The bookmobile is making its usual rounds when Minnie and Eddie are flagged down by a woman in distress. The woman’s husband, a famous artist, needs emergency medical care. After getting him into the bookmobile, Minnie races the man to the hospital in time…but his bad luck has only just begun.
After disappearing from the hospital, the artist is discovered slumped over the body of a murdered woman. Minnie knows that her new friend didn’t commit the crime, but the evidence paints an unflattering picture. Now this librarian and her furry friend have to put the investigation in high gear and catch the real killer before someone else checks out.
Series: Bookmobile Cat Mystery #2
Release Date: 07/01/2014
Things Writers Can't Do
by Laurie Cass
Spelling, for instance. Being a writer does not automatically make you an expert speller. Usually we're pretty good, but there are words that throw us every time. Well, me. I really shouldn't speak for any of my fellow writers, so please re-title this post in your head as "Things Laurie Can't Always Do Very Well." More accurate, but not as catchy.
Back to spelling. In a general sort of way, I'm an excellent speller. Lots of syllables? No problem. The goofy exceptions to the i and e rule? They can't fool me. But then there are my trouble words. I am so horrible at spelling the word "fluorescent," as in the light fixture, that spell check doesn't know what to do with it. (What the heck is that "u" doing so early in the word anyway?) And as a beginning typist back in eighth grade, it took me a long time to figure out why I was getting marked down for typing "seperate."
I have a hard time with "privilege," too, because I desperately want to put a "d" ahead of the letter "g." And my typing fingers insist that judgment should have two of the letter "e." You know where that second one wants to go, don't tell me you don't.
And, sadly, it's not just spelling skills that I lack. The decision of whether to use "affect" or "effect" in a sentence can throw me into a tizzy. Yes, I know, there are all sorts of methods that can help with the decision, but either I don't remember the method or it doesn't apply or I get so irritated at the English language that I end up rewriting the sentence so I don't have to make that choice. Cheating? Probably. Do I care? Well... yeah. But not enough to reread that chapter in my old grammar textbook.
Then there's punctuation. Back in my school days, lo these many years ago, I ended up with the idea that the rules for where to put a comma and when to use a semi-colon were written in stone. There was a time and a place for inserting an ellipses and if you had to ask when and where that was, well, maybe you shouldn't be writing in the first place.
Now I know better. Now I know that certain types of punctuation go in and out of fashion. I know that other countries use punctuation in different ways, and I know that different publishing houses have different policies for things from M dashes to hyphenations. None of this stuff is set in stone.
Which makes e breathe a small sigh of relief, because I have come to the conclusion that I'm never going to learn it all, no matter how hard I try. Besides, I can always look up what I need to know. Or change the sentence structure if I don't mind cheating a little.
So I'm sorry if this post is destroying any illusions about the expertise you might have thought I had regarding the English language. But what I can do, at least in a halfway decent fashion, is tell a story. And that, I hope, is what writers are supposed to do.
Laurie Cass grew up in Michigan and graduated from Eastern Michigan University in the 80s with a (mostly unused) Bachelor of Science degree in geology. Currently, Laurie and her husband share their house with two cats, the inestimable Eddie, and the adorably cute Sinii. When Laurie isn't writing, she's working her day job, reading, yanking weeds out of her garden, or doing some variety of skiing.
Website: http://catmystery.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookmobilecat
Thanks to the awesome ladies at Penguin, I have 1 paperback copy of Tailing a Tabby by Laurie Cass to give away to one of my lucky readers! Just enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win, and be sure to keep checking back for more awesome giveaways!
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