Greetings, Friends!

I hope the new year finds you well. I'm currently working on a sequel to The House That Cleans Itself called The Kitchen That Cleans Itself. To that end, I'd love to get your answers to the following questions when you have a moment.

1. What "kitchen mess" problem in your house would you love to find a solution for? (For example: Dishes that pile up in the sink, mail and other papers that end up all over the counter.)

2. What activities take place in your kitchen that aren't food related? (For example: Kids doing homework at the kitchen table.)

3. What solutions have you found that help your kitchen stay cleaner? (For example: I keep a package of granite wipes in an easily-accessible drawer.)

Please send your responses to mindystarnsclark@aol.com, or simply post as a comment to this blog.

Thanks so much!

Update

Recently, a Consensus member wrote to ask some follow-up questions about the results of one of my inquiries. It struck me that she probably wasn't the only one who was intersted in how I end up using the responses that I get from y'all. Therefore, in the future I'll try to post pertinent follow-up info on previous questions here, though sometimes, of course, the follow-up won't show up on this blog for a long, long time. (Sometimes, there can be a year or more between my asking y'all a question and the release of the book that the question was for.)

For today, I'd thought I'd let you know how I ended up using your answers in my latest mystery, Secrets of Harmony Grove:

1. I put out a call for clever advertising slogans and their related products. What a hoot! This one set of responses alone reminded me of what an incredibly creative group of people you are. I had so much fun with that. The "winner" came from Julie Koehn, who suggested a women's clothing line of sporting wear with the slogan, "In It To Win It." In my original plot outline, the slogan was more prominent than it ended up being in the final version of the book. I tend to overwrite with every book and then have to cut for space, but at least it made it in there.

2. I had also asked for suggestions in creating Harmony Grove. Though, again, I got a ton of clever replies, in the end I decided to simplify things by basing the entire grove on a single literary reference, the epic poem Metamorphoses by Ovid. I hope you've had a chance to read the book, which came out in October, and that you enjoyed the prominent part that the grove played in the book.

Y'all cannot imagine how much I appreciate your efforts on my behalf and how very useful your responses are to me.

Thanks again for ALL of your help.