I'm today's blogger at The Lady Killers...

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I'm guest blogging at Dru's Book Musings

Find out what Faye does every day:

A Day in the Life of Intrepid Archaeologist Faye Longchamp

The romance of writing novels

Here's a publication day blog post I wrote for The Book Case. Enjoy!

The romance of writing novels

My holiday wishes and a gift for you...

Yesterday was Christmas and it's still Hanukkah and Kwanzaa starts today, so I'm thinking that most of you have been spending time with your friends and family, just like I have. I hope these have been warm and happy times for you, as they have been for me. I'm looking forward to a 2012 in which the Mayans were wrong and the world does not end. I also look forward to a year in which all things tend toward more peace, happiness, and harmony. We live in an imperfect world and entropy works, so I do not expect us to achieve perfect peace this year, nor in my lifetime, but I am an optimistic sort and I do think that we can work toward those goals.

I'm wrapping up a lot of small personal writing projects, preparing to begin another Faye Longchamp mystery, so my professional "new year" coincides with the calendar, for once. Until then, I've got some holiday gifts for you. Some of them are on a short-burn schedule, so act quickly.

Through tomorrow, the Kindle edition of my short story, "A Singularly Unsuitable Word," is free on Amazon. If, like me, you don't have a Kindle, you can read it on your computer.

Through midnight tonight, I'm running a contest on my Facebook Author page. The prize is your choice of a Kindle or a $100 gift certificate to an independent bookseller, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. All you have to do is go to the page and hit the "like" button. And if you read this late and miss the deadline, hit the button anyway, because I'm going to be giving away more stuff.

My wonderful publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has marked down the ebook editions of all my Faye Longchamp mysteries. Artifacts is only $0.99 and all the others are at $4.99, so this is a huge discount off the regular ebook price of $6.99 apiece or $14.95 apiece for paperbacks. I'm not sure how long this will last, maybe till the end of the month, so you might want to grab those now. They're available on the Poisoned Pen Press site, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble:





Because of all this cool stuff going on, I've got books on a couple of bestseller lists on Amazon, and indications are that sales are going well everywhere else. I'm blessed and grateful. Along with loving relationships with friends and family, there are few things in life more satisfying than having a profession that you love. I'm grateful to all my readers and I wish you the 2012 of your dreams.

Happy reading--
Mary Anna

Sometimes you *can* go home again...

I'm going home to Mississippi next week.  I haven't lived there since 1984, but they still consider me one of their own, because they're giving me this year's Mississippi Author Award.  (Actually, it's the Mississippi Library Association who's doing the award-giving, but they're Mississippians, so please forgive the semantic softness.)  I've known about this for a month or two, but I'm still flattered, touched, and, frankly, flabbergasted.  They're flying me in for an awards banquet and everything.  Usually, I haul myself to personal appearances in my well-worn Toyota, so this feels rather like getting the royal treatment.  I'm grateful.

I've lived in Florida since April 1987.  How long is that?  More than 24 years?  It hardly seems possible.  By contrast, I lived in Mississippi for nineteen-and-a-half years, moved away for the last two years of my undergrad degree, then returned for a little more than a year for graduate school.  Let's be generous and call it twenty-one years.  Since I ain't sixty, I guess it's safe to say that I've now lived in Florida for longer than I've lived anywhere else.  Why don't I see myself as a Floridian?

Maybe it's the accent that I'll apparently never lose.  (I sound like I've got a mouthful of magnolias.)  More likely it's the six generations of my family that lived in the Magnolia State before I came along.  We were there before Misssissippi became a state.  We were there before it even became a territory.  We were there before the steamboat that would eventually take cotton north and bring money south was even invented.  We were there for the near-obliteration of the native peoples and for the Civil War and for Reconstruction and for the civil rights movement.  I'm not saying we participated in those things, for good or ill.  I have no idea.  I just know that we were there.  Since I'm pretty sure some of us were native peoples, I have a good idea that all of us weren't too keen on the Trail of Tears, but otherwise, I just don't know.  As is true of most human history, I'd guess my people's feelings and actions were...complicated.

My own feelings about that history are complicated enough that it took me three books before I got up the nerve to write a book about the place.  I was afraid I'd never be able to go home again.

Instead, that book, Effigies, got a full-page feature article in Mississippi Magazine, and the magazine has covered every book I've written since.  I should have known that my undeniably racially themed book would receive a far warmer welcome there than an outsider might have expected.  My series character, Faye Longchamp, is multiracial, so there is some degree of racial theme to all of my books, but they've been warmly welcomed in my home state from the first.  I have not heard the first discouraging word from the folks in Mississippi, not in the eight years since Artifacts first came out.  I would say that this renewed my faith in humankind, but I've never really doubted humankind, nor the good people at home.

And now they've given me this wonderful award, and I'm so deeply touched.  It's one thing to get a nice review from somebody in New York City, but it's quite another thing to know that the people who live down the street from the house where you spent your childhood appreciate what you do.  There will be an award banquet next week and I'll get to rub elbows with some of the nicest people in the world--librarians and Mississippians.

I can't wait.

Why mystery fiction matters

I'm on Day Two of my blog tour, guesting at John Hartness's blog and opining on why mystery fiction is important.  Join me...

http://johnhartness.com/2011/07/26/guest-post-mary-anna-evans/

Look for me all over the internet this week...

I'm doing a blog tour this week, spreading wisdom hither and yon. Here's the schedule, but I will obviously keep reminding you of where I'll be.

Today is a two-fer, because Speak Without Interruption has posted an excerpt of WOUNDED EARTH (and isn't Speak without Interruption a glorious title for people who have things to say, but don't always feel like they get heard?), as well as my usual bi-weekly post at The LadyKillers, where I'm talking about technology in mysteries. Check them out!

Today's posts, with links:
July 25th: Speak Without Interruption
                  The LadyKillers

I'll post links as these blogs go live:
July 26th: John Hartness.com
July 27th: Bards and Sages Group
July 28th: Word Pursuit
July 29th: No Trees Harmed