People often ask me, “Did you decide to write a cozy mystery series about a wedding planner because you got an idea for it from your wedding planning business? The answer is… sort of.
Hello, I’m Mary Karnes, and I write ‘The Wedding Planning Mystery Series’ – a cozy mystery series published by Level Best Books. I always wanted to be an author. My mother helped me obtain the first of many rejection letters when she submitted a series of my poems to “Redbook Magazine” when I was six. I did not, however, always want to be a wedding planner. That was born more out of necessity than desire. I have four daughters. When daughter number two got engaged twelve years ago, my husband said, “Let’s get a wedding planner!” I said flat out, “NO! We are not wasting good money for that!” I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a grave mistake. After daughter number one’s wedding the following year, I thought, I can be a wedding planner. I did just that. I built a website, with the help of Godaddy.com, advertised on the knot.com and my business has been in the black since day one. All I needed to start was advertising, a computer, a clipboard, paper, and some pens – no overhead. Has it always been easy? Heck no! I was dealing with young women planning the biggest day of their lives. But I have been lucky. In ten years of professional planning, I have had only one ‘bridezilla.’ I now have a team of three ladies, and in the 2024 season, we did thirty-nine weddings. I planned them all but wasn’t always the ‘Day of Coordinator.’ I had written three books before I started the wedding planning business, in fact, I had written one wedding planner book before I had even started my business. ‘Why not write a wedding planning series now that I’m in the biz?’ I asked myself. So, I did. Friends say, “It must be so easy to write your series! You must get so much fodder from your brides!” Actually, the opposite is true. I have to work really hard to make my stories not resemble my couples, as I guard their privacy very closely. My first book, WEDDING BRIDE AND DOOM, was published in September 2023. Here’s a brief synopsis: WEDDING BRIDE AND DOOM KATE LUDLOW has moved back home to New England with her daughter, ELLIS, and her little dachshund, Hannah. Her husband, the cheating louse, left her for their next-door neighbor back in California. Finding herself in need of full-time employment, Kate turns her part-time wedding planning business into full-time event coordination. Home a little over a year, Kate lands a big society wedding, (it could be her big break!), and she’s ready to do anything to make the wedding a success, including finding a missing family heirloom ring. Kate is unsure why the family thinks she can find it when no one has been able to locate it for decades, but she’ll give it a shot. As she begins to get all the society wedding vendors in place, Kate stumbles upon the body of her best florist, LORI-SUE JOHNSON. Lori-Sue and Kate weren’t friends back in high school, and they aren’t friends now. And just like that, Kate is the police’s number one suspect. Even though Kate is the police’s only suspect, Kate sees potential murders all around her, including her best friend from high school, JEN COOPER. Back in the day, Jen was worried Lori-Sue might steal her boyfriend, and she never got over it. Was there another layer about their relationship that Kate is not aware of? To compound matters, BRIAN MCALLISTER, Kate’s high school boyfriend, and breaker of her heart, is the lead detective heading up the murder investigation. Are there still strong feelings between them? After the police search her home, Kate realizes no one is going to help her except for herself. She starts her own investigation, beginning with searching the deceased florist’s shop and finding a wrapper to a peanut snack, (Lori-Sue had a deadly peanut allergy), and Brian finds her. Brian tells her, “Kate you are your own worst enemy.” But still Kate carries on with her investigation. She doesn’t know who killed Lori-Sue, just that she didn’t. It could be any of a number of people from old friend, Addalee Baker, who provides Kate with an earful on why she’s not sorry Lori-Sue’s dead, to Brian’s former high school girlfriend and Kate’s archenemy, Sarah-Grace Deloro, the town’s top real estate agent. Why were pending ‘Board of Realtors’ charges dropped as soon as Lori-Sue was murdered? Even society Mother of the Bride, JOYCE SIMPSON, looks guilty. As if Kate doesn’t have enough on her plate, her daughter, Ellis, confides that she has been receiving nasty anonymous texts. Ellis guesses it is the relative of the deceased Lori-Sue, and daughter of Kate’s business rival, KENDRA JACKMAN. Kate goes to Kendra’s house and confronts her, telling her she’d better stop her daughter from harassing Ellis. But Kendra goes to the door to accept a delivery and Kate snoops on Kendra’s phone. It was Kendra who was sending the anonymous texts! Through further digging, Kate finds out Lori-Sue was blackmailing her own cousin, Kendra. Another murder suspect? Kate’s clients begin canceling her planning services, afraid she will be arrested for Lori-Sue’s murder. Kate is panicked. What will she and Ellis do if her business crashes or worse, she’s arrested for murder? Kate’s sleuthing has produced little, so she decides she might as well try to find the socialite’s missing family ring. The search takes Kate from a local jewelry store to a farm to the town’s historic landmarks. She has an unlikely ally, her old high school beau, and police detective Brian. Sparks fly, and it’s obvious there are still lingering feelings between the two. The strongest lead sends Kate to a local wedding cake baker who has purchased the antique ring at a farm tag sale. Where has the ring been all these years and how did it end up at a tag sale? After visiting the farm, Kate goes to a local retirement home to question a resident about the ring’s origin. As Kate investigates, she discovers a long-buried mystery that involves JOYCE SIMPSON, mother of the bride. Kate finds, at the risk to her own life, that Joyce has a deep secret she would do anything to keep, including killing Lori-Sue (and Lori-Sue did die by peanut allergy). This all comes to a head when Joyce realizes Kate is too close to the truth and kidnaps Kate to ultimately silence her. Kate’s unlikely savior is arch-rival Sarah-Grace. Kate discovers her other suspects’ secrets and why they had motives to kill Lori-Sue. The dead florist had been quite the blackmailer and used her friends and family’s secrets against them. The arrival of Kate’s ex lends another layer to her already chaotic life when he makes it plain, he’d like her back. Will Kate reunite her family, or seek what will make her happy, Brian? SAVE THE FATE was published in October 2024. Here is a brief synopsis: SAVE THE FATE Wedding Planner Kate Ludlow is back with her fun circle of small-town New England friends. Life is clipping along well for Kate. Her wedding season is off to a great start; she has reconnected with her former high school boyfriend, and her teen daughter is happy and looking forward to a fun summer. At the town’s traditional kick-off to summer party, “Strawberry Moon,” Jack Malone, the town’s parodical son, surprises the population with his appearance. He’s the best baseball player the whole of New England has ever produced, and he now plays professional baseball in Los Angeles. He hasn’t been home in years but has returned home to marry a local girl. He taps Kate to be his wedding planner, and she couldn’t be happier; what a boon this will be for her business! Jack reconnects with old friends, and apparently old enemies too, as his body is found in the Connecticut River on his third day home. Jack’s high school girlfriend, and Kate’s best friend, Jen, is the prime suspect. She can’t or won’t give an alibi for the time of Jack’s death. But she’s not the only person who looks guilty. A new business partner has come to Eastbury looking for Jack, claiming Jack cheated him in a business deal gone wrong. Then there’s the high school rival who lost everything in a decade’s old confrontation with Jack. The state police leading the investigation into Jack’s death feel certain Jen is their killer, so Kate has to act. If Jen won’t help herself, Kate will have to step in to save her; but this won’t help her fledgling relationship with her old/new love, Brian, who is Eastbury’s lead detective. The third in the series, UNVEILED SECRETS, will be published in October 2025. All books in the series are available wherever online books are so, in print, eBook, or audio formats. Mary Karnes is a mother of four who raised her family through six corporate moves, but always dreamed of being an author. Once the kids were grown, she started a wedding planning company and decided to simultaneously chase her dream of being a published author. The ‘Wedding Planner Mystery Series’ was born, with her business providing much subject matter for her books. Mary resides in New England with her husband, Ken, her mini-dachshund Lucky. Her door is a revolving one with her kids and grandkids visiting frequently.
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By Dawn Barclay On January 14th, LBB released my sixth novel, a domestic thriller titled Deadly When Disturbed by D.M. Barr, which is a modern take on Single White Female. In the Spring, they will release my eleventh book overall, the first of my multi-volume nonfiction series called Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide to New England, which I wrote under my actual name, Dawn M. Barclay. (The Mid-Atlantic volume, featuring NY, NJ, and PA, comes out in September.) Since you are Level Best fans, invested enough to read our blog, I thought it might be fun to give you a bit of backstory and insight into these books, the inside scoop, as it were.
Deadly When Disturbed I got the idea for the book, and specifically for the character Merry from the dissolution of a long-term friendship that went sour in 2016, just around the time my first book came out. A former actor, this person loved being the center of attention, but that’s where the similarity ends. She was not a tacky dresser, nor did she have any criminal or murderous tendencies. This was definitely a case of applying “What if...?” I softened the Merry character by giving her a pet cause, fundraising to release captive dolphins back into the wild. A while back, I saw a documentary about a dolphin kept in a pool at a hotel for the amusement of its patrons. The creature was all alone in the water, with no stimulation, and only one plastic toy to play with. It broke my heart then, as it does every time I remember that poor, lonely mammal. I saw similarities between the dolphin and Merry’s back story, so it seemed like a good fit. The shards of glass on the cover have a special meaning, because not only do they reflect two different people who resemble each other, but the book is also about the false faces we show both to others and to ourselves. (I can hear the lyrics to Billy Joel’s The Stranger playing in my head right now.). The shards are also meaningful because the book is about people who wreck homes, but also homes that wreck people (Dara’s architect husband’s hands were sliced to pieces by an imploding glass door at a job site.) The novel’s autism theme came from my research for another book I wrote called Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Having personal experience with individuals with autism, I had actually suggested the idea of ‘Birthday Parties for All’ to a local ARC chapter, but it never went anywhere. As I often do in my books, I take a legitimate, if unproven, business idea and fictionalize it. The wonderful thing about fiction is, all businesses can work if that’s my aim. Deadly When Disturbed is the third of my novels to involve Rock Canyon Realty. (I’m a Realtor who works in Rockland County, NY.) The first, Expired Listings, involves a serial murderer who was killing off all the unethical real estate agents in town (meaning all of them) and no one cared. (The locals considered it a public service; the other agents saw it as less competition). What can I say, I love satire. In truth, 99% of agents are honest, hardworking people; it’s the 1% that end up in my books. The second, The Queen of Second Chances, features the stepdaughter of the local queen of mobile home sales, who reluctantly helps “Queen Bea” break into the elder market by infiltrating a senior center as a recreational aide. (I’d say this was purely satire but someone I work with—who I didn’t know at the time I drafted the book—specializes in selling mobile homes and volunteers for Meals on Wheels. He loved QOSC, by the way, and bought a second copy to send to his mom.) But, despite the generally satiric nature of those previous books, the idea of Dara Banks using Ruben Bockelman’s kidney dialysis against him to secure a listing in Deadly When Disturbed was based on real life. I had a friend at my first real estate agency who confided she had breast cancer, then swore me to secrecy. She was sure that if other agents found out, she would lose potential listings, much as Ruben did. Sadly, that agent is gone now but we kept her secret secure at the time and her business never faltered because of her ailment. Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide There’s not as much backstory with this one. I conceived of the idea in September of 2022 during the Bouchercon convention in Minneapolis. (Bouchercon is the world mystery conference; it’s named after mystery writer, reviewer, and editor, Anthony Boucher.) One of the pre-conference activities was a true crime tour of Minneapolis and St. Paul and since I’d never taken a tour like that before, I signed up. Not only was it fascinating, but it also got me wondering if anyone had ever published a reference guide listing all the true crime tours around the world. The idea of my book took off from there, because not only did such a book not exist, but there was also considerably more to include than just those tours. My Vacations Can Be Murder guides detail the summaries of major crimes; a listing of where to read more; hotels and restaurants that were formerly jails, or courthouses, or are reportedly haunted; true crime and ghost tours’ museums and other crime and justice-related attractions; the local prisons, where the bodies are buried; and itineraries to see all the true crime sites, including the street names where the actual crimes took place. There will likely be ten volumes, though that could grow. For example, my second book was supposed to cover six states—NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, and DC—but because the first three had so much crime (especially New York!), I had to move DE, MD, and DC to a “Capital Regions” edition that will also include VA and WVA. So, I think it’s conceivable that Florida and Texas might end up with their own volumes, but I won’t know until I get there. If you have questions about the thriller or the true crime series, or would like me to speak to your book club, please don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected]. You can follow me at www.dmbarr.com and www.vacationscanbemurder.com, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky at authordmbarr. Happy reading! Dawn Barclay/D.M. Barr is an award-winning author who writes psychological, domestic, and romantic suspense. Her published books include Expired Listings, Murder Worth the Weight, Saving Grace: A Psychological Thriller, The Queen of Second Chances, and Simple Tryst of Fate. Dawn recently finished her second stint co-editing a Sisters in Crime NY/Tri-state chapter anthology, New York State of Crime, which includes her third published short story, Orchestral Removals in the Dark. In December 2025, Down & Out Books will publish Better Off Dead, Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, which she conceived and edited solo. A member of ITW and SinC-New England, she has served as president of Hudson Valley Scribes, vice president of Sisters in Crime-NY, and the newsletter author/board member of the NY chapter of Mystery Writers of America. By Jeff Markowitz “When you die, I believe, God isn’t going to ask you what you published. God’s going to ask you what you wrote.” (McNally, T.M. “Big Dogs and Little Dogs,” in Martone, Michael, and Susan Neville. 2006. Rules of thumb: 73 authors reveal their fiction writing fixations. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books).
There’s a certain wisdom to that remark, but, with all due respect to McNally and to God, the Almighty isn’t in my target demographic. God, perhaps, will read my unpublished manuscripts, but the ladies in the Hungry Readers Book Club won’t read my books unless they’re published. Now that The Other has been released, I find myself pondering two questions that readers often ask me. Where do your story ideas come from? Every book starts from an idea. Where do these story ideas come from? In the case of The Other, I found the story idea when I went down a rabbit hole. I trust you know what I mean. You start out searching for a certain bit of information. You have the best of intentions, but something grabs your attention, and you’re pulled just a little bit off course. Then there’s another grabber, and another, and before you know it, you’ve lost sight of your original question and instead you’ve spent the day reading about Camp Wille und Macht. At least, that’s what I did. Camp Wille und Macht was the first Nazi youth camp in America, established in the summer of 1934 on the banks of the Delaware-Raritan Canal. It only stayed open for a few weeks, but it became the prototype for camps in New York and New Jersey, as well as other sites scattered across the country. I don’t write nonfiction. But I believe that fiction can reveal emotional truths in a way that a strictly factual account cannot. I set out to write a fictional account of a Nazi youth camp, on a fictional canal in a fictional New Jersey. And like most writers of fiction, I started with a simple What if? What if the lock tender on the canal was Jewish? What would his life be like if one hundred teenagers dressed in brown shirts erected tents in a field that abutted his home? What if those brown shirts spent their days marching along the towpath? And then I asked myself, What if those brown shirts returned today? What would you do to protect your family if the Nazis came to town? When does the book become real to you? When I first get the idea for a book, the story exists in my head, only. I’ll carry that imaginary world around in my head for months, perhaps years. There are milestones along the way. A finished manuscript. A book contract. Final edits. A book cover. Advanced Reader Copies. The book release. Then something remarkable happens. After the book is published, a stranger reads the book. Maybe you. And the story that was stuck in my head, gets stuck in your head too. That’s when the book becomes real to me. When the story that was stuck in my head, through the magic of reading, gets stuck in your head too. The Other is a story of faith lost and faith found. Although the story is fictional, the problem of hate is all too real. And it is not ancient history. If you read The Other, if the story gets stuck in your head, perhaps you’ll spare a moment to reach out and let me know. That’s the reality that makes a writer start thinking about the next great story. Jeff Markowitz is the author of six mysteries, including the award-winning dark comedy, Death and White Diamonds. Jeff spent more than forty years creating community-based programs and services in New Jersey for children and adults with autism, including twenty-five years as President and Executive Director of the Life Skills Resource Center, before retiring in 2018 to devote more time to writing. In October 2021, a puzzle hunt based on Jeff’s novella, Motive for Murder raised more than $1 million for at-risk children in NYC. Jeff is a past President of the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Monmouth Junction NJ with his wife Carol and two cats, Vergil and Aeneas. By Teresa Trent I am a cozy mystery writer who decided one day to write what I call a historical cozy. I enjoy reading historical fiction, but I would never consider myself a historian. But I loved the idea of using a historical event as the setting for a cozy mystery. That’s when Dot Morgan became my latest heroine. I placed her in the early sixties and gave her the not-so- glamorous job of secretary. This occupation was a splendid vehicle to put her in various work settings, but always in her small town in Texas. It also meant Dot would keep losing her job. To date, she’s lost three jobs, yet amazingly keeps getting hired.
In the second book in my Swinging Sixties Series, If I Had a Hammer, I placed Dot and her cousin Ellie on the grassy knoll on November 22, 1963. Think about the writing hurdles here. Everyone knows this scene because they have seen it or read about it countless times, both in fiction and nonfiction. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is an event that some generations use as a “Where were you?” moment. Readers know the history of this day, so the thought of getting it wrong is not something I wanted to do. The writing challenge was intimidating since my cozy characters pretty well plotted their lives around bake sales and beauty shop gossip. A presidential assassination brought a very non-cozy element into my story. I took a cue from historical writers and immersed myself in research. I studied black-and-white photos of the people who stood along the parade route on November 22 and then wrote my two characters in the middle of them. They were elbow to elbow with people in headscarves and boxy black glasses. As the motorcade approached, I focused on my two young women. What would they be thinking before the assassination? They would look at Jackie Kennedy. My mother was obsessed with all things Jackie. She bought clothes in Jackie style and even mimicked her hairstyles. Yes, these characters would look at the first lady’s outfit and feel the way I remember my mother feeling. They would have great respect for a woman they had never met. They would refer to the president and his wife as Jackie and John, as if they knew them personally. When the shooting started in my story, I zeroed in on Dot who was winding the wheel of an Instamatic camera. My reason for doing this, instead of her witnessing the entire horrific scene as her cousin did, was to keep Dot’s viewpoint at a safe, cozy distance. Ellie, the cousin, sees the whole thing and goes through PTSD after this scene. Dot, who I’ll need to solve a murder in her small town, remains a bit more removed. She never looks up, but only through the eyehole of the lens, and then to the wheel on the back of the camera to forward the film roll. Cozy mysteries are about a sense of safety in the middle of a murder investigation. Miss Marple was rarely in danger, and if she were, she carried knitting needles. In writing a cozy historical mystery, I put my characters in a little more danger than Agatha Christie did, but they are still cozy with their three-network television, wind-up watches, and Instamatic cameras. I typically borrow more from Mayberry than the realities of that Dallas parade route in 1963. After this book, I put Dot to work in a radio station in Listen, Do You Want to Hear a Secret? and in 2025 she’s working in a funeral home in the upcoming release, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. It was the only job she could get because people kept dying in her other jobs. Dot Morgan tackles the sexism and racism of the sixties, along with overcoming her own stereotype of being a young, attractive, blond secretary (she must be simple-minded because she’s blond). I love including the history of this period because it gives my cozy mystery another layer of story. But don’t worry, even historical cozies will have plenty of bake sales and beauty parlor gossip. Teresa Trent writes the Swinging Sixties Cozy Mystery Series as well as several other cozy mystery series from her home in Houston Texas. She is also the voice of Books to the Ceiling, a podcast that features narrated excerpts from new mysteries coming onto the market. You can find her online at teresatrent.com and teresatrent.blog. By Rose Kerr I got hooked on reading mysteries early. My dad was a sea captain on a cargo ship and his ports of call were along the eastern seaboard of the United States. I’d give him a list of books I wanted, and he’d scour the bookstores for me. He’d come home with Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys books. The characters were kids a little older than me, and the mystery was something that had to do with family or friends.
Soon enough, I moved on to Agatha Christie, followed by Carolyn Hart and Sue Grafton. Those were books that made me stop and say, “I want to do this one day”. Why did I read mysteries so much? There was a puzzle to be solved. Often, there was a murder. And figuring out who did it kept me turning the pages. I loved, absolutely loved, figuring out who did it. But more than that, I needed to know why. The main characters were always someone who tried to do their best and come up with answers. They weren’t always police officers, sometimes they were just regular people. Women were smart, resourceful, and courageous. They solved crimes differently than men did. And they didn’t wait around to be rescued by some guy. They did it themselves. The mysteries I read took me to different places around the world, far from my small village along St. Mary’s Bay. The details provided by the authors painted the settings well. Mysteries provided me with an escape, one page at a time. Justice was served. The bad guy/girl got caught and sent away. In my first book for Level Best Books, Death at the Scottish Broch, I’ve worked to include the pieces of mysteries that I’ve enjoyed as a reader. My main character, Dr. Mia Reid, is an archaeologist. She’s smart and resourceful. And not afraid to stand up for herself, her students, or for Ethan, the victim in this book. Ethan isn’t only Mia’s colleague; he’s a good friend. And his death rocks Mia to her core. Mia digs deep to learn who killed Ethan and why they did. She also defends him against charges of artifact smuggling. She’s determined to clear his name and solve his murder. The supporting cast of characters helps the story unfold. Mia can lean on them for feedback and a different perspective. They include locals from the Isle of Skye; the students working with Mia on the dig; Mia’s Gran back in Lakeview City; and Mia’s former lover, Luke Forbes, who’s now working for Interpol. Each of them contributes to the narrative in their own way. The location for Death at the Scottish Broch is the Isle of Skye, in Scotland. It’s a magical place. Brooding mountains, green valleys, waterfalls, lochs, and the people. And it’s a little remote. You take a ferry or cross a bridge to get there. The area where I’ve set the dig is rugged, windy, and isolated. A perfect setting for a mystery. So, yes. Mysteries matter. They can entertain, educate, and provide the reader with an escape from everyday life. If my books provide a reader with a few hours of entertainment and escape from the real world, I’m happy. Thanks for reading! Rose Kerr writes mysteries featuring strong, smart, women protagonists who must draw on their wits and resourcefulness to solve the crime. Rose was born in a small community in Nova Scotia and has traveled across Canada. Her working career included employment in figure skating, non-profit organizations, and in distance education. More recently, Rose and her husband have moved to Southern Ontario. When she isn’t writing, Rose and her husband enjoy exploring the new region. “Never, never, never give up” Or, how to become a published author in fifteen years or less12/20/2024 by Allison Keeton Winston Churchill is credited with saying “Never, never, never give up.” Even though attempting to be a published author isn’t the same as surviving the Nazis’ bombings, Churchill’s mantra has echoed in my head for decades and has helped me keep my spirits afloat through pages and years of rejection letters, or worse, the echo of silence.
While I often say that I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was seven, it wasn’t until I received my MFA in my 40’s that I felt worthy enough to officially try. Did I need the MFA to write? No, but I did need it for courage, community, and a push—I had to write to justify the graduate school expense. Also, craft, as we know, can be taught, and I did have a lot to learn. I still do. But, two, three, four years out of graduate school, and I still hadn’t published my original novel. No agent had an interest in me, and I grew tired of rewriting it over and over and over to make it better. (Was I actually making it better, anyway?) Then, by chance, I took a seminar given by Steve Berry, successful thriller writer. He shared that his first seven novels were still in a drawer. “Keep writing,” he said to the class. His comment gave me permission to start a new story. That novel didn’t sell either. I wrote a third one. It also didn’t sell. So, I wrote a fourth. Then a fifth. With the sixth, I thought I had a winner. Who isn’t intrigued by the Lizzie Borden saga? Nope. Struck out again. All six novels are still in a “drawer,” so to speak. Another turning point came when I gave up my search for a literary agent. I’m not anti-agent, at all, but coming up with a different mindset was freeing. The first glimmer of this idea came from a zoom conference that had representation from the three main avenues to publication: self-published, traditionally published with an agent, and traditionally published without an agent. The latter had had an agent, for years, who never sold his book. He finally struck out on his own and landed a contract with a small press. I also attended a conference where multiple writers spoke of agents who had found editors who were interested in publishing their work, but the editorial board of the publishing houses voted the works down. I thought of my years of struggling to find an agent to only have another round of disappointment heaped on if the agent never sold my work. “Why let two hundred and fifty people dictate my writing career?” I said to myself. I know there are more than two hundred and fifty agents, but it seemed for my genre, I kept running into the same ones online and at conferences. Going beyond the agent process mentally opened me up to new possibilities. My friend and fellow writer, Cheryl, always says that until we actually land a book contract, we write in the dark. Even though we have feedback in our writers’ groups, we never know if what we’re really doing just needs a tweak here or there, because, commercially, agents and editors dismiss us. We have no true validation of our work. One day, I also asked Cheryl for creative advice. “Should I rewrite my fifth or sixth novel, or start the Midcoast Maine Mystery series?” I had pages of notes for the 3M series, as I call it. “Start fresh,” she said. “Start that series.” As she said the words, a raven sat on a branch outside of my window. “Ok,” I said, “and my protagonist’s name is Raven.” Raven Oueltte was born in my seventh novel, Blaze Orange. The book was set up to fit into a series mold, not to compromise myself or to write to the market, but to recognize that if I wanted to be a true mystery writer, I could follow a character-driven plot formula with all the ideas that I had been gathering. Yes, Maine is a character too. There’s a reason so many mystery writers live here. Finally, my story worked! Level Best Books will publish Blaze Orange, the first in a series, in January. I couldn’t be more elated. Fourteen years and seven novels later. While I always say to never give up, and I hadn’t, it still all feels like a dream. If you have a dream, whatever it is, keep at it—keep learning, and listening to feedback, and trying again, and again, and again. Unless it’s becoming a ski jumper in the next Olympics, chances are it’s never too late for you either. Allison Keeton lives in Maine with her muse, Tom, and their two dogs. She has twice been accepted into Rutger University’s invitation-only writers’ conference and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Additionally, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Besides writing mysteries, she has written numerous business articles and published a book on job hunting called Ace that Interview. She also writes a creative non-fiction blog, Largest Ball of Twine. by Elle Jauffret Close your eyes and try to remember the last time you heard an accent. Was it spoken by a friend, a colleague, someone in line at the store, or maybe a telemarketer? What were the first assumptions that came to mind when you heard those accented phrases or words? Whatever you thought, your perception or judgment was likely shaped by both personal experience and the media. In entertainment, accents are used to establish a character in seconds. Think Gloria Pritchett’s passionate Columbian lilt in Modern Family, Kamala Nandiwadal’s Indian inflection in Never Have I Ever, or (Nintendo) Mario’s Italian cadence. Accents hint at a character’s background without the use of words or action scenes, reflecting society’s diversity. But accents aren’t simple tools to play with as their portrayal leads to social categorization (the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups) and prompts conversations on authenticity, diversity, and stereotyping. A ”new comer” in the “accent realm” is Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a speech disorder I explore in Threads of Deception, my novel about a criminal attorney who switches career paths after a bomb destroyed her firm and left her with a French-sounding speech disorder. But FAS is more than an amusing plot twist, it challenges our notion of linguistic identity and what it means to sound foreign or native. Accents aren’t just flavors—they shape perceptions of intelligence and what it means to be American. Did you know that Americans speak roughly 30 major dialects of English and that there are more than 350 languages spoken in the United States? Consequently, the US hosts a large number of accents, reflecting the country’s history and beautiful tapestry of cultures. But, some accents, like the General American accent and the Queen’s English, have always had a superior status, gifting its speakers with assumed authority, intellect, or prestige, while others suffer from opposite assumptions. This bias places Claire Fontaine, the California-born-and-raised protagonist of Threads of Deception, under a constant microscope, her competence and presence being questioned. Though portrayed humorously, similarly to Adrian Monk’s obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias in the series Monk, the concept of accent discrimination is an important matter which requires attention. The same is true with speech disorders. Individuals with conditions like lisp, stutter, or dysarthria often face additional layers of judgment based on how they speak. Just as with accents, society often attaches unfair assumptions about intelligence, capability, or even personality to those with speech impediments. This reality stresses the need for accurate and sensitive representation in media, as it directly impacts the perceptions and treatment of individuals dealing with such challenges. Research has shown that media representation of accents shape how we view them and the people who speak with them. When accents become punchlines or stereotypes, it's not just harmless fun— such practice can fuel prejudice and keep harmful stereotypes alive. That is why storytellers need to handle accents with care and abandon the clichés in favor of authentic and nuanced representations. Speech impediments should be subject to the same considerations. Through our stories, we can challenge stereotypes, champion inclusivity, and celebrate the wonderful diversity of our world. By including characters with accents or speech disorders authentically and respectfully, we not only enrich our narratives but also contribute to a more compassionate and understanding society. Elle Jauffret is a French-born American lawyer, former criminal attorney for the California Attorney General’s office, and culinary enthusiast. She holds a Master of Laws from Université Côte d’Azur Law School (France) and a Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University Law School (USA). She is an avid consumer of mystery and adventure stories in all forms, especially escape rooms. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters In Crime, and International Thriller Writers. She lives in Southern California with her family. You can find her at https://ellejauffret.com or on social media @ellejauffret. By Tina deBellegarde 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/ by Sharon Marchisello 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. By Julie Bates 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. By Tom Coffey 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not going there!
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. By Paul Barra 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.” 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. By Paula Mays 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. 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. By Norman Woolworth 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. 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. By Claire M. Johnson 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. By Kerry Peresta 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. by Vinnie Hansen 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. 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. By Skye Alexander 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:
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. By Katherine Ramsland 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. With her Nut Cracker series, Katherine Ramsland brings her expertise in forensic psychology into her fiction. She consults for coroners, teaches homicide investigators, and has appeared as an expert on more than 200 crime documentaries. She was an executive producer on Murder House Flip and A&E’s Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK. The author of more than 1,500 articles and 71 books, including The Serial Killer’s Apprentice and How to Catch a Killer, she also pens a regular blog for Psychology Today.
By Laraine StephensScams 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’. https://larainestephens.com https://www.facebook.com/crimewriter3/ By Steve Packwood 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!”. by Nancy Cole Silverman 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.
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. By DonnaRae Menard 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?’ 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. |
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