Autumn Embers, the third book in my Batavia-on-Hudson mystery series, is a story about family, friendship and identity. When I stopped to write this essay, I realized that identity is a theme I return to over and over.
 
So much of my writing has to do with characters attempting to fit in, trying to feel comfortable, getting to know themselves. Be it in a new community, in a profession, in a relationship, or even in their own skin. They are testing their potential, overcoming their personal blocks.
 
The Batavia-on-Hudson series started with Winter Witness where Bianca St. Denis is working to be accepted as a member of her new community, a small village in the Catskill Mountains, and learning how to live as a new young(ish) widow. It’s a new identity for her and she’s not sure she is ready to embrace it. Many of the other characters are also flailing: the local troublemaker teenager who can’t seem to shed the bad boy image no matter how hard he tries, the new young doctor in town who doesn’t measure up to Old Doc, the quiet Japanese man who lives alone in the hills above the village. They are all searching to know themselves and where they fit. 
 
Dead Man’s Leap, Book 2, is where Bianca comes to grips with her grief and learns what’s important to her. In fact, the entire community deals with a storm that causes enough damage that they all have to reassess what is important to them and their identity. They learn to cut their losses (material and emotional) and move forward with their lives.
 
It’s no surprise to me that I write on this subject. As a child, I was painfully shy and my affliction was complicated by a lifestyle of frequent house moves, including a major one out of the country. I needed to fit in again and again. And just as I thought I had it under control, we’d relocate one more time. Needless to say, these moves were very difficult for someone like me, but in the long run, I learned a great deal from these disruptions. Each time I settled in my new community, I was able to peel off a layer of my shyness—of my identity—until one day it no longer debilitated me. I had shed one version of me and replaced it with another version I preferred: someone more adventurous and more comfortable in my own skin. Each new location taught me that I could remake myself over and over.
 
I started investigating these ideas in my writing years ago. Some of my first pieces of short fiction were on the subject of my childhood as a daughter of immigrants. How I never really understood my friends. How I had to mold myself to be like them, dress like them, eat the foods they ate, and listen to the music they liked. In fact, one Friday in grammar school, after being embarrassed during recess for not knowing a pop song, I spent the entire weekend with my transistor tuned into WABC to introduce myself to all the hottest songs. By the time I returned to school on Monday morning, I knew them all, along with every word of their lyrics. This incident was the basis of my flash fiction piece entitled “Lost in America.” So, no, it’s no surprise to me that I write about identity.
 
As I said above, Book 3 - Autumn Embers, is a story about family, friendship and identity. Ian, Bianca’s son, has made a new life for himself in Japan. There, he has embraced the expatriate community and as a result, they have become like family—his chosen family. Bianca must come to terms with this painful realization, but she also learns that she has done the same thing in Batavia. She too has chosen her new family in the villagers of Batavia. Many of the expat characters in Autumn Embers are grappling with these same notions. They learn just how malleable their identities can be. In the meantime, at home in Batavia, Mike Riley, the sheriff and Bianca’s love interest, is grappling with his own issues. It looks like he may not be re-elected as sheriff and he has no idea how to not be a law enforcement officer. As if that weren’t enough, he has learned news about his partners death from years ago that calls into question who Sal really was. And Mike does this all while learning how to live his new life as a separated bachelor. He is in flux and learning the depth and complexity of his own identity.
 
My experience has shown me that my identity has many layers and many iterations. I have taken these lessons, shared them with Bianca and the others, and enjoyed watching each character evolve on the page.
 
 
This essay first appeared on the Wall-to-Wall Books Blog on October 23, 2024
https://wall-to-wall-books.blogspot.com/2024/10/autumn-embers-guest-post-by-tina.html

Tina deBellegarde’s debut novel, "Winter Witness", was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. "Dead Man’s Leap", her second book in the Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery Series, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. Reviewers have called Tina “the Louise Penny of the Catskills.” Tina also writes short stories and flash fiction. Her story “Tokyo Stranger,” nominated for a Derringer Award, appears in the Mystery Writers of America anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta. Tina co-chairs the Murderous March Conference and is a founding member of Sleuths and Sidekicks, where she blogs, tours virtually, and teaches writing workshops. She is a member of Writers in Kyoto and reviews books for BooksOnAsia.net. She lives in Catskill, New York with her husband Denis and their cat Shelby. She travels frequently to Japan to visit her son and daughter-in-law and to do research. Tina is currently working on a collection of interconnected short stories set in Japan. Visit her website for more: https://www.tinadebellegarde.com/

I’ve always loved animals and have been owned by cats most of my life. At age four, I acquired my first kitten. My mother warned me not to grab her, to approach gently. I didn’t listen and got scratched. Nevertheless, I was not deterred from loving cats, but I learned right away to respect them.

About twenty years ago, I found my tribe at the Fayette Humane Society (FHS), a local all-volunteer, foster-run animal rescue group supported solely by donations and fundraisers. I fostered cats in my home, worked at adoption events, and later, was asked to become the organization’s grant writer. In 2011, they invited me to join the Board of Directors. I learned that, although we rescue and rehome cats and dogs, it’s not enough to make a difference. Sadly, three to four million healthy, adoptable cats and dogs are put to death in animal shelters around the country every year, simply because they don’t have homes. We can’t adopt our way out of this problem. Spay and neuter became our mission.

Not only do we ensure that all pets we adopt are fixed before they go to their new homes, we reach out to pet owners in the community and offer assistance with spay/neuter surgery. I’ve obtained numerous grants to fund this effort.

One of the programs I write grants for is TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return). Or more accurately, TNVR (Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return). Before I became a rescue volunteer, I assumed all cats were potential house pets, like most of the cats who appear in cozy mysteries. I didn’t realize there are millions of unowned, unsocialized cats who call the outdoors their home.

My town, like most communities all over the world, supports multiple colonies of free-roaming cats. They populate wooded areas, trailer parks, and shopping centers, especially properties that house restaurants. Free-roaming cats might be lost pets, strays, or truly feral felines, born outdoors and never socialized to humans. Unfortunately, they reproduce exponentially. A kitten can have a litter before she’s six months old, sometimes as early as four months. And most of her surviving kittens will have litters of their own before she’s a year old. In a state like Georgia, where the winters are mild, cats breed all year; a couple of abandoned, unaltered pets can quickly grow into a huge colony.

Fortunately, volunteers from rescue groups like FHS are passionate about TNVR. They set humane traps to catch these free-roaming cats, transport them to a low-cost clinic to be spayed or neutered and vaccinated, then return the unsocialized ones to their outdoor homes, where they can live out their natural lives but not reproduce. While the cat is under anesthesia, the veterinarian clips a corner from the left ear; if the cat gets trapped again, the ear tip saves everyone another trip to the clinic.

Since feral cats are mostly nocturnal, our trapper volunteers must work at night, usually in deserted locations. A perfect set-up for danger… or finding a dead body.
Hence the premise for my new mystery, Trap, Neuter, Die.

I figured most readers would be as clueless about TNVR as I was before I joined FHS. So, how could I educate them on the program without a big info-dump?

Our organization has a revolving door for volunteers: high school students who need hours for Beta Club, empty-nesters or new retirees biting off more than they can chew, and of course, court-ordered community service. I decided to make my protagonist, thirty-year-old divorcee DeeLo Myer, a new community service volunteer. Thus, the reader learns about TNVR along with the heroine.

The story opens with DeeLo’s first night on duty. A newcomer to the fictitious Georgia town of Pecan Point, she’s paired with seasoned trapper Catherine Foster, who’s not ashamed to admit she likes feral cats a whole lot better than human beings. And she’s particularly intolerant of DeeLo when she finds out the reason for her court-ordered community service. Needless to say, their working relationship gets off to a rough start.

The night gets even worse when they discover a dead body. And Catherine won’t let DeeLo call 9-1-1.

From my involvement in procuring grant funds, I learned that many communities, including the county where I live, have animal ordinances that do not support TNVR, so volunteers operate in the shadows. These ordinances treat free-roaming cats the same as pets, with leash laws as well as ownership and abandonment restrictions designed for pet owners, not feral cat caretakers or rescue volunteers. A few years ago, a group of FHS volunteers attempted to work with the Fayette County Board of Commissioners to get the animal ordinance updated—let’s just say there was a lot of drama and hidden political agendas. Maybe fodder for a novel…
These draconian ordinances are rarely enforced; in fact, most people don’t know what’s on the books. But in my story, a cop with a grudge against Catherine Foster has read the county’s ordinance and found the loophole giving him the authority to arrest her for practicing TNVR.
When DeeLo sees Catherine arrested (and subsequently held under suspicion of murder), she’s amazed at the law’s stupidity and vows to change it. How hard could that be? She enlists the help of her boyfriend, owner of the law firm where she works.

DeeLo’s job at the law firm gives her intimate knowledge of the business affairs of key Pecan Point residents. And in her efforts to enlist support for her ordinance reforms, she comes in contact with some of the town’s most prominent citizens—including those who have motives for murder.

Even though I’ve been a rescue volunteer for years, I was never a trapper. As part of my research for this book, I went out trapping with FHS volunteer and TNVR guru Marcia Hendershot, who is nothing like Catherine Foster (apart from her TNVR expertise). Marcia was kind enough to be one of my beta readers and help me correct my mistakes.
​
What do I hope to accomplish with this book? I want to create awareness about the tragedy of pet overpopulation and show how some people are working to help solve it. And of course, give readers an entertaining mystery.

Sharon Marchisello is a long-time volunteer and cat foster for the Fayette Humane Society (FHS). Because she earned a Master’s in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, her fellow volunteers tasked her with writing grants for FHS, including procuring funds to support Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return. She’s the author of two mysteries published by Sunbury Press--Going Home (2014) and Secrets of the Galapagos (2019). Sharon has written short stories, a nonfiction book about personal finance, training manuals, screenplays, a blog, and book reviews. She is an active member of Sisters in Crime, the Atlanta Writers Club, and the Hometown Novel Writers Association. Retired from a 27-year career with Delta Air Lines, she now lives in Peachtree City, Georgia, and serves on the board of directors for the Friends of the Peachtree City Library.

Want to add more punch to your prose? Sometimes a little research into the setting of your story is what’s needed. Research adds depth and authenticity to novels. It can be the defining feature between a work and a work of art.
 
As a historical fiction writer, I have to make my readers feel at home in Eighteenth Century Colonial America. In order to do that requires a great deal of delving into the details of daily life in this time frame. How did people dress? What did they eat? What were the social norms? People did not wear underwear in the 18th century. Underneath their clothes they were remarkably well ventilated. Modern underwear did not come into being until later in the 19th century.
People and societies evolve over time. What was commonplace in one time period would be flat out weird in another.  One example in the Western world between the mid 16th century and the late 19th century young boys and girls dressed alike in gowns between the ages of two and up to eight. The gowns were seen as gender neutral and made toilet training easier among other reasons. The goal of a good historical writer is to propel their reader back in time so that they feel they are walking those streets and living in that era. A well-developed setting creates the perfect framework for a story to take place.
 
Getting the information wrong jars the reader and casts doubt on the reliability of the author. It’s been several years ago that I was reading over a friend’s manuscript set during the American antebellum period. I was lost in the sultry south until the scene shifted to an airport.  Airport? Yes, she had absentmindedly put an airport in the 1850’s. My mind was hit with a situation I knew could not be true unless the story was about time travel-which it wasn’t. 
 
The most important component of research is using credible resources – places  you can rely upon to be factual and true. The reference desk at your local library can help you discover many reliable resources for your writing project.  It’s also important to realize that if an event really happened it will be recounted by more than one source.  For example, Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 is recounted in many places.  Washington chopping down a cherry tree – one. Mason Locke Weems was an early biographer of our first president who made up the story to show demonstrate the president’s honesty at an early age.
 
I like primary sources for my research when I can find them. These can be letters, memoirs, maps and newspapers. Colonial America had quite a few newspapers many of which are online. Reading them gives tremendous insight into the minutia of daily life some of it is funny, some of it is tragic The advertisements seeking information on runaway slaves never ceases to break my heart even if it was normal for this time period.
 
I utilize period maps as well as Google Earth to get a sense of a place. The beauty of Google Earth is that it utilizes satellite technology to put you in a precise location. You can walk the streets of a city or  neighborhood utilizing the street level option. Period maps tell you what was there in that time period and what they considered relevant. For my current WIP I have located a few maps of Valley Forge at the time of its occupation so I know where all the barracks are, Washington’s headquarters and all of his generals.  I can easily locate the roads, the artillery and geographic features such as Mount Joy and Mount Misery. The encampment was between the two.
 
Taking time to learn about the time and place you write about enriches your story in a multitude of ways. It enhances the narrative and provides a note of authority that you know what you are talking about. I love learning the details of life in time periods in which I write because it not only tells me what they did but gives me insight into why.

Julie Bates’ first novel Cry of the Innocent, premiered in June 2021. The Eight book Faith Clarke series is set in the America Colonies during the Revolutionary War. Needless to say she is an avid history buff – some would say nut. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Triangle Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Southeastern Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA) and The Historical Novel Society. She enjoys doing crafts, working in her garden and experimenting in the kitchen. When not plotting her next story, she spends time with her husband and son, as well as a number of dogs and cats who have shown up on her doorstep and never left.

​I never intended to write a series. The thought of going to the well too often was off-putting, and I feared getting stale. I wanted to write standalones; I believed they would test the limits of my creativity.
 
Then I wrote PUBLIC MORALS. Loosely based on a real-life corruption scandal in the New York City Police Department, it's told in two parts. In the first part, set in 1982, a crooked cop named Terence Devine is convicted for killing a sex worker. In the second part, which occurs forty years later, his daughter, Sheila, a documentary filmmaker, investigates the crimes that he and other people committed -- in the process unearthing startling new evidence.
 
As I put the novel through multiple drafts, I discovered that I really liked Sheila Devine (I do not always feel this way about my characters; in reviewing my novel MIAMI TWILIGHT, the mystery impresario Otto Penzler said that "Coffey has a genius for creating antiheroes"), and I wanted to extend her journey. For a number of years, I've also kicked around the idea of writing a book based on the Central Park Jogger case. I wouldn't say that I had a "Eureka!" moment, but after finishing PUBLIC MORALS, and not wanting to let Sheila go, I decided that she could be the vehicle that would allow me to write about the jogger case. The result is SPECIAL VICTIM, the second novel in what I am immodestly calling The Devine Trilogy.
 
Thirty-five years after it happened, the Central Park Jogger case still resonates in New York. I got a sense of that on Nov. 2 when I read from the book at a Mystery Writers of America event at a library in midtown Manhattan. Perhaps it's my imagination, but as soon as I began reading I felt I had the rapt attention of the two dozen people in attendance, all of whom were familiar with the story. The air seemed to leave the room, in a good way. When I was done, and the moderator Hal Glatzer asked for questions or comments, instead of the typical non-responses from the audience, many people waded in with pointed questions and comments. I was happy for the strong reactions, both pro and con, and after the session, I talked to a retired NYPD detective who had taken part in the interrogations of the five young men who were first convicted, and then exonerated, in the assault. It turns out that some of the people close to the investigation had doubts about their guilt from the start -- doubts that were memorably aired by Joan Didion in an essay in The New York Review of Books two years after the attack -- but groupthink prevailed, both in law enforcement and the news media.
 
Much as I'd like to pin the blame for this miscarriage of justice on police and prosecutors, I cannot. I was a journalist in New York City for many years, and this was one of my former profession's worst moments. The presumption of innocence may seem like a quaint and no-longer-relevant idea, but it was established for a reason. In this case, as soon as the young men who became known as the Central Park Five were arrested, they were convicted in the court of public opinion. Blaring headlines in the tabloid press assumed the defendants' guilt and wondered why they hadn't been put in prison for life already, placing an incredible amount of pressure on the police to arrest somebody, anybody, really didn't matter who it was. The overwhelming desire in New York was for vengeance, not justice, and inconvenient facts were ignored. Even after DNA established the identity of the real attacker, many people who were involved in the investigation, and who wrote stories about it, refused to admit that they had made mistakes, or had gotten anything wrong. As a result, many people in New York City still believe that the members of the Central Park Five were involved in the attack. (To be fair, some of those guys were in the park that night, and they weren't doing outreach to the homeless; they were beating up the homeless.)
 
Now I'm on to the third book of my trilogy, which I hope will complete the journey of Sheila Devine and her family. The book is tentatively titled STOP AND FRISK, and I'm reluctant to say anything about it because I haven't finished writing it yet. While it's not based on a specific event, it does deal with the all-too-frequent deadly encounters in this country between the police and young men of color. And in writing this trilogy, rather than writing each novel as a standalone, I've discovered that I've been able to delve even more deeply into story, into character, and into the state of the human condition.
 
Which means, I guess, that I may have to start another series.

Erica Miner and Lori Robbins took a similar path, from the stage to the page, when they drew upon their real-life experiences as inspiration for their books. Erica’s Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series and Lori’s On Pointe Mysteries take readers on a backstage tour that’s equal parts glamour and intrigue, even before the first murder victim takes a literal swan dive. The two authors interviewed each other to explore the connection between fact and fiction for them and their amateur sleuths.
 
Lori’s Questions for Erica:

• Are there any elements of your life as a performer you don’t address in your writing?

 
Many. I focus on the most dramatic elements possible, since that is what makes opera such a compelling subject for murder mysteries. Opera stories are among the bloodiest, most violent ever written. That’s why composers often choose novels, and the plays of Shakespeare, as the basis for their operas. It’s all about great stories, made even greater by setting them to music. The parts I leave out tend to be the more mundane aspects of my performing life, although I do touch upon those to make my protagonist, Julia, as believable as possible. She does have to deal with the daily routines of being a performing musician, but I think readers are more interested in the conflicts, the jealousies, rivalries and backstabbing that occur behind-the-scenes. A big part of Julia’s arc is to morph from starry-eyed neophyte to savvy survivalist. It’s the intensity of the operatic drama that gets her there.

• Other than the murders, how much is fiction and how much is true to life?

 
I like to say only the author knows for sure! But I also admit that my fictional portrayals, of the characters who work at the opera and of the atmospheres of the opera houses, are extremely authentic. In my first Opera Mystery, Aria for Murder, which takes place at the Met Opera where I was a violinist for 21 years, I drew upon my experiences about what goes on backstage there and my knowledge of the dark corners and hidden stairways in that huge opera house to create authenticity and an environment fraught with danger. It’s a very mysterious place; so mysterious that creating motivation for murder seemed natural to me. When it came to the opera houses in the sequels, Santa Fe and San Francisco Opera (Prelude to Murder and the next sequel, Overture to Murder), I had to do a great deal more research to build a realistic world of mystery. I was fortunate in that I had connections with people who worked in those places and gave me on-site tours from top to bottom, which I used to fabricate stories that are very true to life. (Just FYI, San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, built in 1932, is the creepiest place ever.) But since I never performed in those opera theatres, I used my wicked imagination to create stories that would be believable.

• Did you base any of your characters on real people?

In Aria for Murder, most of the characters are based on a combination of traits of different people I worked with at the Met. Sometimes I would give certain attributes to certain characters but create them as different genders than they actually were. The exception was one key character who is entirely based on a real person. One of my colleagues who read the book immediately recognized this person who, sadly, is no longer with us. The protagonist throughout the series, Julia, is much like me when I first started out at the Met: naïve, unaware of the political machinations that go on behind the scenes. She becomes smarter fast, and I give her great courage and fortitude. That’s the beauty of fiction: you can give a character similar to yourself qualities you only wish you had. In Prelude to Murder, I also based characters on people I met in various departments throughout the opera house, but I extrapolated certain nationalities and traits of people who worked at the Met to create new and compelling characters who figured importantly in the Santa Fe plot.

• Is there any parallel between performing and writing?

For me, yes, when I’m writing about performing and performers. I’m constantly thinking of recreating my own feelings and remembrances of my performing life as I move these characters around in their performing world. I also am visualizing a performing milieu and feeling the deep emotions of performers as I write. The two elements are inextricably linked for me.

• Are there any elements of life as a performer that books and movies consistently get wrong?

I’m not going there!

• What surprises readers about the worlds you describe?

Most readers don’t have any idea what goes on behind the scenes at an opera house. They tell me they’re constantly amazed at the intensity of relationships between the multifaceted groups of people who work there. I try to make the descriptions of those conflicts, as well as of the many different locations within in the theatre, as vivid as possible. Many of those who have read Aria for Murder tell me the story and its descriptions of the Met brought them back to the times they’ve been to performances there. Others who have read Prelude to Murder have told me the descriptions are so intriguing they feel like getting on the next plane to Santa Fe!

• You use quotations to open each chapter of your books. What was the inspiration behind that decision?

 
I honestly can’t remember what it was initially, but I think it seemed the natural thing to do in order to further open up the world of opera to my readers. In these Opera Mysteries, the worlds of musical drama and real-time murder collide. The opera quotes that head the chapters give a hint or taste of what’s to come in the context of those bloody opera stories I mentioned above. Having the quotes first in the original language gives a flavor of the opera from which they come, and adding the English translation clues the reader in as to the subtleties of meaning. My readers tell me they love this feature of my books.
 

 
Short bio:
Award-winning Seattle-based author, lecturer and arts journalist Erica Miner believes opera theatres are perfect places for creating fictional mischief! Drawing on her 21 years as a violinist at the famed Metropolitan Opera, Erica’s fanciful plot fabrications reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series (Level Best Books): Aria for Murder (2022), finalist in the 2023 CIBA and Eric Hoffer Book Awards; Prelude to Murder (2023) (‘A skillfully written whodunit of operatic proportions’--Kirkus Reviews); and Book 3, Overture to Murder, just released last month. Erica’s debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. She is an active member of the Puget Sound chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Northwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America.  
Buy links, Overture to Murder:
 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Third Place Books

 
Erica’s questions for Lori:

• Was ballet your first love? When did you decide to start studying?

 
I saw a production of Swan Lake when I was sixteen and fell in love with ballet. The next day, I signed up for my first lesson. Most girls my age were getting ready to audition for professional companies, and I knew my dream of one day joining that elite group was unlikely to come true. But, like my protagonist, dance was the only thing that mattered. Three years after I walked into the studio for the first time I signed a contract with a modern dance company in Miami. Ballet remained my first love, and I went on to dance in a number of regional companies, as well as with Ballet Hispanico. I still take lessons several times a week, and ballet remains an important part of my life.

• How did you determine you wanted to base your murder mysteries on ballet?

 
The dance world is filled with inherent drama, which makes it the perfect vehicle for a murder mystery. The competition is fierce, the careers are short, and the pressure is intense. Ballet offered a range of vivid possibilities for characters, as well as for plot and setting. Leah Siderova, the protagonist for the On Pointe mysteries, defies expectations, both fictional and factual. Yes, she’s embroiled in a murder mystery, but she’s also a ballerina on the wrong side of thirty and the stakes are higher for her than they would be for someone facing a less uncertain future.  Those challenges make her observant, wary, and more than a little cynical. In other words, the perfect amateur sleuth.

In my Master Class series, the protagonist is an English teacher who on the surface is very different from Leah. But she too is facing an uncertain future. There’s something deeply satisfying about writing, and reading, about amateur sleuths, no matter what world they inhabit. They show ordinary people, who, when challenged, find the strength and courage to do extraordinary things.

• Are there any elements of life as a performer that books and movies consistently get wrong?  

It’s rare for a movie or book to capture how intense and exhausting life as a performer can be. Many fictionalized portraits depict dancers indulging in nonstop sex, drugs, and barhopping. In real life, they rarely have the time, money, or energy that would enable that kind of lifestyle.

• Other than the murders, how much is fiction and how much is true to life?

The descriptions of a dancer’s life are all grounded in reality, but the stories and characters blend fact and fiction. The murders are works of my imagination, as are the characters, although both are inspired by real-life events. Murder in Third Position, for example, was inspired by problems the Metropolitan Opera had with the mechanical parts of an elaborate set that caused several minor injuries. In my book, the set design kills someone.

• Did you base any of your characters on real people?

Most are composite characters. Some, like my protagonist’s mother, are pure works of fiction, but I feel I know them! Barbara, in particular, is so vivid and commanding a figure, I think I’m going to have to give her her own book. Or at least, a short story.
It’s not only the characters individually but their relationships with each other that interest me. Professional dancers remain students for as long as they’re dancing. They take class every day, and their interactions with teachers and choreographers are a rich source of real-life and fictional tension. The dynamic between a grown daughter and her mother also offers continuing opportunities for both drama and growth. But not too much growth, or the exchanges between Leah and Barbara wouldn’t be nearly as funny.

• You also use quotations to open each chapter of your books. What was the inspiration behind that decision?

 
Dancers talk with their bodies. We don’t often get to hear their words, although many are remarkably eloquent speakers and writers. I added the quotations to give them a voice. In my Master Class mystery series, however, the quotations serve a different purpose, as they provide clues to solving the murder. Not all clues, however, are created equal. Some are genuine leads and others are designed to deceive. I love puzzles, and those quotations reflect that.
 
 
Short bio:
Lori Robbins writes the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and is a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won the Indie Award for Best Mystery and two Silver Falchions. Short stories include “Leading Ladies” which received Honorable Mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with a number of modern dance and classical ballet companies, including Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Ballet. Her commercial work, for Pavlova Perfume and Macy’s, paid the bills. After ten very lean years onstage she became an English teacher and now writes full time.
Lori is a co-president of the New York/ Tristate Sisters in Crime and an active member of Mystery Writers of America.


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The Historical Novel Society of North America, our version of the original HNS in the UK, has announced its first-ever short story contest. Your submission must be no longer than 4,000-words and must be set in or around historical Las Vegas (i.e. before 1975). Sin City is the site of the 2025 HNSNA conference.

Those are easy parameters to digest and opens the contest to everything from Wild West gunfights to mobster influence in casinos to desert life to the tragedy of gambling addiction. It promises to be a popular contest, especially since HNS is a venerable organization. The winner gets $250 plus free registration at the conference (value: $550).

A couple of things about the announcement caught my attention. One, the rising date of a story considered historical. Most book publishers want to label any fiction setting in the 1960s or earlier as historical. As we get further into the 21st century, the date will continue to rise, but the HNS may be already moving the standard up by capping their eligible submissions setting at 1975. It was not unexpected.

After all, Americans alive today who can reasonably be expected to remember 1975 in a first-hand manner would have to be at least 65 years old. That age would make them a mid-teen when the dismaying videos of the fall of Saigon showed up on our TV sets, or when Margaret Thatcher rose to political prominence in Britain. Folks who are at least 65 today probably recall the first breakfast burrito, Billy Jean King’s 6th Wimbledon title, Billy Martin’s move from punching other players to creating great havoc as a manager, or even the founding of Microsoft. Too bad hardly any of them will recall buying any Microsoft stock in those days, although their memory banks will contain many interesting tidbits about life back then.
If you writers want to mine those memories for your stories, you had better get a move on. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 55 million of those geezers are still alive. That’s 16.8% of the U.S. population. And they’re dying fast.

The second thing about the HNS announcement that interested me was the cost to enter the contest: $25. There will undoubtedly be hundreds of entries, so the organization will bring in thousands of dollars—and will award $800 in cash and attendance fees. They will also produce an anthology of the top stories and will award the writers of those published stories “a small honorarium.”

That honorarium could be your entry fee returned, or it could be 50 bucks. I could even be as much as $100. If it is $100, that would be a gratifying figure for a short story writer to earn on one story. The best mystery magazines pay twice that amount for a story, but the competition for sales in those few existing magazines is fierce. Most members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society sell their work for a wretched $25 or $50, hoping for recognition and/or evolving quality of sales in the future. It takes hours to write a 4,000-word short story, hours more to edit it and tighten the prose, hours more to rewrite portions of it and to submit it until it sells. Fiction writers don’t get paid on an hourly basis; we should know how much our work pays compared to other vocations.

But that’s the theme for another blog. What concerns me most about the HNS writing contest is that it’s a money machine for the conference; is it also a worthwhile investment for the writer?

The Historical Novel Society has many expenses, as do all writing organizations, and those organizations do a lot of good for the writers of our country. They support and defend novelists and short story writers, promote the work of their members, educate them, sometimes insure them, and offer them an opportunity for fame in their annual award presentations. Writers’ organizations are an integral part of a writer’s career path. They are supposed to support themselves by the annual dues paid by members.

Other writing conferences besides HNS make money by charging for award competitions. Crime con Killer Nashville, for instance, charges a writer $80 to enter a book for a Silver Falchion, although if he or she attends the conference itself, the award fee is included in the tuition charge. For his $80, the winning writer gets a plaque.
Promoters who organize and produce a conference deserve to make money for their efforts. That’s not the question, not for writers. The question for writers is: should I pay to have my work judged by someone?

Prestigious writing contests, such as the Edgars offered to members by the Mystery Writers of America, charge nothing to enter. Besides the Edgars, others that charge nothing include the Thriller awards from the Thriller Writers of America and the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers (North America branch). Publishers who wish to enter their authors’ works send copies of novels to the judges of a contest category. That’s it. No fee. No money-making. It’s a service.

The value of a writer’s work is marked by the awards it wins, the reviews it receives, and the money it makes. It shouldn’t rely on the writer buying a chance to win a prize. Writing fiction is a gamble where you wage your time and effort and talent; it should not be a lottery where you pay to play.

 

paulbarra.com/Paul A. Barra’s novel, “Sgt. Ford’s Widow,” published by The Permanent Press, was called “an extraordinary story” by NPR.

Joan Baum wrote (NPR, 9/24), in part: “…compelling, suspenseful and moving novel, Sgt. Ford’s Widow – an unusual narrative that links the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and Casper, Wyoming in the late `60s, early 1970s, each place invoked with rhythmic sensual detail.”
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Barra has had seven other novels published, plus many short stories. He is a former naval officer who was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor "V" and the Combat Action Ribbon for his service on the rivers of the Mekong delta, was a reporter for local papers, and the senior staff writer for the diocese of Charleston. He and his wife, the former Joni Lee, have eight children and live in Columbia, SC.

His second children’s adventure novel (Samson and The Charleston Spy) will be released by Level Best Books in the spring, 2025.

The mystery genre has gone through various metamorphoses from the traditional “who done it,” to far-out fantasy. The rise in travel and increasing globalization has led to an even greater expansion of the genre, which now includes the popular International Mysteries.  These are stories from far-off places that allow you to sightsee while you solve a murder.  Like the travels of Gulliver in the past, these stories allow you to learn about new cultures and to develop a greater love for humanity.

It’s the genre I got into, the one I most enjoy.

So, where did I develop this attraction for these types of mysteries you might ask?  It was a combination of travel and falling in love with International Mysteries in their original language on MHZ, a local Washington DC television Network, especially Andrea Camilleri’s "Montalbano," Donna Leon’s, "Inspector Brunetti," and Georges Simenon’s, "Magret." There are also those dark Swedish Mysteries like Martin Beck and Wallander.  (I urge you to read the books and find the shows on www. MHZ.com online). These wonderful mysteries intrigued me.

I also traveled, quite by accident the first time, to Southern Spain.  The problem is that, as soon as the plane landed in sunny Malaga airport, I knew that was where I belonged.  There began a lifetime love affair.

I don’t believe in Karma or that kind of thing, but if I did, I’m certain I had an ancient relative, perhaps from that time when the Moors ruled Spain before the La Reconquista. The romantic era of the final conquest of Grenada (home of the Al Alhambra, which you definitely need to see), by Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand in 1492 the same year Christopher Columbus opened America to the Europeans.

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This attraction drew me back several times a year for a while, to the point that my friend Lourdes’s then husband said I was 45% American and 65% Spanish. I haven’t been to my other home in a while, though I intend to return. In the meantime, I invite you to travel with me across the Mediterranean, to look over at the Rock of Gibraltar into the continent of Africa.  I invite you to immerse yourself in colorful Flamenco, share tapas, stop for a churro in rich deep dark chocolate, and finish the night with a fine glass of Cava or Rijoa. While we’re there, we’ll find out who done it.

I recently read that the Japanese term Honkaku- which means orthodox, refers to the old-fashioned detective stories. The entertainment from them derives from the logical reasoning of solving the crime, like everyone’s favorite, Agatha Christie novels. A Brief Introduction to Honkaku Detective Fiction - killerthrillers.net
Now, we’ve entered what the Japanese call, Shin Honkaku- the New Orthodox. These started with Island mysteries in the 1980’s. 4 Different Styles of Mystery Novels from Around the World (bookriot.com).   The new orthodox involves solving a mystery on an island, something like the popular television show, Death in Paradise, if you’ve seen it (also love those British mysteries on Britbox).  Today, we don’t stop just at the islands. We can go anywhere from Spain to Italy to France to Sweden, to Greece, to Morocco, or to Istanbul. This new orthodoxy expands our imaginations even further than Gulliver traveled.

I invite you to join me and fall in love with a land not your own. You may want to see a part of the world you never knew existed; you may want to write your own mystery. Whatever you decide, you can’t go wrong with a good trip and a good murder to solve.

Paula B. Mays is a Native of Washington, D.C. She is the Current President of Sisters in Crime (SINC) Chesapeake Chapter, a Trademark attorney, a former USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) attorney, and has a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from George Washington University. MURDER IN LA PLAZA DE TOROS is the first in a new series of mysteries set in a fictional town in Southern Spain. Paula has also published articles in the Huffington Post and has written other trademark-related articles. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Having recently published my first novel, I feel fortunate to have sampled the pleasures many aspiring authors despair of ever experiencing: the momentary disbelief when a publisher says “yes;” the tactile thrill of holding the printed copy of your “baby” for the first time; the rush of excitement when a complete stranger posts a laudatory review; the warm memories triggered when a hand from the distant past reaches out and pats you on the back; the encouragement implicit in an eager inquiry about the next installment in a planned series.

Grateful as I am for all these delights, what has struck me most profoundly is the individuality of readers’ responses. How differently readers react to this or that character or plot twist or interpret the meaning of an exchange of dialogue. The first time I read her a passage out loud, my own wife was aghast to learn that I pronounced the first name of my protagonist, Bruneau Abellard, with a drawn-out emphasis on the second syllable, lobbying vehemently for her Bruno over my Broo-know. Some found Bruneau’s on-again, off-again girlfriend overbearing; others wished she was more assertive. The city of New Orleans, where the novel takes place, was perceived as beautiful or threatening; fragrant or malodorous (author’s note: both these things are true!); mysterious and cloistered, or open and welcoming. And so on.

What the novelist comes to realize is that once the reader takes the reins, she is off and running, beyond your control. You have provided a map, and a well-marked trail, but she is free to wander where she may.

Contemplating the wondrous, and wonderful, phenomenon of the “runaway reader,” brought me back to my long-ago grad school days, when in a literary criticism class, we waded through a fascinating if at times impenetrable tome called The Implied Reader. Its author, German philosopher Wolfgang Iser, is best known for pioneering a school of literary theory called “reader-response” criticism. To crudely oversimplify, Iser’s central insight is that reading is as much an act of creation as writing. As she writes, an author may have a particular reader in mind, but that reader is a mere construct of the author’s imagination. The actual “flesh and blood” reader brings her own experiences and sensibility to her encounter with the text, creating impressions and points of view that are uniquely her own.

Remembering Iser’s treatise and experiencing for the first time the subtle shock of the runaway reader, brings me to two parting thoughts. The first is that I am now better able to articulate my longstanding aversion to the audiobook format, at least when it comes to works of fiction. I understand the appeal of the medium and suppose that listening to a novel beats never picking one up, but I remain firm in my conviction that the audiobook experience is a pale simulacrum of the real deal. The mostly passive -- dare I say, lazy? -- act of “listening” as a narrator appropriates the characters’ voices, cannot possibly replicate the creative engagement inherent in the act of reading.
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My second, and parting insight, is that releasing a published novel is not unlike sending your kindergartener off to her first day of school. You’ve done the best you can to prepare her for this moment, but now she must make her own way in the world.


Norman Woolworth’s first novel, The Lafitte Affair, is a historical mystery set mostly in present-day New Orleans, with glimpses of the city during its “Belle Epoque” of the 1820s. In a starred review, Kirkus called it “a well-crafted mystery that is beautifully written, educational, and all-around entertaining.” BookTrib deemed it “a savory jambalaya that tempts you to take another bite and keep turning pages.” And Readers’ Favorite gave the book five stars, saying “the novel is as much about the city’s colorful characters as it is about the unfolding mystery.” It called the novel “a fast paced, edge-of-your-seat read … worthy of the big screen.” Woolworth is a retired corporate executive who resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife Lori and their blue-blooded mongrel, Nola.
 

​I pride myself in developing the settings in my books as if they were secondary characters. Often, they are. The good guys and the bad guys sweat when the sun’s blazing with heat, whether they’re in the barren landscape of west Texas or the smothering humidity of North Carolina. The quietness of a mountain snow can be deafening. The smell of freshly cut hay is starkly different than the smells lingering near the dumpster behind a restaurant in Newark, New Jersey.
 
Like many authors, I too, get sidetracked when researching a setting I’m not familiar with. Our dear friend Google makes it way too easy to fall down that rabbit hole we call research. When I was writing Wink of an Eye (Minotaur, 2014), I spent way too many hours researching Wink, Texas. Yes—there really is a small town in west Texas named Wink. The Roy Orbison Museum is located right there on Main Street. It’s by appointment only, though.
 
I was on a mission to learn everything I could about Wink, Texas. We all know how Texans like to spend their Friday nights under the lights watching their high school football games and Wink is no different. It’s home of the Wildcats. The population of Wink holds steady at about a thousand except when the oil’s hitting then it explodes to sometimes three thousand. I learned this from the mayor’s wife. We became friends on Facebook when I joined the Wink, Texas Facebook group. Rather than googling everything and relying on Wikipedia, I used a more reliable source—the actual residents.
 
With one scene, I wanted the common name for a specific cactus. I sent my friend the mayor’s wife a few photos I’d found and asked her. I said I wanted to know the slang name, the name she’d use if she saw it on the side of the road. I anxiously waited for a really cool name like Flowering Betty, or Lady Redbud. I was a little disappointed when she came back and said, “we call it a cactus.”
 
I’ve never been to Wink, Texas. Although I have been invited to dinner at the mayor’s house. But I did enough research, even longtime residents were impressed. I was told by more than one that I had “nailed it.”
 
While I’ve never been to Wink, I have been to the mountains of Appalachia. I’ve stood in a coal camp in the Coal Miner’s Museum in West Virginia. I’ve stopped in Goober Peas store in Meat Camp, North Carolina. I’ve taken so many day trips to Boone, I no longer use GPS. I’ve hiked the Linville Falls trails several times. I’ve been to the top of Grandfather Mountain and caught snowflakes on my tongue then drove down to the parking lot where we’d stop, get out of the car, and take off out coats because it was sixty degrees at the foot of the mighty mountain. I’ve been deep into the hollers bordering North Carolina and Tennessee. I was even invited to a snake-handling church but it didn’t work out. Yes, those churches do exist but they’re so well hidden, sometimes in plain sight, their very existence is hush-hush.
 
My other books, The Ava Logan series, and What the Monkey Saw are set in the North Carolina mountains. Two different series, two different protagonists, two different career paths joined by a common thread. The people of Appalachia.
 
I’m not really sure why I’m so drawn to that region, but I am. I was born and raised, and still live in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, but man, those mountains speak to me.
 
Watching the devastation going on in Western North Carolina right now thanks to a hurricane of all things, is like taking a punch straight to the gut. Honestly, I’m too stunned to cry. I stare at the images of homes reduced to scattered, splintered wood. Roads I’ve traveled that are no longer there. Entire towns that are no longer there. And I wish it was a nightmare we would wake up from and everything would be back like it was. From now on the survivors will think of time as before “the storm” or after the storm. There’ll be no in between. No other way to reference time.  
 
And somewhere in the far corners of my mind, I’m thinking about these two series I have with more books to come. How do I write them now? Do I include the day the rain came and the rivers and creeks rose and the mud rolled and raged like flowing lava and the very land my mountain people stood upon washed out from under them? Do I dare write about such a catastrophic event?
 
The terrorist attack on 911 forced the entertainment industry to rethink using images of the twin towers. Those towers that used to be there, but now they’re not.
 
Can I act like nothing’s happened at all and continue writing the two different series set as they were? Or do I, too, write before and after?

Lynn Chandler Willis is a best-selling, multi-award-winning author who has worked in the corporate world, the television news industry, and had a thirteen-year run as the owner and publisher of a small-town newspaper. She lives in the heart of North Carolina on a mini-farm surrounded by chickens, turkeys, ducks, nine grandkids, a sassy little calico named Jingles, and Finn, a brown border collie known to be the best dog in the world. Seriously.    

Why write historical fiction? Let’s review some stats. Regarding genre, mystery and thrillers account for 47% of all book sales. Good news for us crime fiction writers! More great news, historical fiction makes up 20% of total book sales in the United Kingdom. Audiobooks are outselling ebooks by a wide margin, with historical fiction seeing a 17% increase in audiobook sales in 2023.

I have a theory about why historicals are so popular. I believe that the readership of crime fiction skews older This is not based on anything more than anecdotal evidence. I recently returned from Bouchercon, the grand-daddy of the crime fiction conventions, and the attendees skewed older. This has been true for several years at the crime fiction cons I’ve attended. I would say that it is likely that the attendees at any panel are, by and large, my contemporaries, and I’m not young.

So why did I write a historical crime novel? Although research into the slang used in the 1920s is a trip down a delightful rabbit hole, the ins and outs of cell phones, computer code, and the latest surveillance equipment leave me baffled and bored. I use a smart phone, and I was a technical editor for many years and have worked on several textbooks, but I struggle to keep up with the latest in modern sleuthing techniques. I think that is why cozy mysteries have an edge over hardcore thrillers. There is a lot less demand for the more technical aspects of crime-solving. It’s the candlestick in the library with Miss Scarlett as the murderer. The same holds true for a historical novel. There are other facts to pin down, but not blood-splatter patterns or the velocity of an AK-47.

I set my recently published historical mystery in 1930 San Francisco. I’m old enough to remember when you wore white gloves and a hat to visit the City. It was a world where high-end department stores ringed Union Square and where you shopped for clothes you needed for an “event.” When I was ten, we flew back to Ireland to see my grandmother, and my mother bought a suit at I. Magnin’s for the journey. My sister and I didn’t rate dresses from I. Magnin’s, but we wore dresses on the plane! And it wasn’t that many years ago when the department stores tried to outdo each other with their windows at Christmas. That was worth a special trip. I’m a December baby, and one year my parents took me to buy a gift at the City of Paris department store. I remember that amazing rotunda even if I don’t remember the present. When the City of Paris closed and was replaced by Nieman Marcus, I had no interest in crossing their threshold even though they kept the rotunda. Buying something at Nieman Marcus, the bastion of Texas excess, doesn’t have the same appeal.

My point is that with historicals, the reader can enter the writer’s world, and it’s all vaguely relatable, regardless if it’s ancient Rome, Victorian England, or sixteenth-century Tudor England. If you have a Roman Senator riding a horse, well, I’ve ridden a horse—pretty badly and I was stiff for days—but I can relate to someone on a horse. Someone is murdered in a castle? Hey, I’ve been to castles. I know what it feels like to climb up stone steps and feel the chill of the walls on my face. Holding a cell phone in my hand doesn’t elicit any vibes that I can relate to, and the ones I do feel are largely frustration and irritation. Of course, I’m not saying that everyone is as much of a Luddite as I am, but the stats say that I’m not alone. Welcome, my tech-weary peeps!


Claire M. Johnson’s first novel, Beat Until Stiff, was nominated for the 2003 Agatha Award for Best First Novel and was a Booksense pick. Her second book in this series, Roux Morgue, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Fog City, her noir crime novel set in Prohibition-era San Francisco, debuted July 2024 from Level Best Books. This book won the Gold from the Royal Palm Literary Award hosted by the Florida Writers Association and is the first in a series featuring Maggie Laurent, P.I. Ms. Johnson is currently President of Mystery Writers of America’s Northern California Chapter.

My critique group is such a hoot.

If you don’t have one, I suggest reaching out to three to five other authors and bending their will until they agree to help you create one. Two years ago, I summoned a bit of courage to do just that while sitting in an uncomfortable, metal chair in a room thick with warm bodies at an Island Writers Network meeting. I’ve been a proud - but mostly absent - member for ten years. The “mostly absent” part haunted me. Would my request be rebuffed? Booted to the curb for not maintaining an active participation in the group?

When the discussion circled to workshops, I leapt to my feet with my hand in the air and declared that I needed a critique group and if this interested anyone, see me after.

Forty people. Not a sound.

A serious cloud of insecurity enveloped me when I sat down. I felt my cheeks warming. The rest of the meeting agenda proceeded, and I bit my fingernail wondering if I’d get any response. I was desperate. Deadlines loomed, big, dark blots on the horizon; and I needed help. After the dismissal of the meeting, I rose from my chair, keeping my eyes on the floor.

Five people rushed toward me, eyes alight, smiles blazing.

My insecurity crept away in defeat. I had my group!

            We chatted, agreed on guidelines, and decided on “three and three.” We’d trade three chapters, have three weeks to read and comment on them, and the fourth week we’d send out our new chapters. Once a month, we’d meet in person. It’s been a rewarding experience for all of us.

            Here are a few tidbits I’d like to pass on regarding our ragtag crew of writers that we’ve dubbed “The Alphas.”
 
1)A critique group doesn’t have to be comprised of writers of the same fiction genre. It’s not the traditional approach, but it’s been an eye-opener, for sure. Our group has a sci-fi writer, two historical writers, a crime noir writer, and me – suspense. We all have different personalities and writing habits, but the foundational principles of writing fiction are universal. I’ve been blown away by the different perspectives of each person, and their input has made my books better.

2)Learn to adjust to different, sometimes abrasive, personalities. “Mr. Encyclopedia,” my pet name for one of our group, insists on correcting every detail of a product, animal, location, event or activity, even it it’s not crucial to the storyline. It’s become a joke, but his attention to detail lends authenticity to our stories. It may irritate us, it may get uncomfortable, but it’s brought growth. And, he’s almost never wrong! (Equally irritating.)

3)Multiple cultures are terrific in critique groups. Reading another race or culture’s creative approach, then critiquing the work and talking about it in person is mesmerizing. On the other side of the coin, their critique of my own work is like having a built-in sensitivity reader.

4)We’ve agreed to ALWAYS include encouraging comments along with the “critical” ones. We trade pages in Word docs and use comments instead of inline edits. Our focus is developmental, or character authenticity, but we throw in the occasional copyedit if it’s glaring. They all know I hate passive sentences, and now we laugh about my (often futile) attempts to get group members to avoid the overuse of “was.” No matter our differences in writing styles, we remain aware that positive comments must be sprinkled in with the more corrective ones.

5)Look forward to new friendships! It’s surprising how sharing our stories - often based on real-life situations that are personal and intimate - creates a deeper, more empathetic understanding of one another. We can ride out the most scathing critique with good-natured jibes and not even blink. A critique group is a powerful bonding tool and source of support.

6)Not that any of us flop around with big heads or overblown pride at our author events, but if we fall into that trap… critique partners provide balance with that big slice of humble pie they serve every week, liberally topped with the whipped cream of encouragement.
 
To those of you floating out there in author-land bemoaning the struggle and treading water emotionally like I was, get up and get going! Find your group! You can thank me later.


Kerry Peresta is the author of the Olivia Callahan Suspense series Level Best Books and Back Before Dawn, a standalone suspense, Level Best Books. Kerry is represented by Cindy Bullard of Birch Literary. 
 Kerry spent thirty years in advertising as an account manager, creative director, copywriter, and editor. She began writing full-time in 2009 as a humor columnist for a daily newspaper before she decided to take the plunge and begin writing novels. Kerry was chapter president of Maryland Writers Association when she lived in Maryland, and currently is a member of the Island Writers Network, the Sisters in Crime organization, South Carolina Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, and is a popular presenter and speaker for the Pat Conroy Literary Center in Beaufort, SC. Kerry and her husband are originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, and moved to Hilton Head Island, SC, in 2015. She and her husband enjoy kayaking, road trips, their grandkids, their three cats, and the scenic vistas of the Lowcountry. Discover more at kerryperesta.com.

Cha-cha-cha-changes. The one constant in life. In this decade-birthday year, I feel this acutely. A voice whispers in my ear, “You are the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be.” If there’s stuff I still want to do, I better get to it.

The urgency has already resulted in two trips, one of them to check off bucket-list items: the Teddy Roosevelt National Park and The Enchanted Highway. But I also realize my years as a writer could be numbered. In September, I’ll be on a MWA panel at the MLK Library in San Jose with Laurie King, Leslie Karst, and Heather Haven. We’ll be discussing how we work, how we got started, and what a person needs to do “to make it.”

Like I know that?

However, on more reflection, I do know something about it. My first response—to laugh—is due to constantly moving my goal posts. At one time, I would have thought I’d made it to write a book. Well, I’ve done that a dozen time over if you count the two manuscripts in my file cabinet. Get an agent? I’ve had one. Have a book published. Done. Nine to date.

But even now with seventy traditionally published short stories and a two-book contract with Level Best Books, it’s hard for me to acknowledge the messages that tell me I have reached a certain level of success—the very invitation to be on the aforementioned panel, for example.
Other authors ask me for blurbs.

I was recruited by the NorCal MWA chapter to do a Facebook Live presentation on short story. I moderated a panel on short story at Left Coast Crime. The Coastal Cruisers chapter of Sisters in Crime asked me to do a Zoom presentation on short story.

My local bookstore reached out to see if I’d like to be “in conversation” with a NY Times Bestselling YA thriller writer. Are you kidding me?

The Capitol Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime asked if I would be a judge for their anthology.

A well-known editor invited me to submit to an anthology he’s put together.

Barb Goffman chose one of my stories to be a reprint in Black Cat Weekly.

Some of these things have required a lot of work on my part but I’ve learned to say yes to opportunities, to step up to difficult jobs like moderating a panel or judging an anthology. They are my way to give back to a community that has supported me, but they are also benchmarks of “making it.”

And it has been my experience that seizing these opportunities and putting in the work generates more opportunities.
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I’ve always wanted to have a contract with a significant publishing company rather than indie publishing my long works via the small, collaborative press to which I belong. Now I’ve achieved that. Of course, reaching one metric does not prevent me from wishing I made more money from writing, would win a prestigious award, or break through to a best sellers list. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to level up, but it’s important to acknowledge our accomplishments and to understand we are not in competition with other authors, but only with our own expectations.

Vinnie Hansen fled the howling winds of the South Dakota prairie and headed for the California coast the day after high school graduation. 

She graduated from the University of California, Irvine (BA) and San Francisco State University (MA) writing programs. She’s gone on to pen numerous short stories; Lostart Street, a novel of mystery, murder and moonbeams; and the Carol Sabala mystery series. The seventh installment in the series, Black Beans & Venom, made the finalist list for the Claymore Award as did the opening of One Gun. 

Still sane after 27 years of teaching high school English, Vinnie has retired and lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband and the requisite cat. 

What comes to mind when you hear the word “occult”? Evil cults that worship the devil? Weird rituals where animals are sacrificed? Wizards with nefarious aims wielding power behind the scenes? If so, you probably got those impressions from Hollywood or from fear-based religious groups. Let’s pull back the dark curtain that shrouds the occult arts to discover how supernatural elements can contribute to a mystery novel’s plot.
 
What Does “Occult” Mean?
           
First of all, the word “occult” simply means hidden, as in hidden knowledge. For centuries, people who practiced the occult arts had to hide what they knew and practiced in order to avoid imprisonment, torture, and murder at the hands of misguided authorities. They formed secret societies sometimes known as Mystery Schools, passed down wisdom through symbols and oral tradition, and wrote in secret code.
 
Yet occult ideas and practices––witchcraft, divination, spellcasting, incantations, and magic potions––continue to fascinate us to this day. Perhaps the most famous scene in literature comes from Shakespeare’s MacBeth where three witches stir a mysterious brew while they prophesy “toil and trouble” for the Scottish king. The Bard’s plays MacBeth and Hamlet also feature ghosts, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream involves faery spells and shapeshifting. More recently, J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter stories have captured the imaginations of millions of young people worldwide and introduced them to some of the tenets of magic work––and its possibilities.
 
Using the Occult in Plotting a Story
 
Occult practices involve working with forces beyond the mundane, tapping into reservoirs of hidden power, and sometimes interacting with supernatural beings. Therefore, they let writers and readers step outside the ordinary limitations of a storyline. Ghosts and spirits can also expand readers’ knowledge into realms beyond the physical. In Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, for example, a murdered girl shares a perspective of the crime from her vantage point on the other side.
 
Oracles such as the tarot, astrology, or runes can give veiled glimpses into the future. Is someone destined to die when the Death card turns up in a tarot reading? In my mystery novels What the Walls Know, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, and Running in the Shadows a tarot card reader sees trouble lurking ahead for the protagonist Lizzie Crane, which adds to the stories’ suspense.
 
Authors can incorporate metaphysical ideas into their novels in various ways. For example:

• Is a character a seasoned witch or wizard, or a novice dabbling with forces she doesn’t understand, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
• Does a character pursue a metaphysical path that leads him to a discovery or danger? How does he grow from this experience?
• If this is a historical novel, what local customs, religious beliefs, and laws affected occultists at that time? Are historical events, such as the Salem Witch Trials of the early 1690s, worthwhile additions to the book?
• Do nonphysical entities influence a character’s decisions, aid her in solving a problem, or guide her into a realm beyond the physical one?
• Does a character conjure a spell that works––or goes wrong––and takes the story in an intriguing direction?

 
Oh, and by the way, writing is a powerful form of magic. When casting a spell, you envision an outcome you want to create. Then you infuse it with color, action, emotion, intention, and passion. You experience it as if you’re living it right now. In your mind’s eye, you see the result as if it already exists––and you’re the Creator who makes it happen. Sounds like writing a novel, doesn’t it?
 
Author Bio:
skyealexander.com/Skye Alexander’s historical mystery novels What the Walls Know, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, and Running in the Shadows use tarot cards to provide clues. Skye is also a recognized authority in the field of metaphysics and the author of fifteen bestselling nonfiction books on the occult arts including The Modern Guide to Witchcraft, The Modern Witchcraft Book of Tarot, and Magickal Astrology.

​Dead-Handed is my third crime fiction novel in the Nut Cracker Investigations series. Before I began, I had a firm sense of the plot. I wrote an outline. Then characters appeared, startling things were said, and unplanned plot twists emerged. It felt like the steering wheel on a moving car had suddenly disengaged.
 
This happens for pantzers, but I tend to be a plotter, so why didn’t I panic?
 
Because I’ve researched the way our brain delivers its best creative effects. During this process, I found a lecture given to a group of psychologists in Paris in 1908. The lecturer was Jules Henri Poincaré, an engineer and mathematical savant. He proposed a way to work on complex problems by exploiting an impasse: Let go and let the unconscious have its say.
 
Poincaré was a mining inspector in northeastern France. While working on his dissertation on differential equations, he hit a brick wall, so he went on a trip. As he traveled, he relaxed. One morning, he went to the bus stop. The bus door opened and he lifted his foot to step inside. Out of nowhere, the elusive solution he was chasing before his trip arrived. “As I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it.” Upon his return, he verified the result.
 
Another such experience happened during a late-night coffee break. Poincaré had been striving for weeks to clarify a point in his research. Each day, he’d sat at his worktable, trying and trying, without result. Then one evening, he drank a cup of coffee. It kept him awake and “ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.” He believed that the stimulant had made him more present to unconscious material.
 
He also found it effective to take a walk. (I do this as well.) Once, as he strolled, the solution to a stubborn problem struck him. Upon returning, he got back to work. But one aspect of this problem remained stubbornly resistant. He worked on it, day after day, to no avail. Only when he pulled away for another outing did the solution pop.
 
Comparing unconscious ideas to atoms, Poincaré said, “During a period of apparent rest and unconscious work, certain of them come unhooked from the wall and put in motion...  Their mutual impacts may produce new combinations.” In other words, our unconscious brain absorbs the data we feed it from research and experience. Then, like a kid learning to bake, blends it into unique concoctions.
 
This sounds like support for pantsing, and it is, but wait. Plotting has its place.
 
In his lecture, Poincaré listed five key points about creative insight.
 
1)It begins with a period of conscious work, followed by unconscious work.
2)Then, you verify the unconscious work, i.e., put it on a “firm footing.”
3)Trust must be built in the “delicate intuition” of the unconscious, which “knows better how to divine than the conscious self, since it succeeds where that has failed.”
4)The conscious mind (plotting) decides on the worth of the unconscious product.
5)The unconscious product is only a “point of departure.” The rest can be worked out with the discipline of the more logical conscious mind. (Some might call this plotzing.)
 
Brain research today supports Poincaré’s ideas. The neural flash that explodes as sudden insight originates in the brain’s right hemisphere—the area attuned to metaphors, nuances, and emotions. Physiological measures show that just before an insight occurs, activity decreases in left-brain areas while high-frequency brainwaves increase in the right temporal lobe. About 1.5 seconds before insight, low frequency brainwaves increase. They vanish as the high-frequency waves spike. Researchers think this is a “gating effect” that acts to collect energy for the spurt.
 
In contrast, during solutions based solely on conscious calculation, there was no such flash or spurt.
 
What brings insight from the inaccessible mind to full mental awareness, as Poincaré describes, is the selective triggering of stimuli. That is, your research primes it. Then, once the brain has time to absorb and play with this diverse data, it delivers. You just need to give it some space.
 
I find Poincare’s steps to be effective: work on your book (write, research, plot, etc.) to the point of impasse. Then, relax and do no brainwork: take a walk, play a game, see a movie. Let another part of your brain go to work. Don’t guide it. Just be ready for things to emerge you hadn’t expected.

Scams and confidence men. From the telephone call that we receive just as we’re about to take that first mouthful of dinner, telling us that we owe the Tax Office $1400, to the message on our mobiles informing us that the bank has inadvertently short-changed us, it seems that scams have become a part of everyday life.

Fake websites, romance scammers, road tolls that we haven’t paid (supposedly), phoney people tried to ‘Friend’ us on Facebook (my latest was Johnny Depp!), Pyramid or Ponzi schemes which make money by recruiting new participants, identity fraud, as well as diets, remedies and treatments that claim to cure all manner of ills, are just some of the hurdles that we must navigate to keep our money (and our mental health) safe.

The rise of social media has highlighted the problem, but when I researched the incidence of  con men and women, and deceptive marketing used to sell or promote fraudulent products, I found a wealth of examples from the past, which served as inspiration for my latest offering in the Reggie da Costa Mysteries, Lies and Deception, which is set in Melbourne, Australia, in 1925.

Jasper Fitzalan Howard is found stabbed to death in his room at The Hotel Windsor. Initially, the police identify him as a wealthy investor and a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk. However, while investigating the murder, Reggie da Costa, The Argus’s celebrated crime reporter, uncovers a web of lies and deception surrounding Howard’s carefully constructed façade. Jasper Howard is not whom he seems. Swindling wealthy businessmen whilst blackmailing their wives, Howard has attracted many enemies, giving Reggie a host of suspects for his murder.

In my research I discovered that it was an American, William Thompson, after whom the term ‘confidence man’ was coined. Thompson would request that the target show confidence in the honesty of a stranger by handing over his watch. Of course, the victim never saw his watch again!

And then there were the consummate salesmen, such as Victor Lustig, who sold the Eiffel Tower twice for scrap metal, and George Parker, who sold the Brooklyn Bridge to a tourist. Britain's most successful serial confidence trickster, Achilleas Kallakis, duped banks out of more than £750 million by pretending to be a Mayfair property baron. In Australia, Belle Gibson promoted herself as a wellness guru, claiming to cure her cancer with a mixture of diet, exercise and alternative medicine therapies.

History is dotted with examples of confidence men and ‘snake oil’ salesmen who have exploited people’s trust, their gullibility and sometimes, their greed.
 
Just a moment … I’ve received an email. Apparently, I’ve won $1,500,000 in a lottery. How’s that for good luck!!! I can claim it if I click on the link. Here goes …

Laraine Stephens lives in Beaumaris, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She worked as a teacher-librarian and Head of Library for over 35 years. After retiring at the end of 2013, she became a writer of historical crime fiction. Apart from writing, she is an avid golfer, loves travelling, going to the football and playing Mahjong, and enjoys reading, restaurants and films. For five years she worked as a volunteer guide at the Old Melbourne Gaol.
 
She is a member of Writers Victoria, Sisters in Crime (Australia), the Australian Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Novel Society of Australasia, the International Thriller Writers and the Crime Writers’ Association of the United Kingdom.

Laraine has a six-book contract with Level Best Books (USA). She has published four novels so far in The Reggie da Costa Mysteries: ‘The Death Mask Murders’, ‘Deadly Intent’, ‘A Deadly Game’ and ‘Lies and Deception’.
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https://larainestephens.com
https://www.facebook.com/crimewriter3/
​

Along with over 150 million other citizens of the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth, without thinking much about it, I went about living my life as a ‘New Elizabethan.’  Despite the connotations of the word ‘Elizabethan’ and obvious links to Shakespeare, I have never worn a lacey ruff or tights, sported a moustache or pointy beard, or uttered ‘hath’, ‘doth’ or ‘gadzooks!’  Nor have I skipped about singing ‘hey nonny, nonny,’ or ‘Lorks a Lordy!’  I was a New Elizabethan.  Then it happened.

At 3.10pm on Thursday 8th September 2022, my Queen, Elizabeth the Second, took her last breath at her beloved Balmoral Castle.  A hidden fairy tale retreat set beside the shallow, burbling River Dee, which snakes through the purple heather swathed hills and valleys of a remote corner of Aberdeenshire, in North East Scotland.  A place I know well.

Although that day is over a year past, like so many of my fellows, it still seems strange to me to no longer have our Queen.  For the vast majority of us Brits, after reigning for seventy years, without giving it much logical thought, we assumed she’d always be there, as she always had been.  Of course we were wrong.  We shouldn’t have been shocked and surprised, there had been signs but we were.  So it was, as Her Majesty’s heart, in her surprisingly little body, finally rested, without realising it, I ceased being a New Elizabethan and became a Carolean.  (from Carolus, the Latin for Charles.)

I must declare a personal interest at this point, I am now retired but for thirty years I was an officer of London’s Metropolitan Police and for the final ten of those years I was a member of the Royalty Protection Department of that Service.  I met and interacted with most of the senior Royals, the late Queen in particular, when posted to Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral in Scotland, where she passed away.  With a couple of exceptions I really liked The Royals I met, so I hereby declare myself a Royalist.

Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was code named ‘London Bridge’ and had been planned and periodically updated since the 1960’s, ‘just in case’.  (Each Royal’s funeral is code named after a bridge, her Mother was Tay Bridge, her husband, Prince Philip, was Forth Bridge.  His funeral had long been prepared for too, even the long wheel base Landrover, which on his orders would carry his coffin, was kept ready for decades, stored in the Mews at Windsor Castle, started and driven once a week and kept immaculately clean). 

The State Funeral of Her Majesty took place on Monday 19th September 2022 after ten days of National Mourning.  An image seared into every viewers memory is of her coffin, draped with the Royal Standard upon which sat, apparently precariously, the Crown, The Sceptre and the Golden Orb.  As the red-coated and red faced Guardsmen skilfully manoeuvred the weighty, lead-lined coffin, the nation held its breath, fearful the ancient, priceless objects should perhaps slip and fall.  They were of course, securely fastened.

For me, it was the small, almost unnoticeable vignettes which adhere to the memory and move me deeply.  The Queens daughter, Anne, The Princess Royal, her face riven with sadness, curtseyed slowly and reverentially as the coffin passed her by, honouring her Mother for the very last time.  The New King, Charles III, his eyes glistening with tears which he fought and failed to keep from falling as his ‘Dear Ma’ma’ began the descent into the Vault of Windsor Castle’s St George’s Chapel, to rest beside her Father, King George VI, her Mother Elizabeth and her Husband, Philip.  Most moving of all was the single piper, playing the lament, ‘Sleep, Dearie, Sleep.’  The drone of the pipes and the soulfulness of the tune echoed through the five hundred year old Chapel walls, and as the piper slow stepped away the sound diminished until it could be heard no more. 

It made me recall each morning at Balmoral Castle, The Queens Piper, my friend Pipe Major Jim Stout, played for exactly fifteen minutes, pacing the terrace beneath the dining room window as Her Majesty enjoyed her breakfast.  He could be heard each evening, in his quarters at the Castle, practising for the next morning, to get the timing precisely right.  His tune would begin as Balmoral’s clock struck the hour and finish fifteen minutes later.  The clock would strike the quarter hour the briefest moment after his tune ended.  Jim’s accuracy was fearsome.  The Queen loved the sound of the pipes and it was his honour and joy to please her.

At the end of The Summer Court at Balmoral the Queen would hold the famed Ghillies Ball.  An evening of Highland dancing (called a ceilidh, pronounced kay-lee) attended by whichever Royals were in residence and invited members of the Royal Household Staff.  Initiated by Queen Victoria in 1852 and held every year since, it is named for the estate Ghillies (Highland Gamekeepers).  By my time among the one hundred guests were servants, cleaners, soldiers, cooks and hairdressers, and a few very lucky police officers, such as myself. 

A total novice, I needed Highland dancing lessons for eight weeks in preparation for the event.  Queen’s Piper Jim Stout, who would provide music for the dance, oversaw my feeble efforts, oft declaring (with an amused twinkle in his eye) that I was a “flat-footed, uncoordinated English oaf.”  (Thanks Jim, love you too).  Somehow I eventually passed muster and on the great night was permitted to cavort enthusiastically around the ballroom demonstrating ‘Strip the Willow’, ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, ‘The Eightsome Reel’, and my particularly flamboyant interpretation of ‘The Gay Gordon’, which I imagine is recalled by traumatised witnesses with incredulity.  The climax of course was dancing with Her Majesty, whose hands were soft, whose stature was petite, whose feet were tiny and whose radiant smile was so, so warm.
​
She rests in peace now, for evermore.  Surrounded by her family and noble ancestors, encompassed and protected by the thousand year old walls of Windsor Castle. 
Like millions of others, I can’t quite believe it.  Like millions of others, I miss her.
God save The Queen. 


Steven Packwood was born in the economically declining industrial Midlands of England in 1960 to parents who worked in factories.  In 1984 he moved south to London to become an officer of the Metropolitan Police.

He served in many departments and in many capacities until specialising as one of the British Police’s, very few, firearms officers.  He was employed for several years on armed response vehicles and motorcycles until selected to undergo further training, to qualify as a Protection Officer.  There followed several exciting years safeguarding Prime Ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as other senior Government Ministers and visiting Heads of State.

Steve was invited to join the Royalty Protection Group, initially on Prince Charles’s team (now King Charles III) and ultimately with H.M. Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and in Scotland at Balmoral Castle.  In 2014 Steve retired from the police relatively sane and reasonably intact after providing “Thirty years of exemplary service.”.

Steve has been very happily married to Sue for ten years and has two daughters from a previous marriage.  Amy is twenty seven, a nurse in a central London hospital, whilst Emma is twenty four and has recently followed in her father’s footsteps to join the ranks of the Metropolitan Police.

Steve’s wife encouraged him to start writing when he retired, mainly as a creative outlet after so many years of living a disciplined and regimented life but also, he suspects, to keep him from getting under her feet.  He finds the process of writing both enjoyable and cathartic and admits to savouring being told that his stories are “not bad,” or sometimes even “quite good.”  Words of high praise in a country steeped in a tradition of understatement.​

Steve and Sue are passionate about the theatre and love to travel, having so far ticked off the Far East and the Indian sub-continent as well as most of Europe but take special joy in crossing the pond to visit the USA which they adore.  The couple have relatives in Florida and good friends in New York, so these are the most frequent destinations but they plan to explore the rest of the country soon, pandemics permitting.

Steve has an adventurous spirit, as a qualified scuba diver he has a passion for swimming with sharks, misunderstood creatures he adores, he has also sky-dived, para-glided, abseiled and bungee jumped.  Sue keeps a substantial life insurance policy in her back pocket.  Steve considers himself amongst the luckiest of people and loves his life, often exclaiming with a satisfied sigh to anyone who will listen, “where did it all go so…right!”.  
       

When I began writing Murder on the Med, book three of the Kat Lawson mysteries, I felt as though I was channeling a slightly different voice for my protagonist, Kat Lawson. In the previous two books, Kat was a level-headed, if not a headstrong, reporter determined to follow the story no matter what the risks. But as I opened a blank page on my computer and began to write, I realized Kat needed a vacation.

As writers, we all understand the difficulty in trying to get a character to do something on the page they don’t want to do. Try explaining this concept to a non-writer, and they will look at you like you’re crazy, but writers understand. Our characters either talk to us or they won’t, and when they don’t, it’s because we’ve taken them where they don’t want to go, and they simply disappear!

So I went with the idea that we all need a break, and voila! There on the page in front of me was Kat sitting onboard a luxury yacht having High Tea with two elderly British ladies who felt it was their duty to inform Kat of a drowning, or at least what they felt was a probable drowning. 

It was a nonsensical conversation, for sure. Kat was uncomfortable, aware the two spinster schoolteachers with whom she was having tea were either daffy or drunk. Either way, the scene was the perfect setup for Kat’s next adventure on the high seas, where she’s been rewarded with an all-expense paid cruise around the Amalfi Coast by her employer, Journey International. All she needs to do is write a feature article about Athena, a luxury cruise ship designed as a floating retirement community for seniors wishing to spend their waning years sailing blissfully into the sunset. This assignment her employer promised was just for fun. A bonus for her previous work as a feature writer while working as an undercover operative for the FBI. What could possibly go wrong? 

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that I would choose a retirement center as the location for Kat’s next adventure. My mother had been ailing while writing this book, and I was spending a lot of time at her retirement complex. Mom was ninety-nine-and-a-half years old when she passed—she insisted I always include the half when referencing her age. She was very proud she had lived such a long and healthy life, and I felt fortunate that I was able to spend time with her at the end. My mother was bright, articulate, and well-read. Her favorite authors were Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. She loved mysteries, and she looked forward to my reading to her what I was working on every day. Without a doubt, she was my biggest fan.

My mother loved the idea that Kat’s next adventure would take place aboard a floating retirement center with a bunch of quirky senior citizens. The more I let Kat take charge, the more I began to accept the idea that the tone of this book would be a little different. My theme:  A group of rogue seniors trade their pensions for piracy as they sail into their sunset years. 
 
I’ll admit I held my breath while writing this book. Would my readers accept a slight change of tone, a blending of genre, in the series? I’m relieved to say early reviews for Murder on the Med have allied my fears, and I’ll share a few.
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• This is my third Kat Lawson Mystery, and I’ll confirm that they keep getting better; some are more history, some more mystery, and this one has great rom-com vibes.
• Reading Murder on the Med was like watching Love Boat or Murder She Wrote...great Agatha Christie vibes.
• A great beach read!

I don’t know why characters and stories come to writers as they do. But I do know that as a writer, it’s important to trust our instincts. Sometimes, we just need to take that leap of faith and go with what shows up on the page. At the end of the day, I think it makes us better writers.

Nancy Cole Silverman spent nearly twenty-five years in news and talk radio before retiring to write fiction. Silverman’s award-winning short stories and crime-focused novels, the Carol Childs and Misty Dawn Mysteries (Henry Press), are based in Los Angeles, while her newest series, the Kat Lawson Mysteries (Level Best Books), takes a more international approach. Kat Lawson, a former investigative reporter has gone undercover for the FBI as a feature writer for a travel publication. Expect lots of international intrigue, vivid descriptions of small European villages, great food, lost archives, and non-stop action. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her husband and thoroughly pampered standard poodle, Paris.

The writing process is filled with stress. I don’t believe it matters if it’s a hundred-thousand-word manuscript, a short story, or a blog. No matter how easily words flow from your mind through your fingers to the page, second guessing is inherent. Will the reader understand your plot, or the emotion? Will they care? Are you true to the story line?
In my mind, the easy part is writing the story. The difficult stage is editing. Beta readers asking why? Copy editors slicing and dicing. Got an agent? Well, they have an opinion. Publishers are waiting, red pen in hand. As soon as you blink, they’re on you. What comes next are re-writes, adjustments, updates. Your precious creation. Your baby is about to undergo a healthy dose of Botox.

My writing style is behind curtain #3. I am a plodder. I get started, put down everything regardless of order, and when I’m finished, I get busy. Each segment is its own small, stapled bit. I lay it out on the table, shuffle the cards to create order, and then look at the book. Do I like it? Yes. No. Why? Reshuffle, new read. Now, I’m talking to my pre-beta people. There’s a lot of nodding, a couple of what are you talking about, and then I’m ready for production.

Finally, I’m face-to-face with the finished piece, complete with cover, and a marketing plan. Pardon me if I giggle hysterically. Where was I? Oh, yes, marketing. When working with a publishing house, they have a plan, but be aware, a lot of it is still in the writer’s lap. Self-publishing? Developing a marketing plan is as stressful as writing the book. Is there another option? Why, yes, there is! I call it seat-of-my-pants.

Somewhere during the writing process, I’m already keyed up and telling people about the book. I’ve been told not to do this, but it happens. When I have the first copy in hand, the fun part begins. I’m telling everybody, anyway that I can think of. I love talking about the stories. It’s not so much bragging, as wanting people to read and enjoy. I’ve just never figured out that my joy might not be theirs. I love doing cold calls. I’ll talk to anybody, go to any group that will have me.

Case in point. Local church group wanted a woman entrepreneur. They might have been surprised I wasn’t writing Christian, but they were polite. During my spiel, I got invited to a neighborhood book club. Tiny, but engaging. Lovely home, husband walked in, we chatted, he laughed at my energy, asked me if I’d like to do a couple of minutes on local access TV. Wonderland, right? I showed up for the segment, found out it was going to be thirty minutes, not the ten I expected, and, are you ready? It was going to be me and the camera. Also, not expected. I explained I wasn’t good with that and was nervous. He pointed; I sat behind the desk. He sat off to the side and asked, ‘So, when you do a cold call, how does it go?’
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Twenty-eight minutes later, the lights came on, the guy held up his hand, and said, “Okay, that’s a wrap!”

Bingo, we were done, and his part ended up on the floor, so to speak.

DonnaRae Menard began writing in junior high school and has been scribbling since. She is the author of the An It's Never Too Late Mystery series. A 1970's suspense featuring Katelyn Took and 17 cats. The Woman Warrior's series, historical fiction, The Waif and The Warlord, fantasy, Detective Carmine Mansuer series, set in Boston, Mass. Dropped from the Sky, It takes Guts, Willa the Wisp, and several short stories. She splits her time between Vermont and New Hampshire, has an affinity for odd jobs, and rescued cats. Check out her website donnaraemenardbooks.com. Find her on Facebook.


 

​Sarah: Somehow we both have written very similar characters, though different
plots, in our first procedural novel. Your book takes place in Laurel,
Maine. It's a small town on the coast of Maine that is a tourist area
(meaning summer residents), and a small steady population year round. LT
Nichols never planned to join the police, and in fact was a bartender
when it was suggested to him. My book takes place in Eden County,
Florida. A rural county with a tiny year-round population in North
Central Florida. Jim Sheppard didn't want to be a sheriff, and he was
getting his masters in education so he could teach history, when his
wife's death and having a baby son made him decide to drop out of
college and go home to Eden County and become a deputy under his father
who was Sheriff.

In the first book they are both faced with crimes that test their
ability to be law enforcement officers, and make both of them doubt
their ability to solve the crime. But they are both determined to find
out what happened and who did it and why, no matter what roadblocks get
thrown in their path.

How did you come to write about LT? And why do you think he became a
good police chief?

Albert: There are so many characters in crime fiction who have extraordinary capabilities, whether it’s incredible powers of deduction or a deep knowledge of psychology or ninja-like combat skills.  But none of the police officers that I know and have known are like that.  They’re real people who try to do their best in an extremely difficult job.  To me, that’s much more dramatic and compelling than the adventures of fanciful quasi-superheroes.  (Though I will admit to reading and loving all of Sherlock Holmes—over and over.)  LT is a good person with good intentions, like many of us.  The difference is that while he realizes his shortcomings, he will not let them get in the way of doing what’s right.  He’s not afraid to do the hard things, even if they appear to be beyond his capabilities.  The funny thing is that I don’t see The Ruins of Woodman’s Village as a police procedural (though I suppose that’s what it is).  I see it as character-driven fiction where the protagonist happens to be a police chief.  Maybe that approach is what keeps LT from being a cliché on the page.

One thing that Sheriff Jim Shephard has that LT does not is a high level of education and a certain thoughtfulness.  LT is a college dropout who was drifting before he joined Laurel’s police force.  Jim Shephard was purposely headed in a different direction and yet wound up in the family business:  being the Sheriff of Eden County.

How does Jim’s educational background and intelligence play into how he approaches his job?  Is it at odds with his family history?

Sarah: I never thought about LT’s education. That is a difference. Jim Sheppard had a Bachelors and was half-way through his Masters program when his wife died in a car wreck. He’s more educated than most of his deputies, except for Dee Jackson, who is completing her Masters in Criminal Justice. That might be a reason that Jim and Dee connect really well.
Jim’s father went to the University of Florida on a football scholarship, which is what he wanted his son to do. He also wanted him to major in Criminal Justice, and instead he majored in history.

I don’t think that Jim thinks of himself as better educated, but more that he loves history. I don’t think he considers what education level his deputies have, as long as they are good at their job. He hires a lot of veterans, because he sees them as having experience that prepares them for dealing with violence.

In BURNING EDEN, Jim does not feel qualified to solve a kidnapping or a possible serial killer. He is overwhelmed. He really relies on the experience of his deputies. He leans on Dee Jackson, with her Military Police experience, and his contacts in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who do all the forensic work for Eden County.

Jim’s education is at odds with everyone’s in his department, and with his family as well.
However, history does educate a person a great deal about human beings. His education has caused him to hire diversely. He has deputies who know the people – all the people – and don’t react according to the prejudices that you’d encounter in a mostly white Sheriff’s department in rural Florida.

Eden County is pretty rural. There are a few wealthy people, but the majority of the population is poor. In THE RUINS OF WOODMAN’S VILLAGE, because Laurel is a summer tourist community, there are HUGE differences in wealth that are visible. You continue to deal with this part of being the Police Chief in Laurel in FLOOD TIDE, the next book – where LT Nichols has to work with a very wealthy, politically connected family. LT definitely seems to have issues with the “summer” people who come into Laurel and change the atmosphere a great deal. Does that change how you approach the characters and the crime?

Albert: The changing summer demographics and the accompanying dynamics of being in a seasonal tourist town pose additional challenges for LT Nichols. They complicate what is already a difficult job. As the town transforms from a small fishing village into a fast-paced resort every summer, a heightened energy envelopes Laurel. In the simplest analysis, the more people who occupy a space, the greater the chance for interactions that can take a bad turn. In addition, backgrounds and expectations can clash. It’s a lot for LT to handle. At the same time, however, he comes to realize that people, no matter what their socioeconomic status, all want the same things (love, comfort, respect, etc..,) and face the same demons (greed, selfishness, unchecked desire, etc..,). When all these things collide, life gets tough for LT Nichols. Maybe that explains his fondness for a cold Budweiser at the end of the day.

Jim Shephard does not exactly have it easy in Eden County, Florida. In Burning Eden and Frozen Eden, the sequel, he faces a different set of challenges, and they come from environmental stressors. In the first book, it’s heat and wildfires. In the second, there are unheard-of wintry conditions and an ice storm. What choices did you make to place Jim and Eden County under these conditions? How do they work into the fabric of who Jim is and his role in the county?

Sarah: Florida weather is a bit like “Florida Man,” unpredictable and extreme. The wildfires written about in BURNING EDEN really happened in 1998. There used to be orange trees in South Florida, but the freeze I write about in FROZEN EDEN pretty much destroyed the industry here.
Yes, we have long periods of “typical” Florida weather. It includes daily afternoon rains, sunshine in the mornings, and clear skies at night. It’s hot in the mornings and early afternoons, then the rain cools it down for the evening.

We have hurricanes and tornadoes. Four Corners, an unincorporated community west of Walt Disney World, has more lightning strikes than any other community in the USA.
We rarely have freezes long enough or bad enough to ice roads. We have no salt, no sand, no way to distribute it on the roads if we had it. We still have homes that don’t have any heat!
For Jim these conditions change everything. They literally threaten the lives of everyone in the county. They bring out Jim’s best qualities. His empathy and his ability to know how and where to use the strengths of his deputies. He’s a smart man, and it’s enjoyable to bring that out in the open.

One of the things I really like about LT Nichols is there’s no artifice about him. He’s a local guy who ended up being the police chief. In both THE RUINS OF WOODMAN’S VILLAGE and FLOOD TIDE, LT has to deal with people who control their world and the people around them with finely developed public personas. From a big man who controls a community through fear to a man who controls his world through wealth and political power, LT never stops pushing for the truth. Even when everyone is telling him to let it go, he simply can’t. Why?

Albert: It’s who he is. He is constantly trying to prove something, not to anyone else, but to himself.  He’s always been small in stature and often underestimated. But he knows if he’s doing his best, he can live with himself. Although he was a good athlete, it wasn’t until he found wrestling in his youth that he fully applied himself to something. LT realizes that it was giving everything he had to wrestling that made him successful—a state champion. He knows that if he wants to do his job to the best of his abilities, he needs to apply that same single-mindedness to being the chief of police in Laurel, Maine. And while he is correct about that with regards to his work, his personal life can suffer collateral damage as a result. This is something that’s explored in THE RUINS OF WOODMAN’S VILLAGE and carries over into FLOOD TIDE. By being someone who refuses to let himself down professionally, LT steps out onto a tightrope of his own creation again and again.
   
While LT Nichols is a bachelor, Sheriff Jim Shephard is a single father—of a son who wants to follow him into law enforcement. While Jim reluctantly stepped into his father’s role of Sherriff of Eden County, Jim is determined to keep his son, Michael, out of the family business. But in the upcoming FROZEN EDEN, Michael edges closer to an active role in an investigation. This intertwined family and professional dynamic is at the heart of who these characters are and where they are going. How does this weigh on Jim? How does it affect the decisions that he makes, both professionally and as a father at home?

Sarah: I think Jim Sheppard feels that his son should have the choice he was denied in life. It’s not that working in the Eden County Sheriff’s Department is a bad choice, but it was a choice he feels he didn’t make. Michael Sheppard has grown up watching his father, and before that his grandfather, do a job that is about doing good in the community. He’s watched his father make changes – a more diverse group of deputies, better educated/trained deputies – and he admires it. While Jim sees being a deputy as limiting Michael’s life experiences, Michael sees it as challenging.

Many of Jim’s deputies have greater life experiences – such as serving overseas in the military. Others are better at routine and knowing the people and Eden County’s geography. The variety of experience makes his department stronger, more capable. He can use deputies in different ways, capitalizing on their abilities and experiences.

I think he fears that Michael would be “settling” for something familiar and never giving himself the opportunity to grow more as a man by being a part of the outside world. Jim did experience that by going to graduate school and his love of history. Being a father pulled him back into Eden County, which I don’t think he regrets, but that he does feel limited him in ways that he sees other people aren’t.


Sarah Bewley has been a private investigator, a freelance writer, and is an award-winning playwright. Her love of mysteries inspired her to write her first book BURNING EDEN. She lives in North Florida with Pat Payne, a visual artist. She rock climbs, takes boxing lessons, and loves reading and dogs.  
 

Albert Waitt is the author of Flood Tide, The Ruins of Woodman’s Village, and Summer to Fall.  Flood Tide, published by Level Best Books in March of 2024, is the second book of a series featuring Laurel, Maine, police chief, LT Nichols.  Waitt’s short fiction has appeared in The Literary Review, Third Coast, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Words and Images, Stymie: A Journal of Sport and Literature, and other publications.  Waitt is a graduate of Bates College and the Creative Writing Program at Boston University.  Experiences ranging from tending bar, teaching creative writing, playing guitar for the Syphlloids, and frying clams can be found bleeding through his work.

“Marriage is a rotten deal for a woman.”

When Ella Shane says this to Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, soon after they meet in the spring of 1899, she’s not flirting or exaggerating; she’s just stating a simple fact of 19th century life, at least from her point of view.

She’s also giving the main reason it takes her three books, several murders, and a brush with death to decide to marry the Duke. (The wedding FINALLY comes in A FATAL RECEPTION, this April!) Marriage seems like prison to Ella, an Irish-Jewish Lower East Side orphan who’s clawed out an independent life and career as an opera singer specializing in “trouser,” male soprano, roles.

It was certainly the end of legal freedom for most women at the time.

Even in the late 19th century, when a woman married, she essentially ceased to exist as an independent person. The legal doctrine was called “femme couvert,” literally translated as “covered woman,” meaning the woman’s rights were covered by her husband’s power. You can see how that could lead to all sorts of trouble.

All of a woman’s money and property, not to mention her person – and her children – were effectively under her husband’s control. She could earn money, but he decided how it was spent. She would bear the children and raise them, but they, too, were his property.

Laws were starting to address the idea that married women might inherit or earn property of their own, but on the ground, men still had close to absolute power over their wives.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, divorce was just barely possible in particularly egregious cases of abuse or financial neglect – and men could ditch an unfaithful wife. But a woman could not expect to take her children with her if she left a bad marriage, even a horrifically abusive one.

In less extreme cases, women just had to put up with the daily knowledge they weren’t real people in the eyes of the law, with little or none of the power a man had. A woman could do almost nothing without her husband’s consent – and that didn’t change for decades. There are plenty of women alive and well today who remember having to ask their husbands to co-sign on their credit cards.

Women like Ella, single and making a living on her own, were rare at the time, but not unknown. Often, they lived with parents or family, as Ella does with her cousin Tommy, and often (based on advice writing and fiction of the time) the families vexed about having an independent woman around, and what to do with her.

Until the late 19th century, a woman alone with money was usually a widow, and people knew how to handle that. She was taking care of her late husband’s estate for the benefit of her children and needed some legal and social room for the purpose. A single woman? Who knows what she might do?

The one thing she certainly could do, though, is run her own affairs without anything more than advice from a man. Ella is well aware of that fact, and while she’s glad to have Tommy as friend, protector, and manager, she also prizes her independence.

Independence she would have to unconditionally surrender in a match with any man, even a worthy one who is her equal. Maybe especially with a worthy man. If a clerk expects his wife to stop working and tend to his home, how much more would a powerful and well-off man expect? The answer, of course, is everything. Women with careers, whether on the stage or elsewhere, generally gave them up when they married.

Ella has no interest in becoming a bird in a gilded cage.

All of this is in the room when the Duke makes his reply to Ella’s comment: “Depends on who’s setting the terms.”

The terms are what makes all the difference, and why Ella and Gil are now heading to the altar in A FATAL RECEPTION. After more than a year of negotiating their relationship and their future and finally coming to the conclusion that they can’t live without each other, the two have agreed on a marriage contract.

It sounds a little cold for a couple madly in love, but it’s the only way for Ella to keep her freedom – and for Gil to show his respect for it. Marriage contracts had always been a part of aristocratic unions, but the diva and her duke make an unusual deal, keeping their property separate and giving her control over her career. Gil surrenders some of what might be his rights in the eyes of the law out of love and respect.

As A FATAL RECEPTION opens, the couple has finally settled the property and legal matters, and now they’re navigating something almost as difficult: the transition from courting couple to spouses. While, of course, solving a crime or two.

And it’s fair to say both are sure they’re getting a good deal.

Kathleen Marple Kalb likes to describe herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning radio journalist, she currently anchors on the weekend morning show at New York's #1 news station, 1010 WINS. She’s the author of several mysteries, historical and contemporary. Her short stories appear in anthologies and online and have been short-listed for Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards. She grew up in front of a microphone and a keyboard, working as an overnight DJ as a teenager in her hometown of Brookville, Pennsylvania…and writing her first (thankfully unpublished) novel at sixteen. When her son started kindergarten, she returned to fiction, and after two failed projects, some 200 rejections, and a family health crisis, found an agent for the third book – leading to a pandemic debut. In hopes of sharing what she’s learned the hard way, she’s active in writers’ groups including Sisters in Crime and the Short Mystery Fiction Society and keeps a weekly writing survival-tips blog. She, her husband, and their son live in Connecticut, in a house owned by their cat.

When it comes to your inner critic, my advice is to not take advice from someone who doesn’t like you. That’s like returning to the perpetrator for healing after you’ve been abused. —Patrick Califia, writer 

Do you hear voices in your head? Of course you do if you’re a writer. Creative people have one relentless voice, in particular, that lives in our heads and never rests—an inner critic that puts us under the microscope, bludgeons us with criticism, and tells us how worthless, selfish, dumb, or inept we are. That kick-butt voice pops up like burnt toast with such lightning speed we don’t even notice, eviscerating us with name-calling, discouragement, and putdowns. 

The critical voice tells you that you can’t; you should, ought to, have to, or must. It knows where you live and where to find you. And it does. When you’re working on an important deadline, it stalks you to your desk and whispers over your shoulder as you pen a manuscript. It could be scolding you right now. Listen closely. Do you hear it: “No, that’s not right! You don’t know what you’re doing! You might as well give up! Who do you think you are? You’re an imposter.” 

Burnt toast anyone? 

The critical voice in our head isn’t who we are. It’s a part of us, not all of us. It’s the lowercase “self.” Who are we, then? We are the captain of our ship—not a passenger, the coach of our team—not a player, the conductor of our symphony—not a musician, the CEO of our boardroom—not a stakeholder. We’re the true writer’s Self with a capital “S”—the writer who hears and sees the lowercase “self” or critic. There’s no use fighting, debating, or arguing with your inner critic. It always has a comeback and always wins, plus you can’t get rid of it. The key is to watch it and let it come and go without personalizing it. When we oppose or try to reason with the Critic, we give it credence and, instead of streaming on through, it takes up residence. 

Studies show when the critic comes down hard on ourselves after a mistake or failure, it reduces our creativity and chances of writing success. When you think about it, eviscerating ourselves after a letdown is like fighting the fire department when our house is on fire. It’s just as easy to affirm ourselves with positive messages as it is to tear ourselves down with negative ones. The best way to address the inner critic when it pops up is to observe it like you would inspect a blemish on your hand instead of reacting to it. Listen to it with a dispassionate ear as a part of you. Imagine someone scolding you over your cell phone and you hold the phone away from your ear. In the same way, you can listen to the Critic’s message from afar as a separate part from you, not all of you. In addition to hearing it as a part of you, not you, a dispassionate ear gives you distance from the Critic’s voice and keeps you from attacking yourself. Plus, it keeps you from believing the voice’s made-up story.

If you’re stuck with your writing, try replacing criticism with Self-compassion (from the capital Self) each step of the way. Self-compassion is a powerful resilient tool that stands up to harm and is more likely to lead to heights of literary success. So put down your gavel and amp up your kinder, compassionate side. In times of writing struggles, give yourself pep talks, positive affirmations, and talk yourself off the ledge instead of letting your Critic encourage you to jump. 

Vincent Van Gogh once said, “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” Bryan Robinson says, “If you hear a voice within you say, “You cannot write,” then by all means write, and that voice will be silenced.” 


Bryan E. Robinson is a licensed psychotherapist and author of 40 nonfiction books. He is also author of two murder mysteries—both soon to come from Level Best Books: Way DEAD Upon the Suwannee River and She’ll Be KILLING Round the Mountain. His tagline is, “I heal by day and kill by night.” He is also author of Daily Writing Resilience: 365 Meditations & Inspirations for Writers. His website is www.bryanrobinsonphd.com.

​As a writer, I am not a pantser; quite the opposite, in fact. My writing methodology reflects my approach to honing my craft in my former life as a musician. In practicing music, whether as a soloist or as a violinist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, planning was always key. This remains true in my writing life as well.
 
Writing a novel is much like practicing a concerto or a Wagner opera. Both require a slavish devotion to perfection, with one important distinction. In a concerto, you’re perfecting a piece written by someone else. With a novel, you’re creating your own personal material, and starting with a blank slate. That means meticulous planning. And it all starts with an outline.
 
In a mystery novel, plotting is more complicated than in other genres. Like a jigsaw puzzle, if one piece doesn’t fit exactly, the entire plot is in danger of falling apart. In addition, two important elements must be determined before you can start writing this type of story: the ending, and the identity of the villain or perp. I also think in terms of starting with the ending and working my way backwards to make sure each plot point fits logically with what came before it.
 
When I write my outline, the broad strokes come first: seven or so large beats, the bones of the story. Then I start to expand the beats into detailed plot points. Eventually, I create an in-depth beat sheet of each scene in the book, from beginning to end, making sure to include the characters’ emotional arcs and interactions and relationships with each other as part of every beat.
 
Once I have a rough draft of my outline, I dissect my plot as I do my music, slowly examining every word as I do every note as if under a magnifying class. Without an outline, this would be impossible to accomplish.
 
Writing an outline is very labor intensive, but the rewards are great. It’s a wonderful feeling when I finally allow myself to use this blueprint to write the actual novel. Plus, I have the outline to refer to during the process, adding or deleting, changing, and refining as I go along.
 
Is it any wonder that I outline meticulously?

Former Metropolitan Opera violinist Erica Miner is an award-wining author, screenwriter, arts journalist, and lecturer. Her debut novel, Travels with my Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards, and her screenplays have won awards in the WinFemme, Santa Fe and Writers Digest competitions. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Erica continues to balance her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with her fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera. Aria for Murder, published by Level Best in Oct. 2022, is the first in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series. Prelude to Murder, the sequel set at the Sante Fe Opera, was released September 2023.  Book three,taking place at the San Francisco Opera is due for release in 2024.   https://www.ericaminer.com
​

The Lady Dragons of Brookville features Trixie, Kathleen, and Martha, three middle-aged women from different backgrounds and life experiences, join forces to protect their community. If I were to bump into them on the street, which one would eye me suspiciously?
Lynn, I guess my first question is what exactly are you doing? If you were suspicious, Trixie would totally give you the stink eye and probably ask you some very probing questions. Which one would apologize and then faint? Oh, no doubt, Kathleen. She is the epitome of a real Southern genteel lady. And which one would karate-chop me? Definitely, Martha. Martha, has a take no prisoners attitude and she is a rule girl. If you’re breaking the rules, Martha will be there to get you back on track.

It’s sometimes said that there’s always a little piece of a character they create in the author. So, which one of the Lady Dragons do you relate to the most?
Not Kathleen. Sadly, my salty language would give Miss Kathleen the vapers.  I think there’s a bit of a Trixie and Martha mashup. Trixie’s directness and Martha’s weird fascination with forensics are pieces of my personality. 

How far did you stray from the original concept to the published book? 
Overall, I kept the original concept which was a mashup of the Golden Girls and Rizzoli and Isles. However, initially, there was going to be four women. The fourth one was a meeting planner. But, in the end four is a crowd. 

Without giving away anything, is there a particular scene in the book you struggled with?
The opening scene of the first chapter stresses me out. There’s just so much riding on it.
One you’re rather proud of? There’s actually two chapters that I was pleased with. The first when Doc and Trixie are at Emile’s restaurant and the second chapter is the well chapter. One that made you laugh out loud? The ladies investigating Camille’s house. Honestly, that chapter tickles me every time I read it. LOVE it!

What type of music does Trixie listen to?
She likes rock music when she runs, especially Guns and Roses.  But Trixie also likes 80’s music. Duh, because everyone knows 80’s music was the best!
Kathleen? She enjoys jazz music and the old crooners such as Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra.
Martha?  Film soundtracks fascinate Martha. She is fascinated by the process of how the music is created to fit specific characters and situations within a film. 

Describe Trixie, Kathleen, and Martha each with the first word that comes to your mind. One word only. Don’t cheat. 
Trixie - loyal 
Kathleen - a pleaser  
Martha - pragmatic

Now, describe Karen in one word. Determined.
Your favorite color? Turquoise 
Beach or mountains? Beach but not the sand.
Ice cream or brownie? Brownie. However, vanilla ice cream with the brownie is acceptable. I’m not big on fruit ice cream but I do line peanut butter chocolate ice cream.
Steak or lasagna? Both. My favorite steak is filet cooked medium. And lasagna, always homemade.

What are you currently working on?  Book 2 of the Lady Dragons. In book two, the ladies have formed LDB Investigations. Their first case is trying to solve the murder of a friend. Early in their investigation, they receive threats which puzzles Trixie, frightens Kathleen and delights Martha.


 
    The quaint town of Brookville was just what Trixie Tanner needed for a fresh start. The condominium brochure promised, “Your vacation destination for everyday living,” and so far, it was true. She loved her new condo, the charming town, and her new life.
    But during Trixie’s early morning run, all that changed. A piercing scream shattered the morning tranquility and the illusion. When the body of a young woman is discovered murdered on the condominium trail, Brookville’s idyllic façade starts to crumble.
    Despite warnings from law enforcement and the formidable medical examiner, Trixie and her new friends Martha, a quirky CSI-wannabe, and Kathleen, a prim and proper retired schoolteacher: the Lady Dragons of Brookville join forces to find the killer and become the voice
for the dead.
 
Karen Fritz lives in North Carolina with her husband, two daughters, one maniacal Doberman and a bougie cat.

Lynn Chandler Willis is an award-winning author, a Shamus Award finalist, and the first woman in a decade to win the PWA Best 1st PI Novel competition. Her latest book with Level Best is What the Monkey Saw. She lives in a little house on the farm in the heart of North Carolina with her shelter dog, Finn, a happy border collie, and a hand-me-down kitty named Jingles.

If you asked 50 writers to describe their “writing processes,” you’d probably get 75 different responses. Some writers stick to a set of inviolable rules, others “meander across the meadow,” while others invoke voodoo dolls and incense, heavy on the incense (substitute “alcohol” for “incense” as required).
 
Hey, whatever works!
 
Here are a few questions to help you “define” your writing process, along with my responses.
 
Are you an outliner or a “seat-of-the-pantser”?
I’m an outliner. Maybe it’s my quantitative background and schooling (yes, I’m a reformed engineer), but I feel more comfortable when I know where I’m headed. I think if I tried to wing it, I’d write myself into a dark alley in Newark with no visible path home. (No offense to anyone living in Newark! Or in dark alleys!) When I taught writing workshops and my outliners’ outlines weren’t working, I’d suggest they change their outlines. When things weren’t flowing for my pantsers, I’d suggest they change their pants. Ba da bing!
 
Do you write daily or whenever you can grab a chance?
Sometimes I write daily, sometimes I write whenever I can grab a moment. (I know, I know—this is a waffle-y answer. Everything’s not always black and white. Or even gray.) When I’m working on a draft, I’m pretty diligent about writing daily. But between projects, I have to admit I don’t write every day. Of course, if you counted emails and social media posts and bios and those frustrating attempts to distill 80,000 words of a novel into four pithy sentences for back cover copy, then I suppose I do write every day. But that’s not the type of writing I call writing.
 
Do you revise as you go or do you plow through?
I’m a big proponent of the Plow-Thru Method (patent pending). When I’m in first draft mode, my only goal is to hit my word quota (see below), quality be damned. That’s what the second draft is for—making my first draft readable. And the third draft is for making the second draft not suck, and the fourth draft is for…well, you get the idea.
 
Do you have a daily quota or do you write for as long as the spirit moves you?
Per the Plow-Thru Method, I sit at my computer and type until I hit my daily quota. Sometimes it’s a thousand words, sometimes twelve-fifty, and when I’m really behind, two thousand. Depends on the schedule. After I hit my quota, I move on to other things, even if I’m in the middle of a sentence when I hit my mark. Seriously, I am not joking about getting up right in the middle of
 
Do you write what you want or what you think has a shot of selling?
Yes.
 
Do you listen to music when you write?
I love music. But I can’t write when it’s on. Same goes for talk radio or TV or the latest episode of Bosch.
 
 
 
Alan Orloff has published ten novels and more than forty-five short stories. His work has won an Anthony, an Agatha, a Derringer, and two ITW Thriller Awards. His latest novel is SANCTUARY MOTEL, from Level Best Books. He loves cake and arugula, but not together. Never together. He lives and writes in South Florida, where the examples of hijinks are endless. www.alanorloff.com
 

The single most common question I get asked as a young(ish!) stay-at-home mom of five kids (by day!) and author (by night!) is “how do you find time to write?”
For me, this is like someone asking, “how do you find time to eat?” or “how do you find time to sleep?”

Writing is such a crucial facet of my identity and it brings me so much joy that to not do it feels like it would be a great loss to who I am as a person. I often tell people I feel most like myself when I’m writing.

But I’ve realized this isn’t exactly what folks really want to know when they ask me this question. They want practical, logistical answers explaining how I find the time to write. Or more accurately, I should say, how I make the time to write, given the other demands on my time. So, I’ve started compiling a list of tips for fellow creatives. I thought I’d share it here.

These are things that work for me as a writer who, from the outside looking in, doesn’t have a ton of spare time to devote to my craft. Maybe these ideas will help you make some time to do the thing that fills your cup, brings you joy, and allows you to feel most like yourself.
​

• Set a timer for however long you have and write until it buzzes at you. This is the best way I’ve found to finish writing books. I set my trusty timer for thirty minutes (sometimes forty-five minutes if I’m feeling feisty and particularly motivated) and let my fingers fly across the keyboard. I don’t stop to edit. I don’t check my cell phone. I write. It’s not always pretty, but words get out on the page, and for me, it’s a guaranteed way to make some progress on a story.

 

• Try to end your writing session in the middle of a scene or at least in a place where you know what’s coming next. It’ll make starting up again so much easier the next time you have time to write, and if you use the timer method, you’ll maximize your minutes.

 

• When working on a first draft, don’t delete anything…even stuff you know you want to change. Make yourself a note in the margins or in a notebook to come back and edit it later, but don’t delete words typed. You’ve earned those! And the first step to finishing a manuscript is getting it out, no matter how pretty (or not so pretty) it is.

 

• Don’t compare your progress to someone else’s. We all draft differently. We all create differently. Your timeline, your pace, is yours. Own it. If listening to someone else’s process or progress is causing you stress, step back and reassess. (Yes, that includes this article. If what I’m sharing isn’t serving you, go forth and do your own thing. No hard feelings!)

 

• When I’m not writing, I like staying in the mindset of my story by listening to my book playlist or scrolling my Pinterest mood board. It keeps the excitement high for when I do have time to get back to the story.

That’s about it. Nothing fancy. Nothing ground-breaking. But this method works for me. As someone who is not a full-time author but instead writes within the margins of her day, these are my tips for other busy creatives.

I’d love to hear from you. How do you find time to write? Do we use any of the same strategies? Share your best creative tips in the comments below. Write on!


Leah Dobrinska is the author of the Larkspur Library Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in the Wisconsin Northwoods; the Mapleton novels, a series of award-winning standalone small town romances; and the Fall In Love closed-door romcoms. She earned her degree in English Literature from UW-Madison where she was awarded the Dean’s Prize and served as a Writing Fellow. She has since worked as a freelance writer, editor, and content marketer. As a kid, she hoped to grow up to be either Nancy Drew or Elizabeth Bennet. Now, she fulfills that dream by writing mysteries and love stories.

A sucker for a good sentence, a happy ending, and the smell of books—both old and new—Leah lives out her very own happily ever after in a small Wisconsin town with her husband and their gaggle of kids. When she's not writing, handing out snacks, or visiting the local library, Leah enjoys reading and running. Find out more about Leah, join her newsletter community, and connect with her through her website, leahdobrinska.com.