All he world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts….
As You Like it by William Shakespeare
 
There is an old adage among writing teachers that says ‘write what you know” which is perhaps the most limiting thing a writer can listen to. Imagine only being able to write about your MFA program or limiting your story possibilities to your high school experiences? Or stories that take place only in your small town?

The truth of it is that a good writer uses the source material of their own life to inform the human reactions in their fiction and the worlds one builds in those stories but just as a start.

Obviously, someone who has had a limited life experience would seem to be at a disadvantage if you wanted to tell a story in another time and place. Say, if one wishes to write a World War Two tale and were born in the 1960s you sure can’t draw on your own life experience, but you can draw on other people’s lived experience by doing research! First person sources, like diaries, journals, news reports or even old movies that show actual locations become a big help.

But period research only gives you the ‘outside’ of a story, that is, what it looks like, maybe even what it sounded like. It is up to the author to get inside the characters, to imagine yourself in that scenario and to imbue the people with the human qualities you have observed in your own life. Even if the characters are not human.

 This is where the ‘write what you know’ applies—you know what mud feel like under your feet, how rain in your face feels, you can extrapolate fear and joy and terror that one might experience in a combat circumstance. The same applies to any location or experience outside your own personal life—research obsessively (at least I do)-- to give it verisimilitude-- and as if you were an actor imagine yourself in the shoes of your character and inhabit them in this new world you have created.

And less you think this applies to only historical or fantasy worlds, remember—in any story you write you have to create the entire reality for the reader. You have to give them not only the color and shape but the feel of the reality that your character is in. Not everyone knows what being in New York is like, or how walking across the Arizona desert feels.

So, a real world on the page--especially in a world where your writing might be read by a world-wide audience. You have to assume your readers are coming on this journey with you for the first time and give them all they need to know.
How is all this relevant to the whole life-mining process? Isn’t this just simple research, basic writing protocols?

Yes and no. I am one of the writers fortunate enough to have had a, shall we say, a colorful life, before turning my full attention to writing. I’ve been shot, stabbed, set on fire, hit by cars and thrown downstairs.

I worked as a book illustrator, a haunted house barker, a bodyguard, a fight choreographer, teacher, actor, jouster and professional stuntman. Most of that list was in professional capacities, and some of it was for real—I have the scars to prove it.

Somewhere in the middle of a tough stunt years ago I decided that while I could always fall down, eventually I would not be able to get up—so I started writing. Part time at first and over a twenty-year period I had work published in magazines, anthologies and then novels, all in a number of genres. Fantasy, mystery, adventure… and then I decided to combine them all in a new series; The Weird Casefiles of Jack Silence!

In Jack Silence is a former stuntman and actor with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare and lives in a realistically drawn New York where The Convergence has happened—the world of the Fey overlays on ours.

The laws of physics and science no longer apply, and the old magicks have begun to creep back in. Not all at once, mind you, but gradually and with seemingly arbitrary rules. It’s a slow-motion apocalypse where internal combustion engines no longer work but magick carpets do; climate change has nothing on this set of circumstances.

Gargoyles, Pixies, Gnomes, Dragons and all sorts of creatures we’ve taken for granted were fantasy now walk or fly the streets of the Manhattan Island.

Not all smooth sailing as sometimes when the Fey come through the barrier they go mad and become violent—when that happens you have to call a Parafey eliminator and Jack Silence sets himself up in business using his life skills as the Ghostmaker.

In a mix of detective, adventure and fantasy elements Jack gathers a loyal staff—a zombie receptionist, a living stone Gnome office manager and a psychic banisher named Madam Vixen to help with spirit problems.

I can say without lying every character and many of the action scenes in the world of Jack Silence have an analog in my real life (something those in my writing group have noted ‘did you really do that? Or is he based on me?)—I’ll never tell!

So. if you like grounded fantasy adventures then look for Guns, Goons and Goblins, the first Jack Silence book coming out next October from Level Best Books!

To quote the bard—To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.”

 
Teel James Glenn has killed hundreds and been killed more times—on stage and screen, as forty-plus years as a stuntman, then he decided to do something risky: become an author.

He has dozens of published books in multiple genres, and his poetry and stories have been printed in over two hundred magazines, including Weird Tales, Mystery, Pulp Adventures, Mad, Black Cat Weekly, Cirsova, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery.
He is a Shamus, Silver Falchion and Derringer finalist and won Best Novel 2021 in the Pulp Factory Award and winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark Award for Best Author.
His website is: TheUrbanSwashbuckler.com Facebook: Teel James Glenn  Bsky: @Teelglenn

We’ve all experienced moments when life forces us to change. Maybe it was a job loss, a health crisis, a move across the country, or even a pandemic. These transitions challenge our sense of self and often prompt us to ask: Who am I now?

In my mystery novel Cosplayed to Death, I explore this question through the lens of Claire Fontaine, a former Washington D.C. attorney whose life is upended after surviving a bombing that destroys her law firm. The trauma leaves her with Foreign Accent Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to speak with a French accent, despite being California-born. As she starts over in a small coastal town as a caterer, Claire becomes a case study in the psychology of reinvention.

Her story mirrors what psychologists call “identity disruption, a psychological "gap" where the old identity no longer fits, but a new one has not yet formed. Claire must write a new story, but like many of us, she isn’t sure how.

Social psychologist Dr. Amy Cuddy’s research on impostor syndrome suggests that when our external identity shifts (new roles, appearances, or careers) we often feel like frauds. Claire feels this tension daily, caught between her old role as a lawyer and her new life as a chef. The problem is also compounded by an online troll who challenges the legitimacy of her French accent and her cooking skills.

Psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory of adult development calls this a battle between “generativity and stagnation” (growth vs. staying stuck in the past). Claire’s transition isn’t just a career change, it’s an identity rupture that forces her to choose between clinging to her past life as a lawyer (stagnation) or embracing the uncertain path of reinvention (generativity). Initially overwhelmed by imposter syndrome, she begins to rediscover herself through food, creativity, and personal expression. In doing so, Claire embodies Erikson’s idea that adulthood requires continuous self-redefinition, turning the kitchen into a space of healing, growth, and authentic transformation.

Other characters in the novel show the darker sides of identity reinvention. Ricky Bingle, a social-climbing narcissist, represents what Dr. Jean Twenge calls “narcissistic self-enhancement.” In Ricky’s decision to buys the captain position reflects an attempt to reshape his identity and create a new, more powerful self-image, even though it’s not backed by his actual skills. Rather than addressing his limitations or genuinely developing his abilities, he seeks to reinvent himself through external status. However, this type of reinvention is more about creating a facade rather than authentic growth.

Renée Efterlig, who completely transforms her body to cosplay as a fictional queen, embodies what researchers refer to as “identity fusion” (when someone integrates the persona of their chosen character into their own identity, feeling a strong emotional connection and sense of belonging to that character). This fusion leads them to embody the character’s traits, values, and actions, sometimes blurring the lines between their real self and the character they portray. Through cosplay, they experience a heightened sense of unity with both the character and the larger fan community.

But Claire’s evolution models something much healthier. Psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman describes “self-actualization through integration”, the ability to combine different parts of ourselves into a more complete identity. Claire doesn’t reject her past or cling to it; instead, she allows it to inform who she’s becoming: a sleuth, an emergency legal advocate, and a chef. Claire voices this when she says, “I’m not staying in Caper Cove forever,” informing us that she isn’t choosing between versions of herself, but she’s building a broader one.

Psychologists like Dr. Kate McLean call this “autobiographical reasoning” , which is about connecting the past with the present in meaningful ways. It's also central to what researchers term “post-traumatic growth,” where adversity becomes a catalyst for deeper purpose.

As her roommate Torres wisely tells her, “Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe it’s where you feel like yourself, whatever version of yourself you want to be.” That insight aligns with psychologist Carl Rogers’ idea of congruence—being true to yourself across all life’s changes.

In a culture that glorifies radical makeovers and total reinvention, Cosplayed to Death offers a different message: that growth isn’t about becoming someone new, but becoming more fully yourself.

Elle Jauffret is a French-born American lawyer, former criminal attorney for the California Attorney General's Office, and culinary enthusiast. She graduated from Université Côte d'Azur Law School (France) and the George Washington University Law School (USA) and is an active member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. An Agatha Award nominee, PenCraft Award recipient, and Claymore Award finalist, Elle volunteers as a write-in host for Sisters in Crime and regularly appears as a panelist, moderator, and guest speaker at conferences across the country (including WonderCon, Comic-Con, San Diego Writers Festival, and Southern California Writers' Conference). She has chaired the Pediatric Literacy Program at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (aka Bethesda Naval Hospital), promoting children’s literacy among the military community. Elle is an avid consumer of mystery and adventure stories in all forms, especially escape rooms. She lives in Southern California with her family, along the coast of San Diego County, which serves as the backdrop for her Suddenly French Mystery series.
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You can find her at https://ellejauffret.com or on social media @ellejauffret.

I had to noodle for a while to come up with something about my books that differs from what my fellow Besties have to offer. It seems they cover the bases many times over with strong protagonists and unique voices, clever, devious, and twisty plots, and dynamite settings. I also have a sassy, independent young woman protagonist with a chip on her shoulder who lives in an antebellum inn, an antique train station and a caboose, and who gets into all manner of trouble. But she has one skill that other writers don’t employ: graphology, the use of handwriting analysis for personality evaluation.

I’ve been fascinated by handwriting since I was six and my father was institutionalized in a state mental hospital with manic depression. I could tell by his letters how he was doing. Small, very light, downward slanting writing told me he was depressed, while large, powerful writing that dominated the whole page indicated an upward spiral into mania. Of course, little unicorns in the corners were also a hint.

I began studying graphology in earnest in the eighties, became certified at the professional level, and then worked for thirty years with Barbara Harding Associates. We used graphology to create profiles of candidates for hiring, to profile persons of interest for law enforcement, as a tool in counseling and education, for lawyers in jury selections, to evaluate threat letters…so many varied applications where it was important to understand the unique characteristics of personality. My latest application is to incorporate elements of graphology in fiction.

At a recent book signing event, a noted psychologist stated that the study of graphology had been debunked by multiple well-known studies and was basically worthless as a tool. It’s true that graphology is a soft science and that it is not admissible as fact in a court of law. Graphology doesn’t predict behavior any more than a SAT score predicts academic performance. However, centuries of empirical evidence demonstrate its usefulness in the understanding of personality.

Many resist graphology as a useful tool until demonstrations show how accurately the strokes they make represent them. When I had my writing analyzed, my small script suggested a focused, detailed nature that delved deeply, tending toward the expert side rather than the larger picture. My connectors have angles and garlands, two somewhat contradictory traits. Angles indicate an analytical, problem-solving bent, and the tendency to be critical. Garlands suggest a more giving, open nature. Other traits for humor, communication ability, goal setting, etc. were right on. And then there is the large fu-k-you K-buckle in my first name, Katherine, a strong sign of authority resistance.

Think of handwriting as brain writing. Your hand is dumb until it receives explicit directions from your brain, and your brain is different from anyone else’s brain. Your writing is as singular as your brain and as unique as a snowflake. Court-certified document examiners take physical measurements of various aspects of writing to prove or disprove forgery. In contrast, graphologists will interpret a host of both positive negative traits to create a personality profile.

Casey Cavendish, my protagonist, has studied graphology and uses handwriting analysis to understand other players’ characteristics in all three novels. In The Drinking Gourd, Casey painstakingly traces over the writing of her erstwhile friend Jules, over and over and over again, to feel what it’s like to write like Jules. Casey studies the writing. She knows what she’s doing and pays attention to the size and formation and slant of the letters, the spacing between letters and words and the pressure of the pen on the paper. She practices in order to forge a suicide note to save her brother from prosecution. Readers often comment about how they enjoy witnessing how Casey studies the strokes made by Jules.

Try it. Select a writing that you can see is quite different from yours. If you have little letters, try tracing large letters. You’ll feel as if you’re falling off the page. If you are a fast writer, choose an exact, copybook, careful writing. You will be surprised at how frustrating it is to write slowly and to be so exact. If you usually print, try tracing someone’s cursive script. You’ll get a small sense of what it’s like to be another person just by tracing the writing.

In Church Street Under, Casey recognizes her aunt’s forgery on a critical document and uses her knowledge of handwriting to challenge and foil the aunt’s attempt to steal property.
In Caboose, Casey manages the rental of a large mansion. New tenants appear to be a very successful, wealthy young couple, an illusion that is shattered when Casey compares separate notes left by the husband and wife, one of the first clues that points to serious trouble. The husband’s writing shows him to be a driven, angry individual with a penchant for violence and little compassion for others despite his outward affable, public persona. The wife has a gentler mix of traits, but mixes vanity and an appreciation for the finer things with signs of manipulative tendencies. The partnership leads to a conflagration that causes serious trouble for Casey and threatens the couple’s little boy.

I’ve also used handwriting in short stories. One in particular, “Free Advice” focuses on the tendency of friends and acquaintances to ask for a quick and dirty examination of writings which they expect to be free. This story illustrates the danger of concentrating on a single trait—in this instance “decisiveness”—while ignoring other, equally important traits, that lead to disastrous consequences.

In each application, I hope to provide enough analysis to explain the interpretation without delving too deeply into the weeds. If you read these stories, please let me know if the inclusion of graphology enhances your enjoyment. Thanks for reading, Kat
[email protected]
 
 
Katherine Fast received Professional Level certification from the American Association of Handwriting Analysts, and Master Graphotherapist from the Institute of Graphological Science. Working with Barbara Harding Associates, she has applied graphology in personnel screening, executive search, jury selection, and educational counseling. Using her workbook, Graphology the Fast Way, she’s taught courses in California and Massachusetts.

She’s written three novels in the Casey Cavendish Mystery series, The Drinking Gourd, Church Street Under, and Caboose, and has published over thirty short stories in various anthologies.

Someone once asked me how long I spend doing research for my historical crime novels. In truth, I am not sure, but I replied by saying that perhaps fifty percent of my writing time is occupied using digitised newspapers and other online sources to check the accuracy and authenticity of the settings and detail of The Reggie da Costa Mysteries. My research covers everything from crime and criminals, clothes, cars and architecture, to the political, social and economic landscape of Australia in the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve also come to realise that this aspect of my writing life is something I love doing, not only because it provides the information that I require, but also because it satisfies my love of trivia and the bizarre.
 
So here, for your reading pleasure, are some of those little absurdities that have made me chuckle as I pursue my passion as an historical crime writer.
 
My first novel, The Death Mask Murders, was inspired by my work as a volunteer guide at the Old Melbourne Jail. In the cells are displayed death masks of executed felons. This gave me the impetus for a story line: What if the psychopath in The Death Mask Murders had developed a fixation with death masks and created them as ‘trophies’ of his victims?


Back in the real world of Australia in the 1800s, these death masks were created to prove that criminality could be predicted, by applying the pseudo-science of Phrenology. This theory asserted that a person’s character could be determined by the shape, or contours, of their skull. Although this theory has now passed its ‘use-by date’, I was fascinated to learn that some expressions associated with Phrenology are still used today. For example, describing people as ‘well-rounded’, their interests as ‘high-brow’ or low-brow’, or even suggesting that ‘You should get your head read,’ are derived from Phrenology.

Similarly, there were others in the past who ascribed criminal tendencies to certain physical characteristics. Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist from the late nineteenth century, asserted that most murderers who committed crimes of passion had bright or ‘hard’ blue eyes and persisted in staring. To support his case, examples of serial killers were given: Dr Crippen, Frederick Deeming and George Joseph Smith (the ‘Brides-in-the-Bath’ murderer), amongst them. In Pennsylvania, the killers of Joseph Raber were known as ‘The Blue-Eyed Six’.
Followers of Lombroso also believed that criminals were born with heads smaller than normal, again a variation on the theories of Phrenology: that particular physical characteristics were an indication of criminal tendencies.

My second novel, Deadly Intent, features Squizzy Taylor, Australia’s best-known gangster from the 1920s. My research revealed that Joseph Theodore Leslie Taylor, or ‘Squizzy’ as he was known, was nicknamed for his squint. This diminutive jury fixer, thief, sly-grogger and murderer modelled himself on the bootleggers of America’s Prohibition days. He was a flashy dresser, a dandy, favouring iridescent silk shirts, velvet collared coats, patent leather shoes, fawn gloves, silk socks and diamond rings. It was said that when Detective Piggott raided his home, he was surprised to find Squizzy in bed wearing pink silk pyjamas. Not your usual gangster from the wrong side of the tracks!

Another of Squizzy’s idiosyncrasies was his taste in cars: flashy American models that he would leave parked outside a suburban police station when he committed crimes, giving him the perfect alibi. He was also very disorganised and forgot to organise a getaway car in his first foray into armed robbery, forcing him to hail a taxi. 

On a more serious note, Deadly Intent also features the police strike of 1923, when 600 members (or one third) of the Victoria Police failed to report for duty. The newspaper reports were firmly on the side of the government, even though the strikers had valid reasons to protest. Long hours, poor pay, no pension, working seven days a week with one Sunday off a month, and being required to buy their uniforms, made up the major part of the strikers’ complaints. The final straw was the appointment of four Special Supervisors to secretly monitor or spy on ordinary constables on the beat.

The response of the public to the news that the police were on strike was enthusiastic, to say the least. Thousands poured into the city of Melbourne, smashing windows, looting shops, getting drunk, even upending a tram and setting it on fire. A menswear shop, The Leviathan, had an unfortunate and prescient sign in their front window: ‘GENUINE CLEARING SALE’, ‘WHY GO SHABBY?’ The suggestion was taken literally by the mob who helped themselves to the clothing on display. 

Baton-wielding police and volunteers drove the rioters back with fire hoses. Army, air force and navy leave was cancelled. A detachment of 200 men from Queenscliff Garrison Artillery and Engineers was sent to Melbourne, each man issued with 200 rounds of ammunition and carrying a rifle fitted with a bayonet. At the Victoria Barracks, machine guns were also held in readiness. Soldiers and sailors guarded the banks, the treasury, Government House and other public buildings. It was interesting that the government of the day was prepared to deal with the strikers using lethal force.

Another interesting aspect of my research revealed that although the ensuing Royal Commission recommended that the strikers’ demands be granted, not a single striker was re-employed. Another interesting fact was that the government of the day prohibited the export of newsreel footage so that this embarrassing event should not be viewed overseas.

My third novel, A Deadly Game, will be published in June this year. One of the most interesting aspects of researching the book was discovering that the excavation and discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun prompted an obsession with all things Egyptian. Theme parties, Egyptian style jewellery, décor and artefacts became immensely popular. The downside was that this interest fostered a burgeoning black market in Egyptian treasures throughout the world.

We often think that scam artists and con men and women are a blight on the present day alone, but their presence was felt in the 1800s and 1900s too. In my research for Lies and Deception, I researched some of the more outrageous confidence tricks seen in ‘Scam History’.

Apart from William McCloundy, who sold the Brooklyn Bridge to a tourist, there have been many other examples of infamous scam artists. Not to be outdone, George C. Parker sold Madison Square Garden, General Grant’s Tomb, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Statue of Liberty to gullible buyers. He took up residence in Sing Sing. And then there was Victor Lustig, who became infamous for selling the Eiffel Tower twice for scrap metal. Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Bigley, alias Cassie Chadwick, posed as the illegitimate daughter of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, ripping off the banks for millions of dollars in loans, at a time when women were not allowed to borrow from banks or vote.

On a smaller scale, but just as effective in drawing in the gullible and the naïve, were the snake oil salesmen, peddling patent medicine drugs containing alcohol, morphine, opium or cocaine. Phony claims of their efficacy and lack of government regulation in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to their widespread use. The tragic case of Eben Byers, who took Radithor (radium water) to ease the pain of an injured arm, is perhaps a more extreme example of the effects of pills, salves, lotions and syrups pushed by fake doctors. Byers died of ‘radium poisoning’ in 1932, after his jaw fell off and his bones disintegrated. He was buried in a lead-lined coffin.
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No doubt, other crime writers apart from me have shaken their heads, chuckled and thought:

‘If I wrote that, no one would believe me!’
 
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).

Poison-pen [adjective] 
“Composed or sent maliciously, as a letter, usually anonymously and for the purpose of damaging another's reputation or happiness.”
[Dictionary.com] First used 1910-1915.
 
Haven’t we all, at some stage, wanted to put pen to paper and tell someone what we really think of them? And wouldn’t it be good if we could avoid being identified so that there would be no recrimination?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Most of us get over our anger/resentment/hurt/jealousy and move on, but there are some who do not. They want to inflict pain or stir things up. They enjoy the thought of creating chaos; disseminating gossip; disconcerting their chosen victim; putting the cat among the pigeons. And how better than by cutting out letters from a newspaper, sticking them onto a sheet of paper, and sending an anonymous message to their target?

When I was writing my most recent novel, The White Feather Murders, I researched poison-pen letters, particularly those from the early years of the twentieth century. I was curious as to their prevalence, the effects that they had on communities, and the motivation of the writers.

In the process, I discovered that it was possible to make some generalisations about those who wrote them. In most cases, the author was usually anonymous and female. Why the latter? Did society at that time make women feel weak, trapped and powerless, so that the only way they could vent their frustrations was through the medium of anonymous letters?

The language used in these communications was not restrained by the conventions of everyday, normal life. It was often crude or malicious. And the motivation behind the person who wrote a poison-pen letter was often difficult to discern. Was it jealousy, resentment, revenge for a perceived slight, or a desire to inflict pain on the recipient? We can only speculate. Certainly, it is clear that the author was obsessed with their victim.

Enough theory. Let’s cut to the chase. What about looking into some of the fascinating and famous cases from the early twentieth century which made headlines, scandalised communities and ruined lives?

Mrs Pollard and her ‘Serpent Typewriter’

What happens when the authorities find it hard to believe that a fine, upstanding member of society is really the author of malicious and spiteful letters?
In 1909, hostilities were unleashed on the citizens of Elizabeth, a suburb near New York City, when accusations of scandalous behaviour were received in anonymous letters typed on a Remington typewriter. Imagine being the woman who was branded as a prostitute and bombarded with literature on obesity, insanity, alcoholism and drug addiction?

The ‘Poison Pen’ in this case was Mrs Anna Pollard, president of the Elizabeth Ladies’ Aid Society, a member of the congregation of the Christ Episcopal Church and a ‘Daughter of the American Revolution’. Despite overwhelming evidence at her trial, she was found not guilty. After her acquittal, the letters began again, but this time, Mrs Pollard confessed and was fined. Social humiliation was her true punishment rather than incarceration or paying a fine.

The Littlehampton Libels

One of the most famous cases is from the town of Littlehampton, on the south coast of England, which is depicted in the film Wicked Little Letters. The anonymous letter writer, in the period between 1920 and 1923, accused its residents of all manner of disgusting and disreputable behaviour. Reputations were ruined, suspicion abounded, and relationships crumbled. The actual case saw a miscarriage of justice when an innocent woman was incarcerated, while the real culprit escaped conviction until she was finally exposed as the poison-pen writer.

The ‘Unknown Hand’

During the same period, an influx of nasty, anonymous messages were dropped into the letter boxes of Sheringham residents in Norfolk, England. They were written by the ‘Unknown Hand’.

A former Girl Guide leader, Miss Dorothy Thurburn, was charged with 24 counts of sending defamatory letters to some of Sheringham’s most highly respected residents, including claims that the recipients had committed extra-marital affairs and fathered illegitimate children. More bizarre accusations attacked people for ‘walking like a duck’, having ‘yellow-dyed hair’ or having ‘odd hips and twitching eyes’.

Three court cases acquitted Miss Thurburn. Interestingly, in her second trial, she was represented by Sir Edward Marshall Hall, who had been briefed to defend the infamous serial killer, Dr Crippen, and represented the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, George Joseph Smith.

‘Tiger Eye’

Tulle, France was the scene of another Poison Pen infestation.

The [Sydney] Sun April 30, 1922, bore the headlines:

“TERRIBLE TIGER EYE
Strange Tale of Tulle
POISON-LETTERS STAMPEDE TOWN”

Anonymous letters of the most diabolical description were received by prominent townspeople from about 1917, with the author of the poisonous communications growing in audaciousness and daring. The letters, left in mailboxes and churches, on doorsteps and on windowsills, were signed ‘Tiger Eye’. Several suicides and relationship breakdowns were the result, and it was said that two men went mad due to the anxiety of being exposed.

‘Tiger-Eye’ mocked the justice system by claiming that no one would be able to identify their fingerprints because they wore gloves when they wrote. A hypnotist was even called in to expose the perpetrator, but to no avail. Dramatically and sadly, Angele Laval, the prime suspect, attempted suicide, even though the judge believed her to be innocent. Despite this, Miss Laval was incarcerated.

Poison-Pen Letters with a Twist

Poison-pen letters have been inspiration for novelists and film-makers alike. In my latest novel, The White Feather Murders, set in Melbourne, Australia in 1927, the ‘Poison Pen’ is an anonymous newspaper columnist who embarks on a crusade against a disparate group of Melbourne’s citizens: the president of the Melbourne Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a nurse, a politician, a doctor and a priest. But here’s the twist! After each column is published, the subject dies ‘accidentally’. And each is found clutching a white feather. It is up to Reggie da Costa, senior crime reporter for The Argus newspaper, to find the link between the victims and their accuser, and the reason why they have been targeted. Of critical importance is the significance of the white feather.

Poison-pen letters create anxiety and suspicion. They bring about breakdowns in relationships and drive people to suicide. For the recipients, they pose the questions: Who is privy to my secrets? Who is ridiculing me? Who is fabricating these lies about me? And, most importantly, why?

As that famous philosopher and singer, Cher, once sang:
“Words are like weapons; they wound sometimes.”
 
Laraine Stephens
 
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).

After decades as an art historian, journalist, curator and director of a historic house museum, ten years ago I felt the urge to write murder mysteries. I was not, however, inspired to make them up out of whole cloth. For some unexamined reason, I choose to do away with real art-world characters who are, in fact, dead but who (with one exception) didn’t die when or where I kill them. All of them meet ends different from their actual deaths. 
 
Scholars aren’t supposed to make up stuff like that, so I don’t think my grad school advisor would have approved. Journalists are also expected to be factual, though as a New York Times art critic I had license to express my opinions, but not to be inaccurate. Museum directors and curators need to get their information right, too. Honest mistakes happen, but none of those lines of work tolerate outright liars.
 
So why would I go against the accepted ethical norms? Well, to be honest, just for the fun of breaking the rules and keeping my readers guessing. Locate the fictional crime in an authentic setting inhabited by people who were, or could have been, there at the time, have them interact with imaginary characters, and it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s false. That’s how I’ve constructed all my Art of Murder mysteries, set in the creative community that migrates between New York City and the Hamptons on eastern Long Island, where my husband and I have lived for nearly fifty years. It’s such a rich source of potential victims and suspects that I’ll never run out of material.  And while the art world may seem opaque to outsiders, its machinations and motivations are entirely recognizable to the average reader.
 
As one of my fictional characters breaks it down, there are five universal motives for murder: jealousy, deception, rivalry, greed and revenge—words to live (or die) by in the world at large. Each of my novels takes a different slant on one of them, with predictably fatal consequences. In the first, An Exquisite Corpse, titled after a Surrealist parlor game, greed is at the forefront. Number two, An Accidental Corpse, hinges on jealousy. Revenge is the motive in the third, An Artful Corpse, while deception is at the heart of number four, An Elegant Corpse, and the latest, number five, A Willful Corpse. I’ll examine rivalry in mystery number six, published in April by Level Best Books. 
 
The Art of Murder series develops chronologically, decade by decade, starting in 1943, when a contingent of Surrealist artists and writers fled Hitler’s Europe and camped out in New York City during World War II. Those who know the true story have asked me why I decided to kill Wifredo Lam, one of the exiled Surrealists, who died in 1982 and who wasn’t even in the city during the war. The answer is, he was the perfect victim to lead the narrative in intriguing directions, and to rope in colorful characters who were his real-life associates. 
 
Two fictional NYPD officers, Brian Fitzgerald and Juanita Diaz—yes, there were female cops back then—who investigate the crime fall in love and marry, and their family story carries forward through the series. By 1956, they’re vacationing in East Hampton with their eight-year-old son, Timothy Juan, known as TJ. He helps solve the mystery of what looked like an accident but may have been the murder of Edith Metzger, a passenger in the car crash that killed the painter Jackson Pollock. (This is the only one of my novels in which the victim dies when and where, though not how, it really happened.) 
 
TJ takes the lead in the next book, set in 1967 New York City amid anti-Vietnam War protests and the heyday of Pop art, when the controversial artist Thomas Hart Benton—who died in 1975 and, like Lam, wasn’t in New York at the time—is stabbed to death at the art school TJ is attending. At age 19, TJ, who’s also studying at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is torn between a career in law enforcement and life as an artist. He resolves the conflict by giving up on art class, but not on his classmate, Ellen Jamieson. Fast forward to 1976, when TJ, now 28 and a licensed private eye married to Ellen, investigates the murder of his friend and mentor, the wealthy artist Alfonso Ossorio, who is found dead—14 years before his actual demise in 1990—in his East Hampton mansion. Ten years later, TJ is hired by Francis V. O’Connor, the leading expert on Jackson Pollock’s work, to track down an art forger, but winds up trying to find out whether O’Connor’s sudden death was an accident, suicide, or murder. Book number six will circle back to 1939, with Brian Fitzgerald as a rookie cop patrolling the soon-to-open New York World’s Fair, where muralists meet with mishaps—one fatal—that are definitely not accidental.
 
As a New York City native and longtime Hamptons resident who trained as an artist before studying art history, I’m intimately familiar with the milieux in which my mysteries are set. Many of the real characters were my friends or acquaintances, so I have an insider’s view of their personalities and behaviors. I knew Pollock’s long-suffering wife, Lee Krasner, and his lover, Ruth Kligman, as well as several of the artists in their circle. Ossorio and his life partner, Ted Dragon, were much as I describe them, and I was especially close to O’Connor. After reading An Exquisite Corpse, he told me I had a flair for mystery writing—high praise from a very judgmental critic. Sadly, A Willful Corpse, the book in which I kill him, was published in April, more than seven years after his death in 2017, so he will never know whodunit.
 
During her 34-year tenure as director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, New York, Helen Harrison began writing mystery novels set in the art world of which she’s a denizen. A widely published author of nonfiction books and articles on art, she enjoys making up stories in which fictional characters interact with people from her own background and experience as a New York Times art critic, NPR arts commentator, curator at the Parrish Art Museum, Guild Hall Museum and the Queens Museum, and a practicing artist. Her second novel, An Accidental Corpse, won the 2019 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award for Mystery & Suspense. A Mystery Writers of America active member, she and her husband, the artist Roy Nicholson, live in Sag Harbor, NY, with the ghost of Roy’s beloved studio cat, Mittens.

​Way back when I was writing the first book in my first series (Force of Habit, 2011), I realized I needed some hands-on research. Specifically, guns. I'd never even touched a gun, but Private Investigators do, and my main character was a PI. TV shows and YouTube videos weren't enough for what I needed. So I scheduled a private lesson at a local gun academy.
 
The owner took one look at me and suggested a tiny little ivory-colored .22 pistol. I explained why I was there and that I needed to practice on a Glock. Being a smart business owner, he shrugged his shoulders and took me back to the gun range with my choice.
 
I'm fairly decent at archery, and I was surprised at the subtle differences in aiming a gun vs. an arrow. When I said I needed to hear what a shot sounded like without the ear guards, he said he didn't recommend it but it was my choice. We were in a long cement-block tunnel. I moved one ear guard partly off one ear and fired.
 
Remember the scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone is practicing to kill the corrupt cop? He fires the gun and after the loud report he says to Clemenza, "Madonna, my ears." That was pretty much my reaction. Then I wrote the scene involving gunfire in a closed room.
 
I knew the lesson was worth it when my next-door neighbor, who worked security, came across the lawn and shook my hand. She thanked me for correctly writing about gunfire in closed places.
 
Don't get me wrong, library and online research is great. I can't hop in a plane and fly to obscure places or time-travel to the 1930s. But hands-on is awesome. Like sword fighting.
 
The second novel in my upcoming mystery series from Level Best Books takes place in a theater. There's stage fighting. I watched a lot of videos, but needed more. So I contacted the great folks at Nickel City Longsword Academy for a few private lessons.
 
Swords are HEAVY. Balanced, but heavy. I hadn't thought of that. I learned the basics of the Spanish style and the Italian style, trained with longswords and rapiers, and it was so much fun. Then I rewatched some videos and everything made more sense. Look for some intense stage fighting in the climax of Book 2, everyone!
 
Here's a picture for proof.

The Ella Shane Mystery Series has always had an unusually diverse cast for a Gilded Age historical series. The main character, and narrator, Ella Shane, is the daughter of Irish and Jewish immigrants and confronts prejudice against both as she builds her career as an opera singer specializing in trouser, or male soprano, roles. The principal supporting character, her cousin Tommy, is a former boxing champion described as “not the marrying kind,” and he lives as fulfilling a gay life as is possible in 1900, largely because everyone assumes the Champ couldn’t be anything other than a model of masculinity.

Over the series, we’ve also seen a key character who is African-American passing as white for his opera career, and met people from a wide variety of classes, backgrounds, and experiences. I’ve always looked for ways to include people other than the “dead white people in big houses” that fill many historical mysteries.
All of that to say, it’s entirely within my wheelhouse and the frame of the series to have the character of a man living as a woman in A FATAL WALTZ. Still, it required a lot of research and care. I’d toyed with the idea for some time, but it wasn’t until this book that I had the right plotline to create the character.

It’s actually the second major plot of the book: the “A” plot features Ella’s new husband, the Duke, trying to determine whether the Prince of Wales may have committed a succession-threatening indiscretion during his 1860 visit to New York. Ella and Tommy, meanwhile, are working to break up a blackmail plot against her best friend’s husband, Paul, a civil court judge, who’s just been arrested in a raid on a sporting house – a brothel.

As it turns out, he was at the brothel to visit his sister the madam. “But I thought Paul only had a brother,” Ella says to her friend Marie. “He had a brother, but now he has a sister,” Marie replies. Later, their mutual pal Dr. Silver explains that some people feel they have the wrong body for their soul, and there’s nothing science can do for them right now. They all come to understand it through the lens of a recent story of a Civil War veteran who was found to be a woman after their death.

When we meet Alice LaJoy, formerly Paul’s brother Allen, she appears to be an attractive woman, known as the most ethical madam in Five Points. She’s a person with her own agency who’s found a way to live her truth in the world she has. The blackmail plot is an ugly complication for Alice and her brother, and Ella and Tommy put themselves at considerable risk to help them.

No spoilers – let’s just say Alice’s fate is anything but the stereotype of the poor tragic trans person, while still period-appropriate.

All of this, of course, happens as Ella and friends are sorting out that little mess involving the Prince of Wales. Which is part of the point. People of all different backgrounds and experiences have always been here and always will be.
Both stories, of the Prince, and the blackmail plot around Alice, touch on big themes of privilege and power, which are as relevant in Ella’s world as they are in ours. By the end of the book, you’ll have answers to the big plot questions…but you may have plenty of other questions to consider.
 
 
 
Kathleen Marple Kalb describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. An award-winning weekend anchor at New York’s 1010 WINS Radio, she’s the author of short stories and novels including the Ella Shane and Old Stuff series, both from Level Best Books. Her stories, under both pen names, have been in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and many anthologies, and short-listed for Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards. Active in writer’s groups, she’s served as Vice President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is VP of the New York/Tri-State Sisters in Crime Chapter. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by a large calico cat.
 
 
 
 
 

I’ve always been interested in the public’s fascination with unsolved mysteries. In how people become invested in events that happened decades or even thousands of years before they were born. I’m curious about why some mysteries endure while others simply fade away in the sands of time.

Cable television and streaming services like YouTube have fueled our appetite for the truth - or at least some version of it. They’ve sparked our interest in events we may not have known occurred until we saw a clip about it.

There seems to be a niche for everyone. Did aliens build the pyramids of Egypt? Did they later crash in Roswell in the 1940s? Is Bigfoot real? Did Amelia Earhart survive? What happened to Atlantis? How did the Roman Empire fall?

The Kennedy Assassination certainly qualifies as such a mystery. Its lasting appeal is easy to understand. The Kennedy Era was Camelot. JFK was America’s King Arthur. He was the dashing young president with the fashionable first lady and their two adorable young children. He was the first president of the television age and he used that medium to maximum effect. He used it to further his ambitious political agenda.

In the sixty years following his death, generations of researchers and conspiracy theorists have plumbed the depths of that which took place in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Books, documentaries, articles and movies have examined every aspect of President Kennedy’s murder. Did Oswald act alone? Was it a conspiracy? How many shots were fired in Dealey Plaza? Was there an official cover-up? There’s even a recent documentary that said the assassination was a hoax concocted by the president to run off with a mistress. I’m still shaking my head over that one.

I’ve always considered myself a skeptic when it comes to conspiracy theories. I was a government employee for twenty-five years. I know the myth of the hyper-efficient government is more worthy of ancient Greece than modern day. If a government agency had played a role in the assassination, it would have required hundreds of people to maintain their silence for the rest of their lives. It simply isn’t a feasible hypothesis.

But even a skeptic like me must admit that the facts as reported to us simply don’t add up. Even a cursory review of the evidence reveals inconsistencies and oversights in the official findings of The Warren Commission. Important questions went unanswered. Relationships with individuals close to Oswald were glossed over. Evidence and conflicting testimony were simply ignored.

Incongruities are fertile ground for thriller writers like me. They lead to intrigue and conspiracy. Suspense lives in the gray areas of such events. That’s what compelled me to write about it. To relate facts I had uncovered in my own way that would appeal to readers.
Writing about an important historical event can be daunting. The challenge of the Kennedy story is that everyone knows how it ends. Somebody planned to shoot the president and succeeded. The end. What more can be said?

But knowing the destination doesn’t make the journey any less interesting. My research led me down several paths I did not expect to find. I discovered events and relationships that proved to me that we didn’t know the whole story. It is there where my idea was born.
My ‘Dallas ’63’ trilogy doesn’t pretend to be a true crime work. The first book in the series – THE TWILIGHT TOWN - is a hardboiled novel that depicts fictional and historical figures in a factual context. It’s about Dallas in the early 1960s, a place where the criminal underworld mingled with the public overworld. Where corruption was almost respectable and part of the Dallas way at that time.

The book begins in early 1963 where Dallas PD Detective Dan Wilson is secretly working with the FBI to investigate corruption in his own department. When an informant – Lee Oswald – tells Wilson about Jack Ruby’s upcoming arms shipment, Wilson asks his ex-partner, J.D. Tippit to help him track where the weapons are going and why.

Over the course of the next several months, Wilson and Tippit find themselves being gradually pulled deeper into a conspiracy that will change the course of a nation forever.
My goal with this trilogy isn’t meant to inform or entertain, but to hopefully do both. My research has taken me on a wonderful and unexpected journey that I hope the reader will enjoy.

Terrence McCauley is an award-winning, bestselling author of thrillers, crime fiction and westerns. A resident of Dutchess County, NY, he is currently working on his next novel. Please visit his website at www.terrencemccauley.com

Being an author is no longer about simply writing a book. That is the job of the writer. But an author has at least six different hats that they must wear. I have been publishing three books a year for the last five years and have been wearing all six of these hats throughout the course of a normal day. On six different books.
 
The first step in the evolution of a book is coming up with an idea. Inspiration for my books have come in a variety of methods. Many of my ideas for books have come from the daily news. Current affairs and my love of Robin Hood are the combination of ideas that have spawned my release this month of The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed, in which a modern-day Robin Hood and his not so merry band fight for justice for those wronged by the ultra-wealthy. But I have also gotten ideas from college professors (I am Cuba), in a bar (Mainely Power), and because of proximity to my daughter (Velma Gone Awry).
 
The second step in the evolution of a book is research. One of my early books saw me scrounging around in the tombs of the Bowdoin College archives (At Every Hazard). Hands on research is the most fun, though, and following the revolutionary war trail of Fidel Castro across Cuba and digging into the history of New Orleans (Love in a Time of Hate) ranks up there as two of the best. For my Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, I have taken to reading the 1923 and 1924 Brooklyn Eagle online at a site called Newspapers.com. The articles can be dry, but the social commentary and advertisements are fantastic.
 
The third step in the evolution of a book, writing, is the meat of the meal. As writers, we often get asked, what is the secret? No secret, folks. Sit down and write. It is like anything else, the more you write, the better you get. I don’t like to take breaks, so I write seven days a week, probably 350 days a year. I’ve found that if I were to take a weekend off, or even a day, or heaven forbid, longer, that I lose my rhythm. The way it works for me is that I write in the morning and spend the rest of the day planning what I will write the next day. No magic bean here. Sit your ass down and work at the craft and hopefully you gather up enough beans to grind up and make a cup of coffee the next day and do it all over again.
 
The fourth step in the evolution of a book is editing. My books have been known to go through nine edits. The first three edits are me getting the manuscript ready for the housecleaner, a.k.a., my paid for editor. He has worked with me on sixteen of my books and we have developed a wonderful rapport. He does three more edits. The first is my favorite, the developmental or global edits. Here, he makes suggestions on how to build scenes, characters, as well as cut and delete other pieces. I usually read these suggestions while going through the three stages of anger, denial, and acceptance. First, I curse him, second, I move to less rage and more that he is just plain wrong this time, and finally acceptance and make the change. My wife, who can find fault with me where nobody else can, then does a spit shine edit before sending it off to the publisher for two more edits.
 
The fifth step in the evolution of a book is marketing. This is when the author does the work once held by the publisher. No more. Which is fine by me, as I enjoy this business aspect of the career of being an author. My marketing involves two distinctive branches, the first being reaching out to reviewers, podcasters, bloggers, and other media avenues to promote my work. With each book, I tend to send out over a hundred queries for review. Over time, I have established about fifteen regulars and am always looking to grow that number. The second branch of my marketing involves reaching out to venues for onsite promotion. These involve libraries, bookstores, rotary clubs, retirement communities, book clubs, and pretty much anybody who will have me. I strive to query 200 of these such venues for each book.
 
The sixth and final step in the evolution of a book is promoting. These involve blogs and podcasts that have been set up in the marketing phase but are more focused on live venues. Last year, I did fifty-one book engagements. The bulk of these (thirty-seven), were COST TALKS at libraries where I talked about my books and writing to an audience. I love this, especially when there is an interactive and lively crowd of patrons.  Even if the turnout is low, I still believe this is beneficial to the process, as the library has spent a month promoting me and my books. Bookstore signings and talks at other organizations can be an equal amount of fun and help expand the base of my readership.
 
Those are the six different hats I wear every day for the evolution of a book, or books. I write first thing in the morning every morning. Without writing, none of the rest matters. Ideas are always floating around. Just this morning I saw a post about the Lumbee Indians who disrupted and dispersed a Klan rally in North Carolina in 1958. Boom. Idea. The day’s research usually holds a combination of a book not yet started, a book being written, and a book being edited. Marketing involves reaching out to the old faithful reviewers, podcasters, venue contacts, and whatnot, but also the grind of countless cold query letters looking for new blood.
 
I do love the final step of promotion. This is where I get to talk to an interviewer, fellow panelists, or an audience of interested readers. If you are interested in an interview, want me to come speak, or have more specific questions concerning the six hats worn by an author during the evolution of a book, please contact me at [email protected].
 
Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.
 
Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published five books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. And finally, there are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed is his 17th published book.
 
 

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. 

​

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.

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.
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What do I hope to accomplish with this book? I want to create awareness about the tragedy of pet overpopulation and show how some people are working to help solve it. And of course, give readers an entertaining mystery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laraine has a six-book contract with Level Best Books (USA). She has published four novels so far in The Reggie da Costa Mysteries: ‘The Death Mask Murders’, ‘Deadly Intent’, ‘A Deadly Game’ and ‘Lies and Deception’.
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https://larainestephens.com
https://www.facebook.com/crimewriter3/
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Writers, especially beginners, are often advised to “write what you know.” Everyone has a story to tell––maybe two or ten––and for many people, writing a book isn’t quite so daunting if you can draw on the huge body of knowledge and experience you already possess. Although that’s good advice, I find it much more interesting to write about what I don’t know. In the process of researching my books, I dig up a wealth of unexpected booty that fills my stories with riches I never imagined.  
 
I write traditional, historical mysteries in the Agatha Christie vein, set in the mid-1920s. I confess, I never liked history when I studied it in school because most of it centered on rulers, wars, and politics rather than the lives of ordinary people. But once I started researching this colorful period for my Lizzie Crane mystery series I got hooked. I realized how much I didn’t know, and I was determined to rectify that deficit.
 
For example, while doing research for my second novel What the Walls Know, I discovered that the first automatic gate was invented by an Egyptian guy named Heron about 2,000 years ago. He also invented a coin-operated dispenser for holy water. How cool is that? I also learned that some of the world’s great pipe organs have more than 30,000 pipes and seven keyboards, and this incredibly intricate instrument dates back to ancient Greece. Because the book features a cast of mediums and other occultists, I also delved into the Spiritualist movement at the early part of the 20th century––séances, Ouija boards, tarot cards, etc.–which turned out to be fascinating.
 
For my third, recently released book The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors set in 1925 in Salem, Massachusetts, I had to bone up on the clipper ship trade between New England and the Orient. In the process, I found out that these beautiful sailing vessels not only brought precious tea, spices, teak, ivory, and silk to the U.S. in the mid-1800s, but also opium (which was legal at the time). The Chinese goddess Quan Yin, sometimes considered the Buddha’s feminine counterpart, is said to have protected seafarers and ferried shipwrecked sailors to shore––hence the title for my book. Many of the ship owners whose clippers made it home safely didn’t want to pay taxes on the valuable goods they’d risked bringing from halfway around the world, so they slipped them past the revenuers via a series of smuggling tunnels built beneath the city of Salem by the country’s first National Guard unit.
 
Because my series is set in the Roaring Twenties and my protagonist, Lizzie Crane, is a jazz singer from New York City, I had to familiarize myself with the jazz musicians of the period. Before I began writing this series, I wasn’t a big fan of jazz but that’s changed as a result of hearing the greats such as George and Ira Gershwin, Bix Beiderbecke, and Louis Armstrong play. YouTube is a valuable resource for this. If you’ve never listened to “Davenport Blues” or “Rhapsody in Blue” I urge you to do so. For my fifth book in the series, When the Blues Come Calling (not yet published), I learned about the rapidly developing music recording industry, how records were made in 1926, and even a portable record player called a Mikiphone that could spin a 10-inch disc yet folded up small enough to fit into a good-sized purse.
 
For me, every day is an exploration into worlds unknown. During my journey, I’ve learned about jigsaw puzzles, merry-go-rounds, rose windows, ladies’ undergarments, Jell-O, New York’s subways, voodoo veves, and so much more. I never know what tidbits of trivia or historic fact I’ll stumble upon and how they’ll influence the direction of my stories. It’s so much more fun that simply recapping what I already know.


Skye Alexander is the author of more than forty fiction and nonfiction books. Her stories have been published in anthologies internationally and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2003, she cofounded Level Best Books with fellow authors Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw. The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors is the third in her Lizzie Crane mystery series. Skye is also an astrologer and tarot reader, and has trained as a medium. She’s best known for her many metaphysical books including Magickal Astrology and The Modern Witchcraft Book of Tarot.

If you want to know if your house is infested with demons, place fine ashes around your bed and in the morning the demons’ footprints will appear like chickens’ footprints, in the ash. If you want to see the demons, take the afterbirth of a firstborn female black cat, born to a firstborn female black cat, burn it in the fire, grind it and place it in your eyes, and you will see them.

That advice might sound like something out of the Brothers Grimm but it’s actually from the Talmud, the ancient, encyclopedic compendium of Jewish knowledge. The sages of nearly two thousand years ago clearly accepted demons—and more—as real enough to be the subject not just of lore, but of law. For example, putting out a light on the Sabbath was forbidden—but exceptions were allowed for one who was fearful of heathens, robbers, or an evil spirit. The distance one could walk on the Sabbath was also proscribed, with a limited extension allowed for one who was forced beyond the standard limit by factors including evil spirits. And one was forbidden to enter ruins because they were often inhabited by demons.

Discovering all this during my continual study of Jewish texts was a revelation. I’d long loved fantasy – I’m old enough to have grown up not on Harry Potter but on The Lord of the Rings – and I’d also long identified with my Jewish faith. But the idea that these two, fantasy and Judaism, might mix seemed to me as unlikely as mixing chocolate and peanut butter (which is why I’m not today a multimillion-dollar candymaker). Of course, they do mix. Publishers have recently given us The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern, for example.

Armed with this insight, I continued to read Jewish folktales (Howard Schwartz is the master reteller of these tales, if you’re interested) but in a new way: as rich ground upon which I might build a modest contribution of my own. That’s how my novel of Jewish fantasy, The Hidden Saint, came to be, inspired by bits of Torah and Talmud, rabbinic legends, folktales, and more.

I knew I wanted my novel to be something other than a typical fantasy clothed in a veneer of Jewish characters and settings. That would have been mere costume Jewry. So I first had to answer another question: what makes Jewish fantasy Jewish? That took me back to those ancient Sages.

What makes their acceptance of evil spirits, ghosts and demons so remarkable was that theirs was not a pagan world with competing supernatural forces, but a monotheistic world. They had to find a way to make a world governed by an ethical, benevolent God consistent with a world of demons and evil spirits. So did I. It’s a puzzle quite similar to the question of why evil exists. A traditional Jewish answer is that the presence of evil is necessary for man to choose good—and that free choice is central to the tradition. Demons and evil spirits also can be looked upon as a mechanism for evil, much as are disease, hurricanes, and wild animals.

But the Sages didn’t just tolerate these supernatural creatures. They used them to validate principles that are linchpins of Judaism (and, in many cases, have become universal values). For example, the Sages say that one is not permitted to allow the ritual fringes of his shirt to drag along the ground in a cemetery, so as to avoid insulting the dead, who can no longer honor God by performing the commandment to wear them. That in turn leads to a discussion as to whether the dead are indeed aware of the living.

To prove that they are, the Talmud relates a series of ghost stories. But these aren’t horror tales. The most elaborate of the set validates the important Jewish values of justice, care for orphans, and honor to parents. A trustee of orphans’ money has died and the money can’t be found, leading to accusations that the dead man stole it. His son goes to the cemetery to ask his father’s spirit what happened. The father assures him that he didn’t steal the money; he buried it for safekeeping and tells his son where to find it. The son also learns that his childhood friend, also deceased, has been denied entrance to heaven because of sins committed in this world. When the proud father tells his son how highly the son is regarded by heaven, the boy replies that on the strength of that regard, heaven must allow his friend to enter. And that’s what happens. It’s a ghost story, but a very Jewish one.
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It also inspired one of the set pieces of The Hidden Saint, a scene in a cemetery about spirits with very earth-bound grief to overcome.
 
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Mark Levenson is the author of The Hidden Saint (Level Best Books, 2022). His Jewish-themed fantasy writing has won honors from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture and the American Jewish University, as well as a Union Internationale de la Marionnette-USA Citation of Excellence, an award founded by Jim Henson.