Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Allotriophagy (and a dose of what's coming up... so to speak)

If you've been following me for a while, you may know I'm galloping along through a Great Escapes virtual book tour (February 15–28) for the newest book in my Silver Rush series, THE SECRET IN THE WALL. Heads up: The tour includes a raffle, in which I'll be giving away copies of the book and Starbucks gift cards. You can enter the raffle on any of the stops, or on the main page of the tour, through the 28th. 

Speaking of Starbucks....

... In an interview I did for the Cozy Up With Kathy blog site, I bumped up against a question that was new to me: "Name 4 items you always have in your fridge or pantry."

I readily confess I lean heavily on coffee and eatables at the "snackety-snacks" end of the food spectrum. My dependence on snack items to get me through the day now has me wondering if I suffer a bit from allotriophagy.

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This alarming 19th-century word is defined in The Little Book of Lost Words by Joe Gillard as "a strong urge or desire to eat food that is abnormal or unhealthy." Now, I don't think my particular cravings are "abnormal"—I don't have an urge to ingest baking soda, for instance, or dishwashing liquid (yuck!), examples given by the Psychology Dictionary for allotriophagy. Still, maybe I should keep a closer eye on my afternoon potato-chip binges...

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... In the meantime, I want to let you know that I'll be speaking with mystery author Donis Casey about my newest book in a Poisoned Pen Bookstore virtual event on Monday, February 28, 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Everyone and anyone is invited! The links are as follows (note that you don't need to be a "FaceBookie" to watch; there's a YouTube alternative):

• www.facebook.com/thepoisonedpenbookstore/live
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbRuLNmD8EhT4WrGGMVW-w

If you're curious to hear me chat about my book (and maybe witness my cat take a stroll across my desk in front the camera), please join us!

Virtual book tour underway, starting with a contemplation on cats

 Travel with me on my virtual book tour from February 15–28. Doesn't require hopping a plane or doing anything other than clicking a link now and again! To see all the stops, just go here.

Yesterday, I popped over to Diane Ascroft's blog to talk about the cats in my series, including Lucky and Eclipse, who make their debut appearance in THE SECRET IN THE WALL. (My own feline, the #DivaMissMia, doesn't get a starring role, but don't tell her that!)

Lucky on the left, Eclipse on the right.

Virtual Promo . . . where's the data?

Initially I thought I'd blog about the new Star Trek movie (summary: I saw it Friday, and it was GREAT!), but my attention was snagged by a comment on an e-list regarding blog book tours and their effectiveness. Personally, I'm planning to do one myself, but as a "data geek," I have to say I'd love to see some numbers on whether they "work" or not (numbers showing effectiveness of any marketing efforts on behalf of authors being hard to come by).

Eureka!

Head on over to Southern Review and check out item #17. It seems that Jack Kilborn (aka J.A. Konrath) planned a 100 blog tour for his new horror book, Afraid. He managed 96. (Quite an impressive feat, IMHO. And I begin to wonder: Does this man sleep? Eat? Prepare dinner or do the laundry? When does he write??) The article contains a little table showing selected dates on his virtual tour and his amazon.com numbers for that day (or maybe the next day, not sure which). In general, the numbers trend upwards, meaning his book rises in rankings. Of course, I start to wonder things such as: Which blogs on what days? Does day of the week make a difference, or the topic covered, or . . .

Okay. I could drive myself crazy thinking about this.

Still, it's very interesting.

Along this line, fellow mystery author Beth Groundwater is more than halfway through her 16-stop blog tour (she's doing 23 posts, but some of her stops are two-parters), and I know she's collecting data as she goes. I'll be very interested to find out what she has discovered!