Kate Flora and Lea Wait after the Maine Literary Awards.

We are pleased to announce that Kate Flora is this year’s winner of the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction for her Portland-based police procedural, Redemption. Winners got blue balloons!

Kaitlyn Dunnett here, falling in with the plan to pass on news, updates, and other interesting stuff on Sundays. I have a follow up to my post on Monday on revising a work in progress. On Tuesday, when I went back to deal with the fiddley bits, I did a search for some of the words I thought I might have used too many times. Shrugged, grinned, and smiled weren’t repeated as often as I’d feared, but then I typed “just” into the FIND space. Would you believe I managed to write that one little word 244 times in a 278 page manuscript? Egad! It’s now down to 74 times and a few of those are actually places were just is part of justify or adjust and so forth. But now I’ve got to do something about “only” which has gone up to 141 uses.

Kate Flora says: You know, Kaitlyn, there was a discussion about this on the New England Sisters in Crime website this week. Those sneaky words! I have a lot of trouble with just, but I’ve never done a search like this. I tend to overuse “really” as well. Sometimes not even seeing that until the book comes for a final pass as it is formatted for print. Suddenly those overused words will just leap off the page.

Then there are those overused words and phrases that writers use in manuscripts I review. I’m seriously thinking about a disclaimer that reads: If you want me to read 50 pages for you, please review in advance and eliminate the following, which stop me cold: 1) the phrase ‘made his way;’ and 2) any scene in which someone smirks. I have a visceral reaction to both of these. They make me stop reading.

Susan Vaughan is pleased to announce the release of Twice a Target, the first week in June. The final book in her Task Force Eagle trilogy features DEA Agent Holt Donovan. All three books are available on Amazon.com as digital downloads and will be available at other retailers soon.

Here’s a short description of the book: Disaster hits Holt twice when a gunfight ruins his mission and a car crash kills his brother and sister-in-law. Home on the Colorado ranch to raise his nephew, Holt hires a nanny, Maddie McCoy, who once jilted his brother. Can danger and a shocking discovery bring them together?