Monday, June 19, 2017

Lori Rader-Day Books Giveaway

In April, the amazing Lori Rader-Day visited Evansville, Indiana on her book tour for The Day I Died I am lucky to only live 40 minutes away from the library where she was talking.  Lesa Holstine, Collection Development Manager for the Evansville/Vanderburgh Public Libraries (and blogger and reviewer), and I had already made arrangements to go out to eat with Lori after the event, so it looked to be a great evening of books, friends, and food.  It was!  Lori brought along her fun personal publicist Julie Powers Schoerke, who also joined us for dinner.  Amazing conversation, including books and plays and movies, lots of laughs.  First up are some of the great facts I learned about Lori at the event.  Read all the way to the end of the post, and you will learn how to win one of two signed books by Lori.  





  • Lori grew up in Lebanon, Indiana and went to Ball State University, where she started writing short stories that people in her dorm would read
  • Lori and her husband moved to Chicago where she wrote articles for a magazine and didn't write for herself for about five years.
  • In 2006, a friend started Lori back on writing for herself
  • Writing stories in a writing workshop kept Lori writing new material
  • Lori actually started writing The Day I Died in 2006 when she visited a library and came across a book on handwriting.  She checked out the book and wrote a short story and was encouraged to keep writing it as a novel.
  • The Day I Died went from an idea to a short story to 409 pages in two years, but she put it in the drawer for a while due to it feeling stagnant.  During its drawer time, Lori wrote and had published Black Hour (2014) and Little Pretty Things (2015), writing these while working a full-time job.
  • Lori needed a book in 2016 and decided to take The Day I Died out of the drawer and to quit her full-time job and devote ten to twelve hours a day to writing. 
  • Lori's 2018 book is already written and ready to begin edit process.
  • Lori is a pantser.  Starts with "what if."  Builds out from some pieces, doesn't plan.
  • Series writing is a possibility, but Lori likes that standalones are a finished story.
  • Lori likes doing radio interviews and she likes revision.
  • Unloaded Two is an upcoming short story collection in which Lori will have a story.
  • Some writing resources Lori suggests are Writers Digest and Twitter.  She also recommends writing programs for learning about the business end of writing.
  • A writing group that Lori was in resulted in Terence Faherty (http://www.terencefaherty.com/) telling her that she was a mystery writer and putting her in a mystery group during that workshop.  The rest, as they say, is history.  
  • And one of my favorite facts I learned about Lori is that she worked in a tinsel factory.

To keep up with Lori, you can visit her website at http://loriraderday.com/ 


So, now for the giveaway.  Comment on this post and say which of the two books pictured below you'd like to win.  I will be picking a winner by the old tried and true names in a hat method on June 30th.  So, you have ten days in which to comment.  Good luck!
                                                                                                                                                        



                          

2 comments:

  1. The Day She Died sounds absolutely amazing!! Definitely would love to win that book!

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    Replies
    1. Allison, thanks for commenting, and it looks like you just might win it. I'll get back to you after the deadline.

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