is getting, this is interesting how this works. But go ahead. - Don't forget the dead bodies. We've all got dead bodies around. - Good bodies. And then the one that comes out next month in July is called Toxic Tort. And it is about a very caustic restaurant critic who gets poisoned with a toxic tort at Seattle's Chocaholic Ball held at the Space Needle. So a lot of iconic Seattle aspects of that story. - That's funny because now we're getting into our food, wine and travel writers here, Katie and Eva. Okay, so chocolate and death. So would that be like the suicide chocolate cake? - I don't think he did it to himself. I'll put that way. So it's definitely not suicide. - Yeah. - But I used to, I got my start actually with nonfiction writing in the food and wine industry. So I met a lot of chefs and boy, they are some of the kindest, most generous people I've ever met. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting if they met up with someone who destroyed their career with a pen, a stroke of their pen. And that's where that one came from. The one I'm working on right now is I'm not gonna say too much about it because it's kind of a fresh idea. I haven't seen anything written about this before, but it has a theme of sisterhood. A lot of the books that I write, a lot of the things that I write in general have to do with the theme of sisterhood. So yeah, that's where we're at. - Good balance with you being part of Tucson Sisters in Crime. I want to go over to Erin now. Erin is the first time Erin's been on our show, Erin Lee. And you can go to our website, ErinLee.com. And that's E-R-Y-N-N-N-L-E-I-G-H. I'm just proving I can spell and I can read. So go to ErinLee.com. So welcome Erin, how are you? - Just fine, thank you. And it's great to be here. - How are you doing? - I'm so so I'm glad to have an opportunity to be a guest. So I'm glad to have you here. - Yeah, in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona, where it's also over a hundred. - Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a little warm, I think, across the country, except for Matt's area. He's chilling out. Maybe, are you in the, you know, the wine cat? Got an area, the cellar? Maybe he is in the cellar, I don't know. But tell us a little bit about your writing, Erin, for folks to get to know about what you do. - Okay, I'm probably more of the newbie writer in the group after a long career in urban planning and public administration. - Whoa. - I finally decided I had enough time and after I moved on and retired from the day job to pursue mystery writing, which I've always wanted to do because I've always been an avid reader. So, but I realized getting into it. It takes longer than you think, 'cause I, you know. So I finally got myself a manuscript of buried truths. My first, it's a traditional mystery with the touch of suspense and they're set in my fictional version of my central Illinois hometown. And I got it done and drafted and I'm in the polishing editing stage for that. And it's about a Los Angeles investigative reporter who gets called home because her great aunt who runs a family estate sale business is killed on the job. And there's a whole world of family secrets involving the clients, the estate sale clients families. They do not want that estate sale to happen. And so there's a bunch of things that they're trying to cover up. And so when my amateur sleuth private investigator goes back, she's figured she has to solve this because the police don't take it very seriously, that this family and all their secrets is what's caused this death of her great aunt. So she's back investigating that. I have it almost ready to query. So I don't have a cover or anything for that. And I have not even found a publisher yet, but I took a detour about, I don't know, six, eight months ago and decided I was going to publish a short story. I had several out for consideration with either anthologies or other places, but I thought I'm going to do this for practice itself. And so I went online and I realized on Amazon, you can actually publish a short story all on your own. I did not know you could do that. So I published a prequel to my book that's coming out while I was waiting 'cause I was getting frustrated the time it takes. And so I just got to design the cover and you put it out, it's just an e-book version. It's like 15 pages or something long, but it's a prequel of my amateur sleep, visiting her hometown, solving another mystery that occurs at the time. It's called Truth Be Told. And there's a little picture of it. I don't know if you can see the cover, 'cause it's an e-book. You can't- - Yeah. - And it's only a bit about Amazon, but it was kind of fun to do just because I wanted to see how does that work, you know? And it was an interesting opportunity to do that. - I think that's really smart part because that gets popular then it helps with the publishers too. Eva, I know you're doing more on the publishing side of things, so that's kind of a smart role to go, right? We're not published. Sometimes when you publish something, publishers come in and say, okay, now you have to take everything down that you've done in the past when it's popular and they wanna buy it. So that's kind of a smart thing to do, don't you think? To get your feet wet. - Ah, that's what I'm planning on doing. I'm probably gonna publish one of my short stories in this exact same way. - Good. - So yeah, what do you think about that, Matt, in regards to putting short stories up and getting started that way? - Now I think that's a fantastic idea. I've done it a few times, not on Amazon, but through a company called BookFunnel that my publisher works with and put up some short stories associated with my books, just to grab people's interests. So yeah, that sounds like a fantastic idea to me. - I might do one. That's gonna be dangerous though, I don't know. So, okay, so I know we're gonna talk about murders and deaths and all kinds of state sales. We've got real estate agents, landlord real estate flippers. There's all kinds of things going on here. But let's talk about something really odd because all of you probably read since you write, right? So we all know that part. So let's go around the room here and see what is something absolutely insanely crazy that you've put in a book or read in a book that just kind of raised the eyebrows 'cause you need to raise an eyebrow or two in a book in some way, right? So just something like, oh yeah, well, I'm gonna put this in here, nobody expects that. So, let's start with you, Matt, 'cause I can go to 20,000 things with yours. So let's start with you. What is something odd that you've put in a book or read in a book that you got? Well, never thought of doing that. I wonder what the readers will think. - Well, you probably jumped to the end of pirate trap because we talked about that a little bit, but I can't talk about that allowed here because that would give things away. So maybe I'll focus on the other book behind me, which is mouse trap and the fact that, you know, genome editing really exists out there and the ability to change the DNA in the embryo of babies to make super babies as a reality under a technology called CRISPR. And, you know, so a lot of times in my books, I do like to grab onto something that is just fascinating to me, such as that, and kind of dig into it. It scares me all at the same time. I also did wanna give a shout out to Kate and D.R. because I also have a book about New Orleans, Love and update, which is the fight for social equality in New Orleans after the Civil War. So, and we have Marie Leveau in there, who is another fun person to put into a book. So, you know, I always liked the fact that she was the buddhu queen of New Orleans and she, people would come to her to get spells and things to fix things in their life. And she would always say, you know, put red dust on the steps and do a few other things that were buddhu related. But then, for instance, if a wife came and said that her husband had been neglecting her and stepping out on her, she might add something like, and bait daily. So, little things like that. She'd throw in a little buddhu and a little practical sense. - That's funny, that's cool. One of the best books I've read about New Orleans is called The Cards Don't Lie. And it's about the Battle of New Orleans and three women, some are of English descent and some are Creole, and what they went through during the Battle of New Orleans. And basically, it is one of the best accounts of how this battle went down. And it was pretty bloody. And it really made sure that everybody knew that Andrew Jackson had diarrhea during the whole battle. He finally was nice to the Indians and somehow managed to get the Indians to save New Orleans. So, that was pretty, it was a good battle. It was a fantastic book. But, Katie, let's go to you. What is a raising eyebrow kind of thing in the book of yours? - Well, I think one of the craziest things was when I was just talking about my tenant from hell. The idea came from a real life happening when I was doing property management for Watson. This lady called me and she said, "We're rented to this person." And my husband, who was a chef at the college in Gainesville, he used to have a weekend home here. And he had a few too many beers and the tenant was saying, "Bill, wouldn't it be nice "if we had a wittest walk on top of my apartment?" "Oh yeah, wouldn't it be nice finding a balcony? "Oh yeah, well, the tenant in real life turns around "and writes a certified letter saying, "I'm not paying my rent until the landlord, "wittest walk, quits a balcony." All of these crazy things which didn't really happen. And he refused to get out. And in Louisiana law, I mean Florida law, any law, if a tenant doesn't turn the key over to you and leaves one item in the house, a real estate agent or an owner can't legally go in just take over. They've got to go through the whole eviction process. And I started that with my story. Of course, in my book, I turns out that this guy is really, he's under witness protection and you know, she has to go to hell and join you to find out he's a musician. And she has a little ghostly help with it too. But the fun thing was that it really started with the two case. And about Marina Vo, the fun thing on that one, a lot of the information she got, 'cause she was a hairdresser. And in New Orleans, she's this black woman doing hairdressing for white women who assumed she didn't even understand what they were saying. And they'd be talking and gossiping about their well-to-do husbands and what they were doing. And she got a lot of her information that way. - And she also owned a brothel and got a lot of information from men that same way. - She was very clever. - She was very clever. - She was very very clever. I had not heard the brothel story, but it makes sense. She also always went to mass at the cathedral too. - She was at the top camp, like. - I started from being a weirdo princess. - Wow, so that's somebody who's playing both sides of the coin, but that's how you get all the intel. That's smart, that's smart. Well, DR knows about music, okay. So I've got to bring that up. DR, give us a raising eyebrow kind of thing in some of your books. - You know, what you're supposed to do is, you've got your protagonist and then you throw rocks and then you throw more rocks. So in Andy's fourth adventure substitute soloist, he doesn't really want to play in an orchestra, rather play Mariachi, but he has the job. And then all of a sudden, the concert master walks out after maybe having killed somebody and all of a sudden Andy finds himself soloist. So in real life, it would be really hard for that to happen, but you create characters who are even better violinists than you are, so I play the violin, but I wouldn't be able to walk in and be a soloist. So anyway, Andy finally conquers this challenge, but in brotherly love, his latest challenge, I make him have to teach high school students, and that's horrible. They won't pay anything. They keep getting out their cell phones while he's trying to have rehearsal with them. And then, you know, like, the very beginning of the book, he's like, "Hello, you guys were playing in two different keys, would you like to explain to me why that's happening?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, oh, was that wrong key?" "Oh, I'm so, oh, can I take this phone call?" So anyway, that's his really hard challenge, and I didn't really think that would fit into a mystery book, and then the more I thought about it, the more fun it was to just torment my poor character with teaching students. I teach university students, they're bad enough, but high school, you know, they're still doing lots of shenanigans, so that's a really funny thing. - I like the shenanigans. We gotta do that, exactly, exactly. Erin, tell us in the eyebrow, raising moment. I don't wanna give something away a little ways off, but I love playing with people's expectations of characters and having people be out of what the norm or context is, especially find that people underestimate elderly, or I think, you know, I'm gonna use that word older, 'cause we're all up there, characters. The older I get, the younger, everyone seems. (laughing) But I find that, you know, people have these expectations about how someone, you know, will be, if they're in their 70s or 80s or whatever, and everybody has a past, everybody's got history, and people should not assume things. I'm even younger characters in some of my books. I mean, I love a twist, and I've used a few about where people have an assumption about someone's way they are behaving and what they're doing, and it's just not in character, and yet, you know, people just assume things. That's our human nature, I think, unfortunately, about things. I also have at the end of my yet to be published book, I added a separate, another twist at the end after it seems everything is resolved, which I can't explain, 'cause that would give away, give away the twist at the end. I didn't intend to, but it sort of came to me and my characters made me do it, and those few folks who have read it so far seem to think that's a really good thing to leave in there, so I'm gonna do it, leave it in there. - Yeah, just when you thought it was safe to go out, you know? - Yeah. - I mean, really, that's always like that. Just when you think it's safe, it's not, it never is. There's nothing safe. - I think some of the best things are the things that are just not huge eyebrow raising things, but just things that play on what people are expecting and then not have it be quite like that, and it just sort of makes you think, oh, wow, that wasn't what I was expecting, so. - Right, and expectations, that's a danger in life, right? We all have expectations, and that's a danger in life because it's never what you expect, you know? - It's never, yeah, I like that. Have that extra little twist at the end. Laurie, what about you? Any eyebrow raising moment? - Well, the first thing to do-- - I want to say eyebrow raising over and over, by the way, on a happy hour show. I'm just saying. (laughing) - Well, the first thing that came to my mind was in the corpus in the crafts of college, the one that just came out. I have a scene with an elderly person, as Aaron was saying, and expectations, and it is a little bit of a, like a humorous scene in which he is on a rascal, a little rascal, your little motorized devices, going down the freeway. And the beta readers were going, yeah, I don't think that really could happen, but you know what, I love it, I'm gonna leave it in, and it stayed in. And then about, oh gosh, I don't know, maybe three or four years ago in Seattle, there was a guy who was on a little rascal going down the freeway, and I thought, it can happen. (laughing) - Did you ever watch the movie? See of the guy who went to see, I think it was his brother or something, long lost brother, and didn't have a driver's license 'cause he was elder, and he rode his John Deere tractor all the way. (laughing) I love that movie. It's a cute movie, but I mean, still, you know, but I hope he never gets in front of me while I'm driving, and I just went through that side of the world, and there's a lot of green to go through, a lot of fields, and a lot of green. But yeah, Eva, what about you? - Well, my writing, of course, isn't quite that developed. I do have, I have one story where the woman, main character blew herself up. - That's cool. - But what I'm reading right now, which isn't a mystery, it's called Family Lore, and it's by Elizabeth Acevedo, and it's a Dominican Republic, women from the Dominican Republic that have moved to New York, you know, migrated back and forth, and it's their story about, you know, from grandma to grand-cut kid and stories in there, and there was an amazing amount, raised my eyebrow, of sexuality in there. And it's well written, and I wasn't expecting that at all in this story, but it's a very interesting story, and unless you're, and you better have an open mind if you're gonna read it. - Ooh, yeah. - So that was, that was... - Yeah, I remember being in a friend's house, when we first got back to this country, and I was still young, I think I was, I think I just turned 21, and I was moving from one, from one office to another in Florida, and it was going, you know, so I was staying at my boss's house for a couple nights on the way, and his wife and I, he got mad, 'cause his wife and I would sit up and drink Kanye Col night together anyway, and then she's like, you should read this book, I just finished this Beauty and the Beast by Anne Rice, and I started reading this, and I'm like, what? Oh, I had no, it was like a big wake-up call to like a whole other world that I didn't know, I was very naive coming out of Africa, let's just put it that way, this was not, like, you know, I've seen a little bit of everything in life, especially being in the music world, but like, when I read this, I was like, my mommy never taught me that. (laughing) So, yeah, that was a wake-up call, and I'm still wondering about that, it's probably more like the 50 shades of whatever that is kind of on that level of, yeah. And it's shocking when you don't expect it, you know what I mean? Like, I thought it was a fairy tale and it was a fairy tale, but it was a very high-sexually charged fairy tale. (laughing) - Well, and also this is about the women's relationships with themselves and maybe with their partners, but it's not over, it's not overtly sex, I mean, it's not sex between, anyway. You have to read it, it's, it's, it's, it was, like I said, nothing, e.g.s, unfortunately it's not, it's just not what I expected in the story, but it's really well written and it's a really interesting story because of their cultural backgrounds, so, yeah. - That's the weird thing is that writing a sexual scene has got to be kind of like, you know, that's a whole other thing, yet you have to have it, but hard, I mean, difficult, I should say, when we talk about that. - You have to have it in some books, so I have one of mine and I had a neighbor who was very incensed in the book of stealing with drugs in Jacksonville and I have prostitutes and drug users in the book and these people don't use nice polite language. I mean, they're not gonna come up to you and say, "Excuse me, man, would you like to buy some crack?" They have other ways of phrasing it, and to me, I mean, I don't use a lot of profanisti normally, but when you're writing about a character like this, this is the way they would speak. What else could I do? - If you ever need research, call me, 'cause I'm really good, 'cause I drive way too much and that's my outlet, so, any time you need any kind of extra verbiage on that, let me know. Okay, so let's talk about plot and character. Nancy, which is, she was here right now, she's hurting dogs right now, literally. They're all wanting to jump in on the happy hour call. She wanted to ask each of you about when you're writing, is does the plot come first or does the character development come first or does it just all happen together? So, let's start with you, Katie. When you were writing the mysteries, which came first for you. - It's a mix, 'cause I might have one idea in my mind when I start the book. And then something my character comes up with changes my whole mind and maybe changes the whole direction the character goes. So, it's definitely a mix. I like a good plot, but I think my characters can change the plot. I had one, which is not my best way back when I first started writing and it was a roaming and it was not very good, but I had my character was pretending to be someone she wasn't. And supposedly, this is supposed to be a brother. And I had this lawyer in there who was supposed to be an old English-tiger guy and turns out he becomes a love interest. It just happened. I mean, just my characters took over. - Oh, that can happen. - And I've had that happening in Khudzu too, which beset in two time frames because as the character, she inherits a great-grandmother's house. And when she covers up with the quilt, she's automatically transported back to a free civil war time. The whole plot is looking for the confederate treasure that really has never been found. And she can't change anything, but she's reliving what a great-grandy lived. And a lot of that would just change. I'd be in the middle of trying to do something and one of my characters wanted something else. So I guess I'm really more character driven. - It's just like time travel. You could have characters, time travel, and meet each other and you never know. Let alone her just time travel, you know. - She can't react. And she's got a psychic cat that helps. I tend to throw a cat most of my books. So I'm not a cat person. And I have one of my novels. The cat saves a life by jumping down on the way I got and knocking the gun out of his hand so she can run out of the hotel room and escape. - Wow. - Gotta have a cat to help you. - Gotta get Eva's book, "Fiecy Feline." You know, I was gonna say-- (laughing) - Watch out of a cat line. - What I've heard is that cats, you know, when you die, if you're left in your house and you have cats, the cats will eat you before a dog will eat you. - Yeah, so. (laughing) - I've read that. - Cat, well, 'cause yeah, I think, well, I wouldn't put it past them at all. They kind of like-- - No, no, I'm almost innocent looking cat that looks like she's a little six month old kid. She's 10 years old. She would not hesitate for a minute to eat me if there was something else around. She eats to have a condo, she eats lettuce, she eats potato chips, anything and everything. - And she's not-- - Well, let's call her a vacuum. Vacuum plated from then. So, Erin, let's go to you on this, you know, character or plot? - That is an interesting question. I was thinking about this and I would have to say both, but it depends on what I'm writing. I think for a novel, because I envision most of them as ideally being a series, I tend to be character driven because I like my characters and I like to develop the background and the setting and the whole situation for that. But if it's a short story, I almost always start with a plot because to me, it's focused more on, you know, like especially if you're writing to a theme for an anthology or something, you kind of have to think about how are you gonna do it and what are you gonna do and what's the setting, you know, what's the whole context? And then I come up with characters that go with that. So, in fairies, I mean-- - Yeah, yeah, what about you, Lori? - Oh, for me, it's always character and usually based on somebody I meet or observe in an airport or a restaurant or in the classroom. And what I always say is if you know the gender and the age of a character, you pretty much know what their internal conflict is. And so once you have the internal conflict, then you can put something really dastardly that comes along and that they have to resolve and you bet your external conflict. And then I let the characters speak, play. - Oh, all right. What about you, DR? - You know, I think I actually start with setting. I have a place that I wanna write about. I love to travel. And so, you know, so every time I'm traveling, I'm always like, ooh, this would be a good setting or that would be a good setting. Once I have the setting, then comes the character. I think, you know, I've got somebody I wanna play with that in that setting. I have a couple of different series. So I have some characters that I like using. So, okay, I've put them in a new setting. I figure I'm gonna use Gina, whoever I'm gonna use. Then I'll often sort of plot out what I think is gonna happen, you know, like try to get all the steps figured out because I've been in the situation of throwing away 20,000 words, something like that. That's no fun. So I try to plot it out and then that never quite works, but that's what I usually start out with. - Hmm, Eva, what about you? - I started out with character and then I had to come up with a plot. So I had a person in a situation. I had this person in a situation and then I had to figure out what else was gonna happen. So I already pretty much had that character, you know, mapped out, I knew her, but I wasn't exactly sure where she was gonna go. So I'm more of the pants or type, but if you're gonna do a mystery or a series or something, you actually kind of have to have some kind of an outline. So I had to work on that with that one. So that's not much of an answer, but that's what I got. - No, character. So it seems characters are pretty big throughout. Matt, what about you? - I guess I would probably do all three that we've discussed. You know, my Brooklyn eight below series, I decided setting first. I wanted to set it in Brooklyn in the 1920s. My Mainly Mystery series came across from an idea of something I heard about a nuclear power plant. So that was definitely, you know, sort of a plot line that originated. But then when I started my Clay Wolf Trap series, I wanted to create a new character away from my golf line did Mainly Mystery characters. So I came up with Clay Wolf and then started putting the mysteries to them. I guess, you know, to talk a little bit about what we were discussing earlier, somebody once suggested me that I should try writing cozies, but I've decided that I liked the three apps of fighting foul language and fornication too much. (laughing) - Oh boy. All right, so now speaking of characters, let's go around the room and pick one character that you've written about, give us their name, and then one person that you would want them to be represented by one famous person, actor. And if it was, if your story or book was gonna be in a movie or a TV show, whatever it was, a play, it doesn't matter, a famous person to represent your character. So let's start with you, Matt. - I guess I'd go with Clay Wolf, who is in my trap series. He's about 40 years old, a former Boston homicide detective and very dapperly dressed. And I would have him played by, maybe Ryan Reynolds. - All right, all right, we got Ryan Reynolds in the house. Good. (laughing) Katie, what about you? - If he's out there listening. - Yeah, come on Ryan, get on there. Get, stop the cell phone coverage. - They don't care, get back to acting. (laughing) - Ooh, that's a hard one to decide. I guess my character, I would, in last step, the mother has searched her daughter has been, her drug addict has been found dead. And she's, the police are sort of ignoring it 'cause this is Jacksonville and his dead drug addicts all over. So what's going on more? And her comment is, the policeman, she may be just one more addict to you, but to me she's my daughter. So it would have to be an older actress. Maybe Jamie Lee Curtis could play her. But she would be the mother and she's the one, actually, that goes out, checks, you know, pretty much destroys a marriage, goes into a real flop house drug house hotel and begins searching for what really happened to her daughter. And she ends up solving, almost getting killed, but she solves the problem herself. - I think Jamie Lee Curtis sounds like a good fit. - I think Jamie Lee Curtis could do the job pretty well. - And after all, she was in "Freaky Friday". So, you know, why not? Hey, so Eva, do you have a character that you wanna represent in a movie or in a film? - Maybe Grace, the character of my novel and that's for an actress? Maybe Jennifer Lawrence. - Okay, because she's, you know, she's a pretty versatile actress. I think she could carry that off. - Okay. D.R., what about you? - Oh, gosh, it's so much fun to think about. But in Durbla Alarmsanana's, the person who would be really great for is here because I've got this character, she's really nice, but she gets betrayed by a boyfriend and then she's really, really mad. I'd love to see Emma Stone do her. - All right. - Okay. - Emma Stone can do almost everybody, but anyway, that would be really fun. And then for my Andy characters, it would be really fun. The guy that did the Lincoln lawyer, now I'm trying to remember his name, the actor that was in the recent Lincoln-- - Matthew McConaughey? - Yes. - Matthew McConaughey? - The TV one? - I'm sorry? - The TV show one? - The TV show, yeah. - You're a molly something, I think, isn't it? - Yeah, anyway, he would be really good for Andy. So, but I should remember his name. What about you, Erin? - I've got this really kind of out there senior, if you will, or character that sort of defies expectations. I was thinking originally Judy Dench, but Helen Mirren could do her too. I mean, they're both fantastic actresses, but she's just comes across as somebody initially and then has a whole different twist to her. She's initially, she didn't even, wasn't on my radar when I started writing at all. She's a character that just came to life and just keep being bigger than life and so I would want an actress who could really be something. Seems very subtle at first, but can just really roll out the drama. - Oh, Judy Dench, good for that. Laurie, what about you? - I'm thinking about the book I'm writing right now and my protagonist is a 61 year old woman. And she's got a real strong backbone and I'm thinking if Kathy Bates grew out her hair and let it go gray and then made a long gray braid, she would do really well in that. - Kathy Bates, every time I think of her, I think of Misery. You know when she, remember that movie? Misery Mad, that was some psychotic craziness. I mean, my God, that was, that was, no. No, what's that with James Con? James Con is good. Okay, keeping up with characters and famous people. All right, let's have a murder mystery dinner party. I know Eva's cooking 'cause she can cook anything anywhere at anytime. She is an amazing chef. So we're having a murder mystery dinner and you wanna invite someone to the murder mystery dinner so you can have dinner with them, but then you're gonna start plotting of who actually murdered somebody, okay? So who would you want to come to that dinner party with you? So I'm gonna start with you, Matt, who's coming to the murder mystery dinner party? Living or dead? Does it matter? - Right, it can be whoever 'cause we can resurrect people too, by the way. You know, we just throw some alcohol in their face and they'll come back to life. (laughing) - Well, I'd love that Robert Parker cup. - You can invite anybody you want. - I was a big fan of the Spencer book. So Robert Parker would be a fantastic invite if living is okay. And I just read a book by Michael Cortilla. So he would be, if it had to be living or he would be the second, but those would be my invites. - What about you, Katie? - Ooh, that's all I'm gonna think about. I guess if we're gonna have to resurrects, but let's go way back and I'll get Anne Boleyn and maybe she can figure out a way to get even Henry the eighth. - Wow. - Some way to get back at him. - Somehow I think a guillotine's gonna be involved. I don't know why. I just think like a guillotine's coming up. Eva, who do you wanna come to your dinner party since you're doing it? You're cooking, but you still have to have something to come in. But you never know what Eva might put in the food, huh? - True, true. Maybe J.A. Chance. - All right. - She's got experience. She's a mystery writer. She's a pretty popular mystery writer with experience. She wrote a whole series about Cochise County and she also writes it, she has a bow munt from Seattle. So she's, yeah, and she's still living. We still see her once in a while, so. - Yeah, cool. - She's good. I can't put her books down when I start with them. - Yeah, that's cool. Laurie, who are you inviting? - You know, I'm reading a book right now called Medgar and Merley. And it's the story of Mr. Medgar. And he was a contemporary of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. And, but he was the first one assassinated. And his wife, Merley kind of carried on his tradition and how these women managed to hold their head up and not become bitter, I think is amazing. And so I think I would love to have her come and to my party. - Cool, cool. Well, we can't murder her 'cause there's already been like that kind of bloodshed. No, but they do have a national part site now designated to their legacy, by the way. - Do they? - Yes, very interesting. I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that. - Yeah, yeah. Erin, what about you? Who are you inviting? - I don't know why, maybe it's time to food, but Anthony Bourdain came to mind because not only- - Well, he's an awesome writer. - He's a great mood and at conversations, but yeah, he's a fantastic writer and always up for adventures. So- - Man wrote mysteries. - Let's bring him back to life. - He wrote mysteries. He wrote mysteries. - You wrote mysteries, yeah. - But if he comes, then he has to bring Iggy Pop with him. I'm sorry. - Okay. (laughing) - He does. And Josh Home, the two of them I have to all be there at the same time. I'm just saying. So that would be good music, dinner music. Yeah, 'cause Josh Home, I think is a little sinister and Iggy's just crazy. So it would be good. It would be good music. DR, who are you bringing? - Well, you know who would be fun to bring would be Leonardo da Vinci. Because he was- - Oh, yeah. - Well, so observant, right? So he would come to a dinner party. He would start sketching and somehow in the little things he was sketching on the napkin or whatever, there would be a clue that would help everybody figure out what the murderer is. So have the whole topic. - The courtroom, you know, sketches, you know? That's crazy too, how people do that. I think that's fascinating. All right, we're almost getting there through our little party side. So I wanna play a little shop of horrors because it kind of goes with that raise the eyebrow with moment, okay? So let's, we're gonna open up a shop of horrors. You know when you go to a museum and they have like the dentist exhibit of how people dentistry from way back when or medical stuff, you know, all that really freaky, weird stuff, you know, like embryos floating in a jar, you know, really just freaky stuff. And so the shop of horrors is like when people come in, you've got to just freak them out and each thing in the shop possesses a power to do something to the people that come into the shop of horrors. So what I wanna know, and I'm running the shop. (laughing) It's funny, it just sounds gonna go. So let's do the shop of horrors. I wanna know what you're going to bring to the shop of horrors, you're selling to me. And what is the superpower of this creepy thing we are putting into the shop to affect anybody that comes in? It could be anything, absolutely anything. Space is not an issue, money is not an issue. Nothing is an issue because it's all in the shop of horrors, which we don't know if it's real or not. So Eva, I'm gonna start with you. What are you putting in the shop of horrors? - I'll lock it, I'll lock it. And it could be male or female. I'll lock it that a male or female could carry. And it would reflect back on its wearer when that wearer wishes ill on somebody else. It will reflect back on the wearer. - Ooh. Ooh, okay. So it's like a total karma chameleon thing. - You mean, yeah, but something that happens like within a day or something, something that happens. - Okay. - And it's the evil when that person is wishing something truly bad on somebody else. I wish you were dead, kind of thing, only. Yeah, that kind of thing. - Oh, nice. - No, no, it doesn't know. - No, it doesn't know. (laughing) But you wanted to shop of horrors. - Dior, what are you bringing to the shop of horrors? - I'm bringing some little Greek worry beads. They're called, it's called a komboloi and increased like you twirl them around. And anyway, you have them in your pocket and just twirl them around and kind of calms you down sometimes. But the one I'm gonna bring to your horror shop will be special because it will help you detect if somebody is lying. So you twirl this, or somebody's telling you a story, you're twirling the worry beads. If they fly out of your hands, that meant you just heard an atrocious, outrageous lie. - Ooh, I like that, I like that. Okay, Lori, let's go to you. What are you bringing to the shop of horrors? - Well, I think my mind is growing the same way as Dior's. I'm thinking it's gonna be an ice pick. Not only is that kind of a pick. (laughing) Not only are they a little bit terrifying to look at and would make a wonderful device for murdering someone, but I'm thinking that, you know, an ice pick is designed to go through ice, which is an extremely dense, extremely tough material. So when you're holding this ice pick, you cannot lie. It goes right to the heart of who you are, and you have to tell the truth. - Wow, and as soon as you said ice pick, for some reason, I felt like the ice pick in an eyeball and a martini go together. That sounds really gross and weird, that's like sick. But all right, I'll take yours on the lying part. Kathy, Katie, I was gonna say Kathleen, but Katie, tell us. - I'll go by either. - Yeah, no, but you're Katie. - But I'm gonna be really icky, because I use this in one of my books to heal somebody. I'm gonna bring you a whole bunch of maggots. And if somebody's got a wound and there's no doctor, they can draw out the infection, but if somebody's really evil, they'll just keep drawing it out until they kill 'em. - Ew. - I didn't realize they used to use that in medicine, and I have one of my characters who got wounded. This is pre-civil war, and they put some maggots on his leg to heal to draw out the infection of the wound. They really did that in real life. - The maggots and leeches, I mean, remember the leeches? And I mean, when we were in Connecticut, I went into a pond. There was a dog we were hanging out with, and the dog kept putting his ball in the pond and lost his ball in the pond. And Nancy and I were having an afternoon of wine at the pond with the dogs. And so I messaged the owner, the pet parent, and said, "You know, your dog's in there." He goes, "Well, how much do you love, Naz? "If you really love the dog, you'll get in the pond." And he's like, "Have you had wine yet?" And I said, "Yes." He says, "Well, get in the pond. "Show your love for the dog." And I got in the pond. And these long leeches, I mean, it was so fast. They came right, and that was it. I decided I don't love your dog that much, but I couldn't do it, but hell no, hell no. That was really, you know, 'cause I thought, okay, let's play African queen for a second, right? But, uh-uh, no, no, it's not funny. I don't know, no, and no, and no, and no. That gets the niches are a big no, no. So, okay, Matt, what about you? What are you bringing to the shop? No leeches. - Well, what would the shop of horrors be without a brain? - I would bring the brain of one of my antagonists who was so wicked that he was expelled from the church of Satan, was known as the Wendigo. And perhaps it would turn into some sort of young Frankenstein sort of thing, where Igor came to steal the brain from the little shop of horrors, and instead of getting Abby Normals' brain, he got a Wendigo's brain and put it into a Frankenstein. - Oh my gosh. (laughing) - I gotta be put into this one. I was just in Kansas, and we visited, this was in, oh, okay, I don't remember which, you know, off-central Kansas is a museum of oddities, and they have a skeleton in there that is supposed to be the skeleton of Frankenstein. They also have a whole bunch of other weird stuff, too. - That's right. - What are you seeing? - Watch for Katie in July, she'll be on the show talking about the oddities, and I think maybe that's what influenced me on this part of this show is like the odd, anything odd is good. Aaron, what are you bringing to the shop? - I'm kind of channeling both, but you and Laurie said, it's, I'm thinking, basically there's an aquarium tank with big bulging-eyed fish floating, and anybody who looks at that fish makes eye contact with the fish, with the big bulging eyes, then knows each other person they looked at in the room's deepest, darkest secret, and their job is to seek revenge for whoever was victimized by these people with whatever deep, dark secret they held, whether they killed somebody or whether they wish something awful on someone, they need to rectify all of that because now they know everybody's deep, dark secrets, and four things they've done. - Yeah, that to me is fascinating how those things happen, you know, where those, I kind of feel like we could have this in reality, right? When we talk about all of it, it could happen, you know, isn't that part of the things like mysteries and the eyebrow raises, you know, you kind of get these, these things could be real, you never know. I mean, you never know, just 'cause what we know now doesn't mean they can't come real, so you never know. I'm just saying. All right, we're gonna go to the final part. The final part is we are going to play building a mystery. And building a mystery is we're gonna give each other a word, okay, and when you get that word, you're gonna create a sentence using that word, but we're going to build a mystery with it. So we're gonna go sentence by sentence around the word, the room here, okay, in the shop of horrors, 'cause now we're in the shop of horrors. So I'll give you a word, and then you're gonna say a sentence that starts off the story, then you're gonna give the next person a word, and they're gonna follow up the story with the sentence that includes that word. Is that clear enough? All right. - Good. - Okay, Eva's in trouble. She's gotta run out real quick, but she'll hopefully come back and finish the story for us. So Katie, you're gonna start off, okay? So I'm gonna come up with a word eyeball, 'cause, you know, Aaron got me. - And an eyeball. - Listen, listen, when I was a kid, I thought ET's eyeball would come out of the bathroom sink. So like, you know, when I went to take a bath, I always thought his eyeball. So you freaked me out a little bit with eyeballs. So the eyeball thing is not good. So anyway, eyeball, eyeball, okay, my character. Let's call my character Carla. Carla gets up next morning and she walks into the kitchen. The friend she had had over 'cause the night he's left, she looks at her table and there's an eyeball lying on the table. - Whoa. - Table is the next word that person's gotta go with. - Okay, so catching Eva up in our audience, we're going, everybody gets a word and they create a sentence. We're building a mystery, a story together. So Katie's got an eyeball. And who, what did you say the next word is? - Her name's Carla and she goes into the, wakes up in the morning after she'd had a tries with her boyfriend. She gets up to next morning, walks into the kitchen and finds an eyeball on her table. And I'll go with table to be the word, I guess, for the next one. - So Matt, Matt, you're next, table. - Carla looked at the table and the eyeball and wondered about the fork sticking out a bit. Had she encountered somebody eating their breakfast? (laughs) - Oh my gosh, we're going back to the Martini, aren't we? Okay, so Lori, this is going right back home to you. Okay? - Okay. - Yeah, what's her word? - Knife. - Knife. So she looked at the eyeball with the fork sticking out of it and she thought, I'm not hungry right now. So I'll take my knife and I will go into the other room to see if I could find who this person is, whose eye it belongs to. But at the door, she discovers there's one shoe and the shoe is not her size. And the word that I'm gonna give the next person is doorbell. - DR, you're ringing the doorbell. Go for it. - She's standing there looking at this dang shoe, wondering what the heck could happen next when, guess what, the doorbell rings and who is there, but a policeman. A policeman. - All right, Erin, it's off to you. - She opens the door to the policeman and quickly kicks the shoe that she's not familiar with out of the way. She's not sure what it means, but it can't be good. So before she invites the policeman in, she looks suspiciously around the room to make sure no one else is there. And then she hears a sound behind her, the sound of the back door closing. She knows no one else is in the house. So now she's really worried. The next person's word is top sticks. - Oh, good God. Eva, good luck with that one. We're bringing the food back to you. - Carla pulls the chopsticks out of her hair. She had used to make this really elegant bun and says, "Hello, officer, what can they do for you?" Well, he's there because somebody had called in a disturbance at her house and she's going, "There's nothing disturbing here. "I don't know what you're talking about." And he goes, "Well, can I come in and look?" And she flashes across the eyeball and the knife and the shoe sitting there and she's going, "Honey, you can't come in unless you have a warrant." And that would be, but I'd have to leave it right there. - Does that mean Bisa has to finish this story for us? - I think so. - Okay, wait. I have to have wine before I get a warrant. So the policeman says, "You're right. "I can go get a warrant or you could pay me 100 bucks "and I'll go away forever." (laughing) - Okay. - Did the policeman have an eye patch by any chance? - Yes, he did, he did. - Looking for his eyeball. - I love this. - You guys, thank you so much for playing. (laughing) But it's fun, it's fun, you know, the creative world that, you know, those kind of games, it's kind of, I think, you know, you guys are writers and authors, but it's something that I think people in general should do those kind of creative exercises to kind of realize that the potential is always there. Like you never know when an eyeball could be listening and telling you the truth or not, you know? So I think you never know. And to always think about the impossible because the impossible could be very much the possible. You never know what is lurking in a pond. It could be an eyeball, it could be a leech, it could be a floating skull, it could be maggots. (laughing) And some people like things like maggots and all kinds of weird things to eat too. So anyway, closing that off, thank you all for joining us. Thank you for a happy hour, cheers to you. I wanna go around the room and give everyone's website again, but again, it is all going to be listed and linked in the show notes. So you'll have everyone's website to there. So Eva, give everyone your website and the best way for them to keep up with you. EvaEldridge.com, I'm on Facebook and are EvaEldridge on Facebook and that's where I spend most of my social media time. Okay, DR for you, what's the best for everyone? The best is just to look at my website, er-ranstell.com and all my info is there. Okay, Erin, for you? ErinLee.com and that's spelled E-R-Y-N-N-L-E-I-G-H. All right, Laurie, for you, Amazon is good, but I also have a dedicated Facebook page, Laurie Pollard-Johnson books. Okay, perfect. Katie for you, it's KatieWalls.com. KatieWalls.com, yes. And I'm on Instagram, Twitter, well, it's X now. And LinkedIn, and it's either K-A-T-Y or K-A-T-Y walls, depending on whether it's Instagram, Twitter, or whichever. Okay, and Matt is on the back. Yes, she does, she's always posting travel stuff too. So when she's not playing with maggots. (laughing) The travel point is americanroads.net. Okay, that's right, americanroads.net. Travel one. Matt, yours is mattcost.net? Yeah, mattcost.net. I'm on Facebook, Instagram under Matt cost, so you can find me. Okay, and everyone, keep up with us at bigblendradio.com. Thank you for joining us, take care. Thank you. Thank you for having us, Lisa. Thank you. Thanks for joining us here on Big Blend Radio. Happy Hour podcast. New episodes air every second Monday and third Friday. Visit us at bigblendradio.com.