Author Wendy Corsi Staub stops by... (& a Giveaway - closed)

CONGRATS TO LUCKY WINNER - MARY!

NYT bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than seventy published novels and has sold more than three million books worldwide. Under her own name, Wendy achieved bestselling status with her single title psychological suspense novels. She also writes women's fiction under the pseudonym Wendy Markham. And here she is with an interesting guest post ...

The other day, as I was writing my new thriller, the electrician was here working on the wiring. He had to shut down the internet for a few hours, he said—would that be a problem? I didn’t think it would. Even though I was on the computer, I was writing a book—not surfing or emailing.

Let me tell you, those hours made me realize just how dependent I, as an author, have become on the internet. As I constructed the scenes of my thriller, it seemed that every few minutes, I would forget and click over to the internet to look up some fact that would make my book more authentic—or my day more organized.

For example, I wanted to mention that Coco Chanel had had brief contact with my heroine, a former fashion model. Was that possible? When did Coco pass away? The usual solution: Google Coco Chanel. Not today.

The phone rang; it was my friend wanting to know what time the kids had to be at school for an extracurricular activity that night. Ordinarily, I’d have looked it up on e-chalk. Today, it would have to wait until I could ask my son in person—and he’s hardly the most accurate source of information when it comes to school.

Back to writing my scene: I couldn’t remember if there was a bus stop on the west side of Broadway between 73rd and 74th Streets in Manhattan. The usual solution: go to Google Maps, zoom in on the intersection, and drag the little man icon down to the street for a closeup. Couldn’t do that. Oh! I could email one of my friends who live in the neighborhood! Oops—couldn’t do that either. Sigh.

This wasn’t working. I decided to flesh out an earlier scene. Hmm… one of my characters had been a little girl in the nineties and she was really into music. Which artists were on top of the charts that year? The usual solution: go to Billboard.com. Not today.

Frustrated, I went to the kitchen for a snack and remembered, while rummaging through the cupboard, that we were almost out of Splenda. The usual solution: go to Amazon.com and it would be at the door two days later—probably sooner than I’d actually get to a store or, if I did manage to get to a store, remember to get the Splenda. Oops. No Amazon=no Splenda.

Back at my desk, I started working on a scene involving teeth and it occurred to me that I’d scheduled an appointment with my dentist for sometime in November. Hmm… when was it? The usual solution: go to my AOL calendar and check.

It went on and on like this for hours. I’d like to say that I learned some valuable lesson about the pleasures of a simpler, non-electronic world, but the truth is, I felt crippled. How on earth did I ever run my life and keep track of my kids without the internet, let alone write books without online fact-checking capability

I know what you mean, Wendy. Earlier this spring we lost power due to a tornado. I felt like I'd lost a limb without internet, music, tv... couldn't even read a book in the flickering candlelight! Those five hours were the longest of my life. I hate how dependent we all are on electricity these days. What did people do before?!

GIVEAWAY

The Prize

A copy of Wendy's latest book, The Best Gift will go to one lucky winner.

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Deadline   Midnight CST of December 18, 2009.

Eligibility  US only.

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