A Little Writer's Humor

Believe it or not, I recently was inspired by ... wait for it ... Jeff Foxworthy. That's right, the quintessential redneck himself.

A colleague from work is very fond of quoting from Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck," and others in the office seem to enjoy engaging in a call-and-response chorus. Here's an example.

Call: You might be a redneck?
Response: If there's ever been crime-scene tape on your bathroom door.

I'm particularly fond of that one, seeing as how I fancy myself a crime fiction writer.

But I digress. And, now with apologies to the half-dozen or so people I've ripped off for this blog post, here it comes.

You might be a writer if:

* You sleep with pen and paper next to your bed, and the stove, and the couch, and the dining table, and the shower and the toilet.
* You get caught up in plotting your next scene and then wonder why your coffee is cold.
* You do everything you can think of to procrastinate from writing, then turn the light on in the middle of the night and feverishly write a couple hundred words because you feel guilty for not writing.
* The stacks of your old manuscripts and rejection letters officially constitute a fire hazard.
* You think sleep is way overrated. Who needs more than three or four hours anyway?
* Your writing projects are backed up on your laptop, your spouse's laptop, two thumb drives, and you're seriously toying with the idea of storing everything in the Cloud.
* You look at yourself and see a writer, while everyone else sees an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive insomniac with a pen fetish.

Now, see how many you can come up with.

~Dave Autry

"You've Got Mail"

In my email in box the other day was the following message from the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime: “Congratulations! The Chesapeake Crimes editorial committee has selected your story to be included in the fifth volume of the Chesapeake Crimes series, expected to be called Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder!”;

What can I say? I am truly honored to have one of my recent short stories, “Deadrise,” selected for publication along with more than a dozen other Chessie Chapter members, including some well-known and very talented published authors.

Here's a teaser: When an investigative reporter gets in over his head while trying to get the goods on drug smugglers in the Chesapeake Bay, he gets some welcome assistance from a very attractive game warden...I mean a very attractive  Maryland Natural Resources Police officer. (You'll just have to get the book to find out more.)

And while I’m getting all swell-headed and feeling like I just won the lottery, I must credit my comrades in the Rockville Writers’ Group for their support and their invaluable constructive criticism that helped make “Deadrise” even better than I had hoped. (I warned that I would blame them if the story got rejected. And looks like they dodged a bullet this time.)

So, here’s the scoop:

The coordinating editors and editorial committee of Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder are pleased to announce that the following authors' stories have been chosen for inclusion in this anthology, the fifth in the Chesapeake Crimes series:

Donna Andrews  –  Mean Girls
David Autry        –  Deadrise
Jill M. Breslau    –  Murder by Mediation
Karen Cantwell   –  Next Stop
Leone Ciporin     –  A Grain of Truth
E.B. Davis          –   Lucky in Death
Barb Goffman    –   The Lord Is My Shamus
Ellen Herbert      –  To Adjuncts Everywhere
Smita H. Jain      –  An Education in Murder
C. Ellett Logan   –  Alligator Is for Shoes
Shari Randall      –  The Objective Case
Harriette Sackler –  The Factory
Art Taylor           –  When Duty Calls
Cathy Wiley        –  Miked for Murder

Our publisher, Wildside Press, expects this book to be released in the spring of 2012.

Be sure to check back frequently for updates and information on how you can get your very own copy of This Job Is Murder!

- Dave Autry