When Key Lime Pie is Tax Deductible – A Guest Post by Nancy Martin

/ Cynthia D'Alba, Guest Blogger / , , , / 14 Comments

Hi gang. Cynthia D’Alba here. I am so thrilled to welcome best-selling author and super-nice person Nancy Martin to our little home on the net. Nancy writes wonderful cozy mysteries that make you laugh, and then lust after the uber-sexy Mick. She took a break in her Blackbird Sisters Mysteries but is back with two new ones. As a long-time fan of the series  I squealed like a teenage girl over The Bieber when I heard about the two new books,. So help me make Nancy feel welcome.

When Key Lime Pie is Tax Deductible

I love writing. Most of the time I love it so much, I hate to leave my desk. Sometimes I think I write fiction just so I don’t have to leave the house to do the research for non-fiction.

But lately, I’ve discovered  a new resource for the kind of research I need to do, which is finding all the right clothes for my amateur sleuth, the once pampered Nora Blackbird, who is forced to get a job when her parents ran off with her trust fund. Now she attends charity balls and cocktail parties in her job as the society columnist for a Philadelphia newspaper, but because Nora is broke, she wears fancy duds from her late grandmother’s collection of haute couture. Believe me, I knew nothing about couture when I started this series, so I’ve been researching clothes ever since.

And lately I’ve discovered Pinterest.

Wait! Stop! If you don’t know about Pinterest and are tempted to click, be warned:  IT’S COMPLETELY ADDICTIVE! http://pinterest.com/

Type in a topic that interests you, and you can find a gajillion photos and fun little postings about the subject.  Recipes? Shoes? Mystery novels? Funny sayings.  (Oh, Dorothy Parker, I have always loved you!) Inspirational stuff. Wedding ideas.  (Lots and lots of wedding ideas.)  Show jumping, yes. Sexy men—double yes!

The day I wandered onto Pinterest for the first time, I clicked on “couture,” and suddenly my clothing research for the next ten books was revealed to me in bright color and plenty of detail.  I have found new friends—fashion experts, even a designer for one company that specializes in Mother of the Bride dresses. (Why couldn’t I have me him five years ago when my Mother of the Bride marathon began?) For me, it’s much more fun than Facebook.  (Maybe because the high school boyfriends don’t come looking for me on Pinterest?)

Now I look for any excuse to create a “board” on Pinterest.  (You “pin” things you’re “interested” in on a virtual bulletin board, get it?)

When I realized I had 50 days until the release of my new mystery, I thought, why not create 50 Shades of…something?  The more I thought about it and the more I snooped around on Pinterest,  the more I liked the idea.  But I didn’t want to do gray! How dull. Why not…pink?  Pink is a pretty, innocent kind of color with a few sexy connotations (Surrender the pink, anyone?) but not so sexy that it would shock my mother.  In an hour, I had 50 pink dresses lined up, and I’ve been pinning one every day since.  It’s so fun! And cute, right? People love pink!  And the 50 days is a countdown to the release date of the book, so it’s a subtle enough kind of self-promotion that my grandmother wouldn’t have been appalled.

Here’s a short book trailer I made after cruising around Pinterest for so long that I started playing around with graphics in other ways:

Next week my daughter is throwing me a party in her new home to meet some of her new friends. It’s not exactly a book party since you can’t invite people to a shindig and then ask them to buy a hardcover, so we’re giving away books. Wr’re getting decoration ideas from Pinterest. My daughter is serving refreshments.  She found a special key lime pie at a local bakery.  She said, “It’s kind of pricey, but what the heck.”  I said, “I have some of my marketing budget left.  Let me buy. Refreshments are tax deductible!”  After a long silence, she finally said, “I need a job where key lime pie is tax deductible.”

Become a writer.  You can spend time doing research on Pinterest and buying key lime pie and not feel guilty. Well, not too guilty.

Nancy Martin’s new Blackbird Sisters mystery, NO WAY TO KILL A LADY, hit the stores  on August 7th.

Find Nancy on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/nanmart1/

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authornancymartin

Her website:   http://www.nancymartinmysteries.com/

Cyndi here again: I’ve read every Blackbird Sisters book and I can’t wait to get my hands on this new one! I can truly–without reservation–recommend this series. And if you don’t fall in lust/love with Mick Abruzzo, you’ll be in the minority of her readers!

To get you off on this series, I’m giving away a copy of Mick’s Story!

 I’ll select one winner from the comments let today and through the weekend. The winner will be announced on Monday, August 13. 

So leave a comment! 

Thanks again Nancy for joining us.