The cookbook side of the new Amazon search...

Amazon's New Search Serves Up Recipes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28519-2003Oct28.html

I am paranoid

My temp agency just wanted to be sure it was okay to let my current boss know I was looking for other work. I worried myself over nothing.

Clearly I'm in that paranoia mood, because I picked Kristine Smith's latest paperback Contact Imminent. I didn't even have to search for it. The local BDaltons had it faced out and everything. Of course they only carry her current book, so god help you if you want the other books in the series.

"Faith manages."

CVS had a last minute opportunity to chat with a semi-local author to talk with us about writing. But instead of gathering at our usual nook, the group gathered at a B&N down in Alexandria. Our author Tom Morrisey is an active member of the Alphasmart forum, which is how our Fearless Leader knows him and invited him to talk to us. He provided a rather different focus, since he writes Christian fiction, so he had an interesting insights on how to include aspect of faith and religion in our writing without making it either too cutesy or heavy handed. (Or as I termed it, by turning it into the "Very Special Novel" after watching something on VH1 on successful tv formulas.) Morrisey also read us a chapter from his forthcoming book focusing on the world of Nascar racing. I thought it was interesting that some Christian bookstores would not carry a books if they included certain topics, like drinking, yet he showed a fairly convincing description of a former alcoholic wanting to take just that one sip. I heard the internal conflicts of how to deal with his children and whether his faith could see him through. It wasn't the heavy handed "It's the devil's drink" type stuff. Morrisey preferred to make his characters human. He mentioned actually that the only people who had written Nascar stories before had shown the characters as hellraisers first and then got religion. Usually when I hear about drivers, they've been raised good old Christian boys. His other book Yucatan Deep from Zondervan focused on cave diving and came up with the idea literally on the spot talking to would-be editor remembering a story about a deep diving accident with two partners, one who didn't make it.