Guest Post

Guest Chick: Diane Vallere

We are thrilled to welcome Diane Vallere, bestselling author of the Samantha Kidd Mysteries, Madison Night Mysteries, Material Witness Mysteries, Sky Crimes and Misdemeanors Mysteries, Mermaid Mysteries, and Costume Shop Mysteries. Please join us in congratulating Diane on the release of Ranch Dressing, Book #15 in the Samatha Kidd series.

THE UNEXPECTED JOY OF INCONVENIENCE

Early last year, I settled into a new writing routine. After getting up and ready, I head to a local café, plug in my laptop, and write for three hours. It’s easy enough to tune out the other patrons and get lost in the world of whatever I’m writing, and it gives me a break from sitting in front of my computer at home—a seat that seems to have more gravity than the rest of the house, because once I sit down, I have a hard time getting back up!

Cup of coffee spilled over computer keyboard on white wooden table, flat lay

But today, within five minutes of booting up my computer, I knocked over my (full) cup of coffee, coating everything on my table with a light roast/half and half mixture. When an employee came over with rags to help me wipe everything down, she offered words of consolation: It’s Monday.

My first thought, which I said aloud, was, “I hope this isn’t an indication of how the rest of the week will go.”

But…what if it is?

What if my whole week is full of unexpected inconveniences that require unexpected reactions. What if I’m forced out of my routine? What if every moment offers a chance to be different than the one I experienced at this same time last week?

The reality is it does. It’s not the inconvenience of accidents that makes our world different, it’s us that keeps our world the same.

Alarm clock and books on table. Text TIME FOR CHANGE on white background

Take a different route to work. Drink tea with breakfast instead of coffee. Change shades of lipstick. Wear sneakers. Don’t wear sneakers. Adopt a puppy or a cat. Rearrange the furniture. Dictate a chapter instead of typing it. Read instead of watching TV. Any one of these changes can send a ripple effect into our routines and cause us to see things differently.

Ever go on a vacation, prepared not to work, and get a great idea? I’ve bought more notebooks on vacations than any other time because I find myself ill-equipped to remember all of the unexpected ideas that populate my mind. Every get stuck on a project and stare at it for hours, not making progress, then stand up to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom and instantly know the way forward? I’ve solved plotting problems while mowing the grass and dictated opening scenes for books I never knew I was going to write while on a walk.

Maybe, instead of getting upset when something unexpected happens, we should celebrate. Yes! I spilled my coffee! Now everything about today from this point forward will be unexpected! Maybe accidents are like bird poop: annoying in the moment but good luck for a year. Maybe the inconvenience is the wake-up call that forces us to see and do things differently, even if only for the five minutes it takes to deal with the mess, before we settle in to do what we set out to do.

My amateur sleuth, Samantha Kidd, is no stranger to the messes of inconvenience. She spent her first few mysteries in reaction mode. These days she’s a little older and wiser, more settled in her life choices, but still curious, and still eager to offer unsolicited assistance. But any kind of routine she might have goes out the window when she heads to a dude ranch for a little R&R in RANCH DRESSING. It’s not until an inconvenience—in the form of a dead body—throws the routine Samantha had planned for the week out the window.

Sure makes a spilled cup of coffee seem like a walk in the park!

Question: do unexpected messes ruin your day, or has a mess ever led to something unexpectedly great?

About Ranch Dressing:

When fashionista Samantha Kidd’s father-in-law arranges a week on the dude ranch he’s aiming to buy, Samantha preps for blue skies and clean living. But all too soon she learns life on the ranch is anything but calm. When the owner is found dead inside one of the stables, all signs point to murder.

As Samantha wrangles clue after clue, she smells something rotten—and it’s not manure. In her quest for the truth, she encounters quirky cowhands, brazen barrel racers, and suspicious horseplay—not to mention a social paradigm straight from the eighteen hundreds.

Can Samantha bring justice to the wild west of eastern New Jersey, or will a renegade ranch dweller get away with murder?

Available Now!

National bestselling author Diane Vallere writes funny and fashionable character-based mysteries. After two decades in luxury retailing, she traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. As past president of the national Sisters in Crime organization, she edited the Agatha-Award-winning essay collection PROMOPHOBIA: Taking the Mystery out of Promoting Crime Fiction. Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.

 

35 thoughts on “Guest Chick: Diane Vallere”

  1. hestia here.

    thanks for this post this morning. My commute is delayed 25 minutes right now due to equipment issues. Not a good day to be late.

    but I will deal. It gives me time to think about what I absolutely have to get done today. Major presentation next week for the top dog in the agency. And my coworker isn’t prepping for it right.

    I usually take these things in stride because it’s out of my control. And maybe something good will come out of it.

    and 15? Wow!

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  2. Kudos on your latest, Diane! Change: the only constant, and that’s always a mess. As we entered another season in our lives, my wife and I downsized yet again. This time it was war! Over 90% of what we had accumulated required an immediate decision: donate or trash. The local donation center loved us, as well as the many people who benefited from gifts of furniture and other serviceable items. From my view, we got the best of the best, because the 10% we kept allowed us to focus on what matters most in this season of our life. Keep the books coming!

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    1. Hi, Grant:

      Congrats on downsizing! Doesn’t that always feel so good (after the initial shock 🙂 Keep enjoying that ten percent of what you kept–you probably rediscovered a few underappreciated treasures in the process!

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  3. This was the first thing I read this morning. THANK YOU! What a great way to look at things. I have a bad cold, and have been hunkering down at home. Today I will go out and take a walk in the fresh air. It is a beautiful day in New England. I’ll make the most of it. We all tend to whine about what goes wrong. I will make a conscious effort to look at each day as an adventure. Hopefully they will be good ones. I look forward to reading your books!
    Carol

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    2. I’m piggybacking on your comment today, Carol, because WordPress is being mean to me again. But I hope the fresh air is just what you need to kick your cold!

      Hi, Diane! *waving* I’m a big ‘ol Pollyanna by nature, so I can always find the silver lining. But when my kids were little and we were starting a business and life was so chaotic, I often fell short. But then i read something about a famous scientist whose name escapes me. He said that when he was little, he spilled a huge thing of milk all over the kitchen floor but instead of getting mad, his mother—realizing that you really can’t cry over spilled milk, even when you’re poor—used it as a teachable moment. They sat down on the floor and studied the patterns the spill made, and talked about it like it was a planned experiment, then cleaned it up together. I wanted to be that kind of mom, but while never reaching quite that state of zen, always remembered that image of a boy and his mother staring at a puddle of milk and tried to reframe the paradigm of whatever had happened at my house.

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      1. Becky, I love this! That’s a great way to turn an accident into something bigger and better. (I do wonder what the Panera employees would have thought if I simply sat and studied the pattern of the spilled coffee?)

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  4. Congratulations, Diane. It really depends on the mess. Something that makes me spend an unplanned half hour cleaning – like the day soy sauce leaked all over the inside of the fridge? Not an issue. I can spend some time plotting.

    A spill that shorts out my laptop? That’s a little bit more concerning.

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    1. Hi Liz,

      Yes, you gotta be quick with the napkins!

      Even so, I’ve found that shorted out laptop might lead me to a computer better suited to my n needs, or a trip to repair that gives me a new idea. There’s always a different way to see it.

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        1. #silverlining 🙂

          These things tend to happen (to me) when I’m in a hurry, but it turns out the unexpected side effect of inconvenience usually (always?) solves some other, bigger problem!

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        2. Jen, that convo actually sounds really cool. We live so much in our own cocoons that we become somewhat of a circular firing squad. How great to get insight into a completely different life. Inspiration for a writer!

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  5. I’ve always had what I call high entropy days, where everything tends toward chaos rather than order. To have order in a system, you I must put energy into it. Or I can just go with the flow and accept the disorder. Either way, I learn something about life.

    Tom Burns

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  6. Thanks for being on the blog today, Diane! Hurrah on all your successes and book 15 in this series!

    I like routine and order, so unexpected detours tend to frustrate me. One of my kids, though, is very good at pivoting and thinking outside the box–it gives me a fresh perspective on things.

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    1. Thanks, Jen! I can fall into a desire for routine myself too, but I’m learning to accept that sometimes what I need is the wake up call of inconvenience, not the regularly scheduled program. Lucky you to have a good example setter in the family 🙂

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  7. Diane, this is so wonderful! You really should be a life coach. I’m like Liz. It depends on the mess. Also on my mood for the day. It generally starts out as an annoyance. If I’m having a bad day, it’s hard not to spiral. But if it’s a minor blip or doesn’t affect my general day that much, it can be a gift.

    I’m a big fan of mindless activities as a way of allowing our brain to rest and new ideas to flow. I wrote a whole blog post about it! The Zen of Picking up Dog Poo – Chicks on the Case

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  8. Considering I’m sitting here furious about the meeting I got called into today, when I don’t have time to attend this meeting, when it is for a seriously idiotic idea (seriously, someone should lose their job over wasting my time telling them how stupid they are). I’ve got too much to do to meet my Friday deadline.

    So yeah, I’m not that open to other possibilities today. Seems like I need to change my perspective.

    Thanks for the reminder. And congrats on Samantha Kidd #15 and book #40 overall!

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  9. Thank you Mark!

    I’ve been where you are and I know that feeling. There’s a huge power in just saying okay, not what I wanted, but here we are and then going with it. Good luck!

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  10. Congratulations, Diane! And thanks so much for visiting us today.

    Great post–and interesting question.

    There have been times when a mess led to something unexpectedly positive…but other times, mess = stress!

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  11. Like, Jen, I like routine and order, but I do my best to go with the flow–even if that flow is spilled milk. (Though if it’s on my laptop, the flow will likely be joined with tears.) My mantra when I’m trying to not get upset by something that’s upset my day is “It’s all part of the movie.” I want to say it’s a quote from Ken Kesey, but I may be wrong. (Research mavens….?)

    Thanks so much for visiting the Chicks today, Diane, and congrats on the new book! Fifteen? Just wow! And I LOVE the title!

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  12. Yes, I too get annoyed if my already loose schedule is further de-arranged. But routine becomes routine, as you show. And congrats on the Dude Ranch mystery!

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  13. Diane, welcome and congrats on the latest! I am a longtime fan!!

    This is such a great post with lovely perspective. I had the accidental “gift” of being sans washing machine for NINE WEEKS. (It’s a long story.) What started as an inconvenience ended up being a blessing as it gave me the opportunity to truly and fer-realsies appreciate all that I have, including appliances that do what they’re told!

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  14. Diane, loved this post! My apologies for being late to the party–I was traveling yesterday. Talk about being jolted from one’s routine, ha. With no wireless or outlets anywhere, sigh. And right now I’m writing from Midtown Manhattan rather than NH, seated at a tiny table with the largest cup (bowl?) of cappuccino I’ve ever encountered. I am eyeing it warily–but if anything starts flying I will embrace the adventure, per your great advice! Congrats on Ranch Dressing, woohoo–another amazing addition to the fabulous Diane Vallere collection!

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