The 2013 Tomato Travesty

They lay tangled in a mass grave, their uprooted tags reading like candy-colored highlights from a carnival barker’s pitch: Pink Girl, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple. So much variety, so much color, so much promise, reduced to fifteen corpses of a single breed: Brown Wilt.

Monday night, temperatures in Southeast PA dropped all the way to freezing, chilling and killing all fifteen of my beloved tomato plants… not to mention the beans, basil, half the zucchinis, and most of the hot peppers.

Brutal.

Yesterday, however, with temps soaring into the eighties, I reacted with dauntless courage and replaced my fallen friends, restoring hope to this frost-blasted region. The 2013 garden forges ahead bravely.

The tomatoes: 1 Supersweet 100, 1 Better Boy, 2 Goliaths, 1 “grafted” tomato (if you aren’t familiar with grafted tomatoes, check them out. They’re cool… like Franken-tomatoes. This one combines a wild tomato with a Fabulous hybrid), 1 German Striped, 1 Green Zebra, 1 Black Krim, 2 Japanese Black Trifeles, 2 Brandywines, and 4 of my favorite slicer, the Cherokee Purple.

The peppers: 1 Cayenne, several Jalapenos, 1 Fresno, 2 Serrano, 1 Ghost / Bhut Jolokia, 1 Wild Brazil, 2 Seven Pots, and 1 Moruga Scorpion, the hottest pepper in the world.

I was too stupid to cover the first tomatoes and peppers of the season and will forevermore wonder how they would have tasted, but I have learned two lessons from the 2013 Tomato Travesty.

First: from here on out, if temps drop – even if it’s July – I’m covering my little, green friends.


Second: A dog with a frisbee at his feet will not appreciate the magnitude of the catastrophe.

Do you garden? If so, what troubles have plagued you? Frost? Varmints? Pests? Disease? Please share your horror stories…

First Look: CBS Releases Preview Trailer for INTELLIGENCE!

Can't tell you how cool it was to watch this -- and how nice it is to finally be able to give people more information about Intelligence, which will play on CBS, Monday nights at 10, starting in February 2014.

It was also fun to see Michael Seitzman, Rene Echevarria, and Tripp Vinson interviewed. These guys might never achieve the household name status of the cast, but they are frigging wizards! It was Tripp who first reached out to me and got the ball rolling. A year ago, we sat down together and talked ideas and possibilities and all the hurdles we would have to cross to get a show on television. He encouraged me to celebrate every milestone and to never pin my happiness on future hurdles. Great advice. Last Friday, when he called with the amazing news that CBS had ordered the show, he said, "Remember when we talked about all those hurdles we had to get over? Well, we got over them."

There's only one hurdle left: putting out a show that people will watch and love. As a consultant, I'm excited to have a small hand in this, and I am completely confident in the cast and crew. Now, seeing the preview trailer for the first time, I feel like I'm flying over that final hurdle...

You can view the trailer here: http://www.cbs.com/shows/intelligence

First Look at Josh Holloway in INTELLIGENCE

Here it is, the first glimpse of Josh Holloway as Gabriel Black, who is based on Carl Freeman, the main character of Phoenix Island.

What a weird, wonderful thing, seeing this...

CBS Announces New Schedule; INTELLIGENCE to Air Mondays at 10 PM!

CBS announced its new schedule today, and it looks like Intelligence, the series based on my teen thriller, will air Mondays at 10 PM, starting most likely in January 2014.

We'll share the time slot with Jerry Bruckheimer's Hostages, which will begin this fall and wrap up in January. I'm excited for that show -- and excited to be following the 9:30 slated Mom, a new show from Chuck Lorre (Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men), which is sure to pull in viewers.

Hope you'll be watching, too!

I'm not sure yet what all this means for the release date of Phoenix Island. That date has been a moving target, but two of my favorite people -- my agent and editor -- are meeting today to discuss the scheduling news and other stuff. As soon as I have the release date, I'll post it here.

For now, here's the CBS article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57584564/cbs-unveils-2013-2014-schedule-with-a-new-slate-of-comedy-drama/

Holy Crap! CBS Ordered INTELLIGENCE!

I'll likely tell the whole story later, but for now, HUZZAH!

Just received the unbelievable news: CBS picked up Intelligence! The Huffington Post article is here.

For anyone just tuning in, Intelligence stars Josh Holloway, Marg Helgenberger, and Meghan Ory, and is based on my debut novel, Phoenix Island (formerly titled Dissident), which is due out soon from Simon & Schuster / Gallery Books.

I can't tell you how happy I am -- and won't, yet, as it's time to celebrate!

Things and Stuff

Just a quick note to say I'm still alive.

Still revising and still alive, that is.

Loads and loads of work, but here's the good news: I love the way things are turning out!

My editor's suggestions were great, and I couldn't be happier with my new ending, which he coaxed out of me with conversation, not specific suggestions.

I will finish the rewrite this week. I'm looking forward to getting back to normal stuff, like exercising and reading for pleasure. I'm also excited to build a new stone wall, put in the garden, and start writing the sequel, which knocking harder at my mental door each day. This one should be fun...

How about you? What's happening? What are you doing? What's new? Good? Bad? Exciting?

Guest Blogger: Best-selling Mystery Writer Victoria Thompson!

Sorry this place has been so quiet lately... due to revisions, I'm busier than a one-legged cat trying to bury a turd on a frozen lake. 

But not to worry! 

Fresh content has arrived, thanks to my friend, mentor, and former critique partner, Victoria Thompson, who also happens to be the bestselling author of the Gaslight Mystery Series. Victoria was nice enough to share this guest post, "Writer to the Rescue", which reveals a great behind-the-scenes story involving her next novel, MURDER IN CHELSEA, which will be available in hardcover and electronic format from Berkley Prime Crime next month, on May 7.

WRITER TO THE RESCUE

So what does an author do when she’s written herself into a corner and can’t for the life of her figure out how to get out of it—all while thousands of fans are clamoring for her blood?  That’s the situation in which I found myself last year at this time.  

If you are a fan of the Gaslight Mystery Series (Berkley Prime Crime), you know that Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy of the New York City Police and Midwife Sarah Brandt have been solving mysteries and gradually falling in love over the first 14 books in the series.  Unfortunately, I had started the series by creating insurmountable barriers to their ever getting together, never realizing that the series would become so successful or that readers would become so invested in Frank and Sarah’s lives.

Now let’s face it, how many mystery writers are lucky enough to have a series that runs for 14 books? I count my blessings every day. But in the spring of 2012, I realized that if I didn’t take care of Frank and Sarah’s relationship, readers probably would not keep reading. But how to do it without ruining the dynamics of the series? I was getting desperate, so I vented to my classmates. 

Classmates?  Yes, I was just finishing up my master’s degree in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University.  One of my classmates, David Wilbanks, who writes Science Fiction and had at that time never read anything I’d ever written, took my challenge and sent me a list of about 20 things that could happen.  Unlike me and my fans, Dave was unencumbered by knowledge of the characters involved, so his solutions didn’t have to be feasible or even sensible.  His ideas were outside the box.  Some of them were even outside the Universe.  But one of them was the perfect solution to Frank and Sarah’s problems!

If you’re expecting me to tell you what that solution is right here, I’m sorry.  I write mysteries, so I’m not giving away anything that might spoil the book for you.  I will say that in MURDER IN CHELSEA you will finally get to see Frank Malloy propose to Sarah Brandt. Of course they also solve a couple murders and locate the birth parents of Sarah’s foster daughter into the bargain.  This is a mystery series after all! And to thank Dave for his help, I named a major character after him in MURDER IN CHELSEA. 

So this is how a fellow writer rescued me, saving me from the wrath of frustrated readers!  You can see how he did it by reading MURDER IN CHELSEA, a May 2013 hardcover release from Berkley Prime Crime.  It’s also available in all electronic formats. Please let me know if you like the solution by contacting me though my website, www.victoriathompson.com or liking me on Facebook at Victoria Thompson Author or following me on Twitter @gaslightvt.