Paige Hawthorne: Blog

Who knew? Isn't it remarkable how much influence - real-life influence - this site has? My fictional character, Winter Jennings, muses on changes - okay, she bitches about alterations that the author doesn't like.

Two recent examples: Burnett's Vodka changed a perfectly classy bottle label into an ugly eyesore. Then, two Brookside grocery stores started using paper sacks without handles.

Guess what?

After posting derogatory Winter comments on SOL, I was delighted to see that Burnett's and the supermarkets reverted to their original products. Whimpering probably. Mewling.

Paige

Your notes to me are sometimes interesting, occasionally fascinating. Once in a while, even instructive. So, I will be putting some of those letters to work.

Now, notably, no reader's name, contact info, etc. will be shared. In fact, your privacy trumps everything else. And not just because some of my editorial staff are, to put it mildly, unhinged.

It occurred to me that those editors could benefit from the insights of the very readers they edit for. So, I'll be sharing - content only - some of your observations, opinions, suggestions, demands, with Thorny, Steven, and Mike.

It bears repeating that none of the three will have any way to find you, to harm you, to … well, let's not dwell on the dark side.

FWIW, the three most frequent reader musings are about guns, sex, and politics. In that order.

Paige

I opened voting. So, haters, vote on 'Vengeance' with … um, vengeance.

You're welcome,

Paige

Almost feel sorry for the haters. I can just feel them straining at the leash - a slathering Pit Bull, ferocious Doberman, deadly Reaper drone, massive Cane Corso. Well, maybe not a Reaper.

Ravenous, hyperventilating, desperate for me to turn on the voting for 'Winter's Vengeance'.

Sorry, the world rotates on a steady axis. At a measured pace.

> My stories are 16 chapters, no more, no fewer.

> Voting begins when Chapter 8 is posted.

> Break glass in case of Emergency.

Paige

I refuse to believe that SOL members are as illiterate as is claimed. My own readers, at least the ones who write me, are often able to string coherent sentences together. Of course, it's sometimes like a child draws a house - window, door, window. Noun, verb, object.

'Dear Paige, I like Pilar.'

A couple of readers, knowing what an ace plagiarizer I am, ask me what I'm reading when I pen one of my stories. Crime novels and thrillers, of course. But those of you with with a bit of Sherlock in you could make some pretty educated guesses.

If, in a current Winter story, I use a word like 'shibboleth' or 'epidemiologist' or a Latin phrase like 'pacta sunt servanda', you can be pretty confident I'm reading Alexander McCall Smith.

If there's a Winter-action scene involving some violence, I'm probably reading Robert B. Parker or Lee Child. Someone like that.

Snappy dialogue - Elmore Leonard. Quirky plot-line - Ross Thomas. Oddball character - Donald Westlake.

Of course for you readers who are unlettered … well, never mind.

Paige