Holiday Gifts

writing updates, music updates, and a photo of me and L...

Dec 17, 2021

It is sort of maybe the beginning of THE HOLIDAYS (for them what celebrates the Christmas ones), which means that EVERYONE GETS PRESENTS.

FROM ME.

The first gift is a writing update — and a chance to read some of what I’ve been working on, if you want to.

(Fiction, I mean. If you want to read this week’s freelance output, keep scrolling.)

I submitted fiction to two writing contests this month. The first piece, which I sent to The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest, is from a project currently titled What If It Were This. I’ve been calling it “a book about magic, in novel-numerical-musical form.” (It’s really a book about love.)

The second piece, which I sent to the St. Martin’s Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, is my finished-and-revised cozy mystery novel titled Ode to Murder. (Boy-oh-boy did I spend this month revising that piece, to get it turned in by the deadline.) Ode to Murder is about—well, if I told you what it was really about, I’d give away the ending. Trust me when I say that it includes MYSTERY and JOKES and BEETHOVEN’S NINTH SYMPHONY and A ROMANTIC SUB-PLOT and AMATEUR DETECTIVES and BAKED GOODS and PROTECTED BIKE LANES.

(The protected bike lanes don’t have anything to do with the mystery, they’re just there because I like writing about cities that make their streets as safe as possible for cyclists.)

If you would like to read either of those pieces, email me at dieker.nicole@gmail.com and I will send you one or both PDFs. Consider this my FIRST HOLIDAY GIFT FOR YOU because I am very proud of both of these writings and I want people to read them regardless of whether or not they win any contests!

(Also, um… this offer is valid only through the end of 2021. Just in case you’re reading this substack in, like, 2025 [after both books have become incredible bestsellers] or something.)

Here is my SECOND HOLIDAY GIFT FOR YOU. It’s a practice video, which means it is also a gift for me (yes, I am one of those people who gives those kinds of presents). There is a lot of very good Mozart in this one, as well as some excellent problem analysis.

Here’s my THIRD HOLIDAY GIFT FOR YOU. This is one of the photos that went into our holiday cards this year, and if you’d told me a few years ago that I’d be taking this photo in December 2021, I probably would have ruined the whole thing by being impatient and trying to make it happen before it was ready to happen.

Anyway.

Happy hols from us to y’all. ❤️

Where I got published this week

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