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.

An interviewer asked me recently which I prefer to write: standalones or series? As I await the Level Best Books re-launch of my “Witch Cats of Cambridge” cozy series, the answer is obvious – but not for the reason you may think.

Before I get into it, I should explain that I love all my books. Asking an author if they prefer one work over another is kind of like asking a parent which is their favorite child. My standalones, which tend to be dark (like Hold Me Down or The Butterfly Trap) will always excite me. In these books, I get to explore adult themes and sexuality and really dig into the dark side of humanity. (Yes, I used to write quite a bit about psychology and mental illness, see: Mad House.) Plus, when those books were finished and off to my agent, I felt done with them – I could clean out my head of betrayal, rape, substance abuse, and characters playing off each other, sometimes unintentionally, in some truly twisted ways.

My cozy series, of which there are several, are a different experience. Over the first four “Witch Cat” books, for example, I’ve come to love spending time with (that is, writing about) dear Becca, a smart, well-intentioned young woman who truly believes she has magical powers. And I’ve fallen equally hard for her three cats – Harriet, Laurel, and Clara – who are the ones who actually have magical power and whose primary duty, as it is with all cats, is to keep their person safe.

People have some misconceptions about cozies. Because they’re gentler than other types of mysteries, some think they’re likely to be cloying or cute. In truth, they deal with real emotions, same as my darker books. If anything, they are more reliant on believable human interactions: nobody is evil in a cozy, although some are misled or confused. (Even my killers tend to either have acted on a misguided impulse or gotten worked up beyond their normal states.) Characters must have honest motivations – even if these are based on misperceptions – if readers are going to relate to them. And in cozies, even more than in, say, thrillers, the relationship between the reader and the folks in the book is vital. We read cozies for the plots, sure. But we love them for the characters.

Even animal characters need to pass muster on this point. True, in our everyday lives we may not know exactly what our cats are thinking. But as we commit them to the page, we have to see them as three-dimensional, with their likes and biases, virtues and flaws – as real as any of us. As I write Becca’s three litter-mate pets, Harriet, Laurel, and especially Clara – who, as Becca’s primary caretaker serves as the heart of this series – I’m particularly aware of how real sibling relationships can play out, and how teasing (and even bullying) give way to the underlying love when push comes to shove.

This is where the writer in me should also point out that cozies are not easier to write than darker books. Do you know the old saw about Ginger Rogers? That she did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels? Well, that’s true of cozies, too. Sure, we have to plot carefully and people our books with believable characters (both human and feline). Only in the case of cozies we have to make it all seem as light as a souffle – or one of Rogers’s fancy quick steps, all swirling skirts and pumps, with a smile as bright as the sun.

With both kinds of books, I – the writer – immerse myself in their world. I have to think like my characters and, to some extent, see the world as they do. Hear their voices. For the extent of the writing period, this means they’re in my head, my dreams, and my heart.

Which leads me back to that original question: Which do I prefer to write, standalones or cozies? By now you can probably guess that – at least for now – it’s cozies. You see, I’m not only awaiting the re-launch of A Spell of Murder, An Incantation of Cats, A Cat on the Case, and To Conjure a Killer, I’m finishing up final edits on The Cat’s Eye Charm, a new “Witch Cat” mystery, which should be out in December, and looking forward to starting a sixth “Witch Cat.” And that means I get to live in this particular world for a bit longer, savoring its particular brand of warmth and magic. A blend that I hope you readers will enjoy as well.

Won’t you join me?

Clea Simon is the Boston Globe-bestselling author of three nonfiction books and more than 30 mysteries, including World Enough and Hold Me Down, both of which were named “Must Reads” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. A graduate of Harvard University and former journalist, she has contributed to publications ranging from Salon.com and Harvard Magazine to Yankee and The New York Times. Visit her at www.CleaSimon.com.

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.

I love the movies from the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. LBB author Gabriel Valjan had a recent post over at the Criminal Minds blog that talked about what writers do in the “in between” times with writing.  He said:
 
Sure, I read — but I also watch movies like a writer on a secret mission. My favorite? Films from the Thirties. Why? Because back then, writers had to get clever with dialogue, dodging censors left and right. That sharp economy of words is a masterclass in storytelling. Plus, watching how the camera narrates helps me rethink scene construction and pacing in fresh ways.

I think many of us who grew up with the influence of these movies, usually seen on TV, in afternoons and weekends, have a soft spot for these films.  And I certainly think the authors in the recent anthology I edited were inspired by the mood of these classics. 
 
Celluloid Crimes is a collection of stories that have what I would call a “Hollywood Noir” vibe.  I dedicated the book to Myrna Loy, William Powell, Asta, and Dashiell Hammett because The Thin Man to me typifies this.  What is great about the stories is the places the writers take us – yes, some stories are Hollywood and Movies adjacent.  Others are amazing Private Eye tales – with male and female gumshoes.  There are Fixers, Cops, Insurance Investigators, Reporters, Actors, and more.  The time periods range from the 30s and 40s to the present day. One thing you can count on – they each have a strong, distinct voice. 

The storytellers of these works are Colin Campbell, Matt Cost, P.A. DeVoe, Devon Ellington, CC Guthrie, Kerry Hammond, Wendy Harrison, Peter W. J. Hayes, Greg Herren, Deborah Lacy, Robert Lopresti, Nicky Nielsen, M.E. Proctor, Jeff Tanner, Gabriel Valjan, Nina Wachsman, and J. J. White.

If you are a fan of “Hollywood Noir” or just like great stories with a great voice, I know you will love this anthology.  It’s available now in all the usual places: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, and you can ask your local bookstore to order you a copy from Ingram.

​Deborah Well is an editor, marketing consultant, and digital strategist. After working for several decades in the finance realm, she has been happy to see her English degree get put to good use in her “retirement career” in the publishing world.  Deb lives in Boston’s South End with her partner, author Gabriel Valjan, and their much-memed tuxedo cat, Munchkin.

Think Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”

Can you hear the opening guitar riff?

The bass sneaks in.

Think you might leave? Not your kind of song? Hah! Robert Plant’s vocals invade your auditory canal.

It’s already a big, full song when BAM! Drums. The music explodes.

Music crept into my fiction like that.

As a child, I took piano lessons. In my tweener years, I learned clarinet and participated in band. But I was a retired adult before I discovered the way playing music actually fit into my life. Walking at the Santa Cruz harbor, I encountered a huge ukulele group—with a hundred participants—strumming and joyously singing. And, I had a realization. I didn’t want to play piano alone in my house. I wanted to make music WITH people. And at the beach! What could be finer? Not everyone there played ukulele. They had a bass and drummer. An occasional guitar or flute. Why not a piano?

To reach this goal, I bought a portable keyboard and learned how to operate it, only to realize the group played from fake charts. Where were the notes? I had to learn piano all over again with an emphasis on chords.

Then I worked up the nerve to join the group only to realize after some time that no one could hear me (probably a good thing). The sound from the small built-in keyboard speakers emanated upwards. I needed an amp . . ..

It’s been fifteen years since I started this musical journey. I spent several of them in an honest-to-goodness performing group called All in Good Time Orchestra. I continue to play at the beach on Saturdays. And because I’m an incurable learner, last year I started to teach myself ukulele.

As writers know, everything is grist for the mill. When editor Susie Bright invited authors to submit to Santa Cruz Noir (2018), part of the Akashic Books’ series, she asked each of us to propose a spot and sub-culture of our colorful town about which to write. Without hesitation, I said, “The harbor and the ukulele community.” From that commitment, came “Miscalculation,” my first short story in which music plays an important role.

About this same time, short story collections with music themes snuck into my writing. My story “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” was published in Gabba Gabba Hey: An Anthology of Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Ramones (2021). Although inspired by the song, the story itself doesn’t contain music references, only a bad boy on a motorcycle and a teenaged girl.

When I contributed to the anthology Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead (2024), editor Josh Pachter wanted one story associated with one song from each of the Dead’s albums. I chose “Dire Wolf.” The story evolved from there, with Josh wanting specific allusions to the song and Easter eggs for Deadhead readers.
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So, BAM! No surprise I found myself developing Zoey Kozinski, the protagonist of my new suspense novel, Crime Writer, by giving her a side hustle of playing keyboards in the band She Cats. I even created a YouTube playlist for the book, which you can find here. Play it before beginning Crime Writer to set the mood or enjoy the songs as they occur in the plot. Rock on!

A Claymore and Silver Falchion finalist, Vinnie Hansen is the author of the Carol Sabala mystery series, the novels LOSTART STREET, ONE GUN, and CRIME WRITER, as well as over seventy published short works. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. A retired high-school English teacher, she lives with her husband and the requisite cat in Santa Cruz, CA.
Learn more at www.vinniehansen.com

Where do memories go when we, to quote Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil”? I’ve been fascinated by this question for as long as I can remember. One way to preserve the past is to write a memoir while you’re still alive, but most of us lack the time or inclination to do so. Coming from a family of storytellers, my ancestral recollections have been passed down verbally from one generation to the next. Expanding on that tradition, I thought it would be fun to honor some of my stories by incorporating them into a mystery novel.
 
A Dark September Night is the first book in a new series set for release on August 12, 2025. It features Emmaline McCoy, named after my great-grandmother. Emma is the marketing director for a cruise company based in Los Angeles. I also worked for a major cruise company in the past. The story begins when a hit-and-run driver kills Emma’s beloved aunt Lydie, who is named after my grandmother Lydia. Emma travels to Justice Bay, a remote coastal town in Northern California, to settle her aunt’s estate. Don’t look for Justice Bay on a map; you won’t find it. The essence of the town is rooted in my memories of one of my favorite places—Camden, Maine.
 
In preparation for putting her aunt’s house on the market, Emma opens a pop-up store in town to sell the curios, antiques, and souvenirs her aunt collected during her travels around the world. She names the shop after Lydie’s Siberian Forest cat, who bears an uncanny resemblance to my cats, Princess Scootie and Riley. The cat’s official name is Cassandra, but everyone calls her Boo because she’s mysterious, some say scary.
 
As part of Cassandra’s Collectibles’ marketing strategy, Emma writes story cards that explain how and where each item was acquired. She has heard many of these tales from her aunt, but if not, she invents them. One example is the backstory of a weathered wooden decoy she found in her aunt’s house:
 
A merchant found the duck battered and bruised in the Marrakesh souk beside a pile of Berber carpets. There were rumors, but no one could confirm how he got from a Minnesota slough to a vendor’s stall in a Moroccan back alley. If you look deep into his glassy yellow eyes, perhaps he’ll reveal his secrets. But proceed with caution. Outside the well-lit tourist areas of this medieval red city where spies and wanderers dwell, they only whisper his name—Decoy.
 
All items for sale in Cassandra’s Collectibles are located in my home in Los Angeles. Most were either part of my “inheritance” or collected during my travels around the world, including the brown gourd mate cup with the metal straw from a trip to Argentina and the yellow and orange Tahitian pareo I wore to dance the Tamouré on the French Polynesian island of Moorea. The decoy has been passed down through my husband’s family in Minnesota for at least three generations.
 
As I mentioned earlier, while all the items for sale in Emma’s shop exist, not all the stories on her cards are true. I’ll let the reader decide which ones are accurate and which are figments of my imagination. After all, what’s the fun in revealing everything?

Patricia Smiley is the author of eight mystery novels. Her short fiction appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. Patty taught writing at various writers’ conferences in the U.S. and Canada. She is the former vice president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and served as president of Sisters in Crime Los Angeles. 
Smiley earned a BA from the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She lives in Los Angeles with her two loyal and opinionated Siberian Forest cats, and a backyard after-hours feeding station for possums, raccoons, marauding felines, and other critters in search of a snack and a cool sip of water. Despite the distractions, work continues on her next Justice Bay novel.

As a writer, I am not a big craft guy. Workshops, story arcs, x-act structures, beats . . . I get that they can all help people and perhaps I’d be a better writer if I steeped myself in that stuff. In my formative years (hopefully I can still be formed, or maybe reformed), my favorite contemporary writers were William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, Thomas Pynchon. Did any of them have MFA’s?
 
Of course, I have come to know and read some very good writers who went down that path, so more power to them, to each his own, etc.
 
I remember reading Gore Vidal, an eloquent writer for sure, saying that he tried to write good sentences, one after the other, and that he usually had no idea what was actually going to come out on the page, even if he knew the narrative direction.
 
I saw David Lynch give a talk a few years ago, and he talked about fishing for ideas; and how he had no idea what he would find when he put a hook in the water. Given that the water was Lynch’s unconscious, I think we all would agree that there was no telling what was going to come out. But, Lynch said, you have to bait the hook.
 
To my mind, plot and story are the bait on the hook. And you hope that you catch something real, something true. How to depict reality/truth—or perhaps more properly, how to evoke it—cannot be accomplished by painting by the numbers.
 
One of the most eloquent artists on the creative process was Francis Bacon, whose alarming and grotesque images seemed to come with no precedent. Bacon was dismissive of Abstract Expressionism and abstract painting in general, and believed that art was a duality, that it was reporting/recording. He wanted to find ways to “trap the fact”, as he put it, that he was obsessed by.
He makes a very interesting comment about this Rembrandt self-portrait:

“If you think of the great Rembrandt self-portrait in Aix-en-Provence . . . you will see that there are hardly any sockets to the eyes, that it is almost completely anti-illustrational. I think that the mystery of fact is conveyed by an image being made out of non-rational marks . . . That is the reason that accident always has to enter into this activity, because the moment you know what to do, you’re just making another form of illustration.  . . . In this Rembrandt self-portrait, there is a coagulation of non-representational marks which have led to making up this very great image.” 1
 
Now writing is not painting. William S. Burroughs is almost alone in introducing chance into the writing process through his cut-up and fold-in methods, which mixed up his own prose with those of Kafka, Conrad, Joyce and others, resulting in passages like this, near the close of Nova Express:
 
“The great wind revolving turrets towers palaces—Insubstantial sound and image flakes fall—Through all the streets time for him to forbear—Blest be he on walls and windows people and sky—On every part of your dust falling softly—falling in the dark mutinous ‘No more’— . . . Melted into air—all the living and dead . . .” 2
There are bits of the close of Joyce’s “The Dead” here and who knows what else. When I was quite young, and probably quite stoned, I did some cut-up experiments and actually used a few bits of the result in my first published story, which had a fairly conventional dystopian plot.
 
I do not attempt now to introduce chance or accident into my work the way that Bacon or Burroughs would. Writing is a different modality than painting, Burroughs experiments notwithstanding.
 
But accident plays a part in writing. As you being to write a passage, the hook baited with the scene or character, what comes out on the page reflects the accident-filled operation of your mind as it strings together words. That is where the art—at least a large portion of the art to my thinking—occurs.
 
And even in plotting this occurs. You may be working on the plot in an outline or notes, and you encounter suddenly, coming from nowhere, a new—a truer—formulation of what will happen as the reality of the characters and their situation forces the truth to come out.
 
Joseph Conrad’s Preface to “The Nigger of the Narcissus” is amazingly, touchingly and profoundly eloquent on the writing process and echoes these thoughts:
 
“There is not a place of splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only a passing glance of wonder and pity.  The task . . . is to hold up unquestioningly the rescued fragment . . . to show its vibration its colour, its form . . . to disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. 3
 
I urge any writer, and readers for that matter, to read the entire Preface. Conrad never says how this can be done—of course. There is no way to tell someone how to do this.
 
I will leave you with the words of another absolute writing master, Tom Stoppard, from his play The Real Thing. The character speaking is a writer who has been asked by his spouse to punch up the politically-motivated yet artless prose of her protégé. He is exasperated with the task and explains how to think about writing:
 
“This [cricket bat] here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together . . . so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout. What we’re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw them up an idea and give it a little knock it might travel.”
 
(He picks up the offending script). No what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!”
(Indicating the cricket bat) This isn’t better because someone says it’s better, or because there’s a conspiracy . . . to keep cudgels out of Lords [a cricket venue]. It’s better because it’s better.” 4
 
Thus, the offending script is not “The Real Thing”. Of course Stoppard’s writer/character, Henry, also accuses Bach of stealing “Air on a G String” from “A Whiter Shade of Pale”:
 
Annie: It’s Bach
Henry: The cheeky beggar.
Annie: What?
Henry: He’s stolen it.
Annie: Bach?
Henry: Note for note. Practically a straight lift from Procul Harum. And he can’t even get it right. Hang on, I’ll play you the original.
 
Well, there you have it. Don’t put your trust in writers. They’ll tell a lie every time in pursuit of the truth.
 
 
Joel E. Turner is the author of WILDWOOD EXIT, a noir tale set at the Jersey Shore, published by Level Best Books in 2025.
 
You can find more of Joel E. Turner’s writing, including fiction and musings on literature, music and movies at joeleturnerauthor.com.
 
Footnotes:
 
1.David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon 1962-1969, (Oxford: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 58.
2.William S. Burroughs, Nova Express, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965), 154.
3.Joseph Conrad, Tales of Land and Sea, (Garden City, New York: Hanover House, [1897] 1953), 106-107.
4.Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing, (New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1982), 51.
5.Stoppard, The Real Thing, 74.

My father lectured his children on the importance of completing a task. Love it or hate it, nothing in life should be left unfinished. Thinking of this now, at the age of eighty, I smile. The journey that ended with the publication of my first mystery, The Curtain Falls in Paris, began in 1996. (Yes, 1996, that’s no typo!)

After having lived in Paris for nearly five years, I moved back to the States, settling in Silicon Valley. (I was supposed to stay there for three months to study the language, but… well, it was Paris.)  Before Paris, I was earning my living as a freelance writer for high-tech companies, and I was able to fall back into that work within weeks. And why not? I was brilliant at writing with knowledge and authority about new technologies. The fact that I understood absolutely nothing never got in my way.  

I awoke one morning, turned on the PC, and got to work. I think it was a user manual for a new Hewlett Packard integrated software system. It was a total mystery to me, but I wrote as if my financial life depended on it… which it did. As I conjured reader-friendly text, a thought passed through my head. While sleeping, had I dreamed something? A story? I went back to the HP work, but the thought persisted. Had I awakened myself in the middle of the night, turned on the PC and typed the story? I looked at the desktop and there it was, a Word file called mystery…. three single-spaced pages describing a murder that takes place in a Paris theater.  

So, here’s where my father’s advice comes in. Over the next twenty-eight years, I wrote the story, revised, tore it apart, and revised it again… and again. During that time, I created seven anthologies. My agent loved all of them, but not my Paris mystery. She criticized with kindness, but told me with sadness that she couldn’t send it out. She was right. It was disjointed; there was no continuity. I kept editing. Finally, when it was clear she couldn’t get behind the novel, I sought another agent.

It was my great fortune that agent Darlene Chan, from the Linda Chester Literary Agency, loved the story. We both knew something was amiss, but couldn’t decide exactly what. With great hope, it went out to editors. Many of the rejections came with praise about the writing, the story, the characters, and several of these editors noted that something was missing… but they weren’t sure what.  

When it was sent to Level Best Books, everything changed. Shawn Reilly Simmons came back with an offer. And not only an offer, but an editing suggestion. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Chapter Four, describing the murder, should be Chapter One. Who couldn’t see that? Well, for starters, me!

And so my relationship with Shawn and Level Best Books began. On May 13, nearly thirty years after that dream, The Curtain Falls in Paris was published.

Does the final product resemble the 1996 dream? I’d say as much as 90% of the original story is in this novel. Same characters, a few name changes, a few country villages added, but the plot is the same.

So, what’s the story?

San Francisco-based journalist Aria Nevins is on the cusp of international prominence with her series on drug abuse. When she suffers a lapse in judgment and short-cuts the fact-check process, an innocent woman dies. She’s dismissed from the paper, removed from Pulitzer consideration, and faces a civil suit from the victim's family. Georges de Charbonnet, a major player with the Paris police, needs to stop the bleeding after weeks of bad press around the death of a young man in custody. He hires Aria to follow a homicide team, led by Noah Roche, and write about their diligence.

With French parents and much of her life in France, Aria sees a way out of the spotlight, a break from the shame brought upon herself and her family. She learns that Roche has attained a high rank without the benefit of the bourgeois family ties many have used to get ahead. He’s respected, but he is not liked, especially by de Charbonnet. She senses that if she writes about Roche’s failings, de Charbonnet can justify appointing someone more fitting to take his job. Before she even meets Roche, she feels trapped in the middle of the judgments of these two men.

Roche bristles at Aria’s arrival. He resents an outsider—an American, a journalist, and a woman—subjecting his team to round-the-clock scrutiny. And he knows how much de Charbonnet would love to demote him.

At Roche and Aria’s first meeting, there is mutual dislike. And then she mentions attending a play that night and Roche is gobsmacked. It's a one-night-only performance of Hamlet’s Father and the hottest ticket in Paris. The lead actors are iconic octogenarians Solange and Bertrand Gabriel, whose careers were launched in these same roles fifty years earlier—and who happen to be old friends of Aria’s family, as is the play's preeminent director Max Formande. Aria has an extra ticket—her mother is too ill to join her—and hopes that her largesse might soften Roche a bit. She gives him the ticket.

They meet at the theater and the tension remains, not helped when, during a quick intermission, she pulls out her recorder and begins to interview him. As Act II of the play begins, Solange Gabriel throws out a cue for actress Camilla Rodolfo, but it goes unanswered… twice. She exits stage left. Director Max Formande finds Roche and begs him to come backstage. With Aria close behind, they go to Camilla’s dressing room and find her brutally murdered.

Roche gets to work. His first move is to call his two dedicated young detectives, Anuj Kumar and Tenna Berglof. Again, Roche expresses resentment when he sees Aria recording everyone. But how can she not? This has the makings of a big story; she can feel it in her bones. And dogging Roche and his team is what she was hired to do.

The plot, as they say, thickens. (Who “they” are, I’ve no idea!) First there’s the dead actress, and then the attempt to kill young Joseph, the lighting technician. Why is actor Anton Delant making this investigation so difficult? Clearly, he has much to hide. And the elderly Gabriels? Outrageous as it seems, all evidence points to them. As Aria and Roche peel away the layers, they discover that appearances are not only deceiving, they can be deadly.
 
It gives me great pleasure that nearly every reviewer admits to being surprised when they learn who the killer is. I’m reminded of mystery writer Anne Perry’s comment about revealing the murderer: surprise is great, as long as it makes sense. So, the response “I didn’t see that coming, but there were hints all along the way!” is truly satisfying. I hope The Curtain Falls in Paris offers a few good surprises for all readers.

Sometime in my fifties, my mother told me that I was a late bloomer. Now that I’m eighty, and with several novels coming out in the next three years, I wonder what she’d say. As for my father? His insistence that I never quit, never give up, and follow every project to completion has paid off.
 
Victoria Zackheim is the author of novels "The Bone Weaver" and "The Curtain Falls in Paris" (May 2025), with two sequels (2026, 2027).  She is the creator/editor of seven anthologies, including the international bestseller "The Other Woman", adapted to the theater and performed in several dozen theaters across the United States, and Faith. She wrote the documentary "Where Birds Never Sang: The Story of Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps", which aired nationwide on PBS. She teaches creative nonfiction in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and is a frequent conference speaker and writing instructor in the US and abroad. A freelance editor, Victoria has worked with many authors on their novels and memoirs. She is a San Francisco Library Laureate and lives in Northern California.   

​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.

There are books that stay with you long after you read them. Books that immerse the reader directly into the plot, allowing them to experience the emotions of the main character as they navigate their way through the fictional world created by the author.
Is it the characters, setting, plot, or something more elusive that makes certain books so memorable?

Take one of my favorite classics, Wuthering Heights. Why is it so unforgettable decades after I read it? Wuthering Heights brings to mind the moors, the manor, unrequited love, tragedy, and revenge. But more than that, there is an eerie feel to it that leaves me haunted. It’s the haunting that stays with me. What specifically caused that response?
Perhaps the atmosphere?

How does an author achieve a particular ambiance? For me as both a reader and writer, the setting and the natural environment, along with the main character’s response to it, is integral to the atmosphere of a novel. Deliberate description of the setting, imagery connecting it to the theme of the novel, and the character’s inner thoughts as their surroundings impact them, along with dialogue, creates that atmosphere.

The interaction between characters and the time and space they inhabit brings the setting to life, as though it were a character in its own right. In Wuthering Heights, the desolate moors reflect Heathcliff’s gloomy disposition, and the societal expectations of the times result in a tragic outcome. The moors and this historical slice of society form a character as much as do Cathy and Heathcliff. Without this character we call ‘setting’, the book simply wouldn’t be as remarkable. Emily Bronte was very familiar with both the moors and Victorian society. It was her life. An author’s, and subsequently, the character’s immersion in a particular time and place elevates the plot off the page and into the life of the reader.

Like Emily Bronte, I set my characters into a location I know. Somewhere I’ve lived, a place I’ve visited and loved, a spot similar to one I know, a locale I have researched. The characters themselves are true to the setting, a blend of people I have known, met, or know of. And then there’s the fictionalization of it all where my writer’s imagination takes over from the reality.

In my latest mystery novel, Cold Query, the setting evokes an atmosphere of serenity. Port Ripley is a safe community—a small town set on the shores of Blue Water Lake with beautiful sunsets over the water. The residents are friendly, nodding and waving to passersby. People generally know each other. It’s so different from the bustling cities that are situated more than an hour away. Even the busy summer season attracts families looking for a peaceful day at the beach or unique shops in the downtown core. It’s a place I know well, inspired by a real lakeside town.

But that cozy feeling is threatened when a series of unexplained deaths occur, one on the heels of the other. A sense of unease builds into fear as police caution residents to be wary. When it becomes evident that there’s a serial killer in town, no one wants to believe it could be one of the locals. Because things like this simply don’t happen in the charming town of Port Ripley.

Ivy Rose, who moved to Port Ripley eleven years ago, lives an idyllic life, having escaped a traumatic past that still haunts her. As a respected highschool teacher and emergent writer, she is well-known in the community. The dangers that once pursued her are a distant memory replaced by pleasant thoughts of times spent on the beach, splashing in the water with her kids and soaking up the sun. Walks on the boardwalk and views of the gorgeous sunsets define her life. Calm, peaceful, like the lapping waves of Blue Water Lake. Familiar, safe, like the neighbors and townspeople she encounters on a regular basis.

Explicit description of a setting is crucial to a novel, and yet shouldn’t bog down the plot. And so, the reader sees the lake and town through the eyes of the characters. Their surroundings come to life through their inner thoughts, dialogue with other characters, and the effect of their surroundings on their lives set the scene in the reader’s mind. Ivy’s daily walks on the boardwalk, her weekly book club meetings, her school community, and the writing community in Blue Water Lake form the setting. So does her former friend, Detective Scott Evan’s view of the town and lake as he gets to know the business area, the lakeside, and the townspeople.

Character and setting become intertwined as Ivy’s safe haven transitions to a threatening environment where a murderer may be just down the street. Her past mixes with the present as Ivy realizes that no matter where she lives, danger follows. No matter how beautiful the setting, in Ivy’s world, it takes on a menacing stance. Unlike Wuthering Heights, there is no gothic-like mansion or eerie wind on the moors to define the atmosphere. Cold Query creates a feeling of fear by placing an unexpected danger—a serial killer—in the most beautiful and welcoming of backdrops. And as the threats escalate, the once calm and caressing waves become deep and dangerous undertows. Imagery plays a crucial role in the setting. As with the natural environment, the nature of people can be two-sided. A darkness lies beneath the surface.

Setting greatly impacts the story, leaving behind an aura long after the book is closed. The paradisiacal setting of Cold Query forms a contrast to the community’s terror with a serial killer at large. A fuzzy warm feeling mixes with the revelation that appearances can be deceiving, creating an atmosphere which may leave the reader wondering whether any place or any one can be a safe haven. Welcome to Blue Water. Take the plunge. And immerse yourself in the small-town atmosphere with the autumn chill of the lake that will seep into your bones and stay there.

Ivanka Fear is a Slovenian-born Canadian author. She lives in Ontario with her family and feline companions. Ivanka earned her B.A. and B.Ed. in English and French at Western University. After retiring from teaching, she wrote poetry and short stories for various literary journals. Ivanka is the author of the Blue Water Mystery series and the Jake and Mallory Thriller series. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada, and Vocamus Writers Community. When not reading and writing, Ivanka enjoys watching mystery series and romance movies, gardening, going for walks, and watching the waves roll in at the lake.

By Andrea J. Johnson

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” or as one would write in steno, SKWRA*EUPBLG. What’s steno you ask? My novel’s main character, Victoria Justice, would say it’s the curious little language that has almost gotten her killed and earned her a front row seat to her town’s most heinous crimes. In actuality, steno—also known as shorthand stenography—is an abbreviated symbolic writing method done on a stenotype, which is a machine that increases the speed and brevity of writing compared to a standard computer keyboard. Thus, the goal of a person who uses stenography is to write as fast as someone can speak. But for me, steno is the inspiration for Poetic Justice, the first book in the Victoria Justice Mysteries, which launches its second and third installments in Spring 2025 and Spring 2026, respectively.

The character of Victoria Justice has lived in my brain since 2006—although back then I didn’t know what to do with her. She was inspired by the call for “original action stars” to compete in the reality TV series Who Wants to Be a Superhero? presented by Stan Lee. The premise of the show was for contestants to create characters who could become comic book heroes. In my mind, what better hero could there be than a court stenographer who seeks to undo bad verdicts through vigilante justice? But at that time, I hadn’t discovered my literary passion, so I couldn’t take advantage of the epiphany.

Cut to almost two decades later. By then, I’d left my full-time job as a courtroom stenographer to pursue writing and had started the search for a new novel idea. Luckily, I found my old notes on Victoria, tweaked her persona to read as more human than hero, and matched her up with highly fictionalized snippets of real-life court cases. And, voila, the Victoria Justice Mysteries were born.

Now, if you’re wondering about the tone of these books, they are a cross between traditional cozies and light legal thrillers (think Murder, She Wrote meets The Pelican Brief). Victoria Justice, is the story’s moral compass, so I devised a name that would leave no doubt about her ethics. She will always do what is right, and she will always prevail against evil. Sure, the moniker is a little on the nose as are most of the names in the series. However, I think that’s the best way to help readers quickly acclimate to the setting and identify the conflict. Of course, there’s also some backstory to the name. In the sixth chapter of Book 1, Victoria reveals that she’s adopted and that her birth mother was a teen hooked on drugs. Doctors had expected her to die from a neonatal opioid addiction, but she survived and her adopted mother named her Victoria in honor of her victory over death.

Even though the books are fictional, just about everything I experienced as a court stenographer has been crammed into this series—from brawls in the courtroom to missing evidence to bomb threats to gun-toting attorneys. And yet, the thing that’s had the most influence on Victoria’s characterization is the outward perception of the profession by those unfamiliar with what stenographers do. She’s often ridiculed for being the one person in the courtroom whose job it is to be seen, not heard. People ignore her, call her an overpaid notetaker, and assume she’s not very smart. I played into that a bit with the physicality as well by making her short and meek, but inside she has the ferocity of a panther and tons of snark. And while the thrust of the series is about solving murders, an equally large portion of it is about Victoria finding her voice and learning to stand up for herself. In a way, she becomes the town’s last bastion for morality by using the profession’s tenants of accuracy, honesty, and neutrality in the face of the law to claim her space in the world. She also finds love while maintaining her independence, which I think is a valuable lesson for young people today.

But because I’ve used several personal experiences to craft these books, all of my friends assume that Victoria Justice is my alter ego. After all, she’s a Black female like me, and I spent nearly ten years as a shorthand stenographer. However, that’s really where the similarities end between me and Victoria. If anything, we are polar opposites. Victoria loves her job and, despite the early childhood hardships of adoption and bullying, she is optimistic about working in the court system since that’s all she wants out of life. I, however, wasn’t a cheerful or disciplined court reporter because I knew my destiny lied elsewhere. I am much happier as a writer, but I love that the time I spent in the steno world has been memorialized in this series. Other than that, any crossover audiences think they see between Victoria and me is merely coincidental.

***
 
Andrea J. Johnson is a speaker, editor, book coach, and author of the Victoria Justice Mysteries. She also teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and her craft essays have appeared in several publications such as CrimeReads, Mystery Scene, and The Romance Writers Report. In addition, she has contributed commentary on popular fiction, films, and television as a freelancer writer for the entertainment websites Popsugar and The List. More notably, she’s authored a series of nonfiction books that include How to Craft a Killer Cozy Mystery, Mastering the Art of Suspense, and How to Craft Killer Dialogue. She has also given writing seminars on these topics through the Mystery Writers of America, Malice Domestic, Sisters in Crime, the International Thriller Writers Association, Women’s Fiction Association, and the Surrey International Writers’ Conference (Canada). When Andrea isn’t writing, teaching, or coaching, she loves dissecting reality television. Join her for those online conversations by visiting ajthenovelist.com or following her on Twitter (X), Pinterest, BlueSky, and Instagram @ajthenovelist.
 

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.
 
 

There’s nothing worse than killing the wrong person.

If I said that to anyone other than mystery writers, I’d get myself arrested. Honestly, I think a night or two in the lockup might have been preferable to what happened when I realized I’d made a fatal error in the first draft of The Stuff of Mayhem.

The book, second in the Old Stuff series, begins with murder and, ahem, mayhem at the Fourth of July cannon firing in the tiny town of Unity, Connecticut. Historian Christian Shaw, her rainbow of found family, and her hot new boyfriend, prosecutor Joe Poli, now have to track the killer, relying on Christian’s knowledge of old things. The businessman who gets blown up made a perfect victim: slimy, pompous, and unethical, involved in a shady development project that threatened our sweet little community.

All good.

What wasn’t so good was the second death: the suspicious end of adorable ninety-something Edit “Amy” Taylor, a World War II bride who was studying for her long-delayed bat mitzvah with the town rabbi. Her death clears the way for a land sale that drives the topline plot, which we find out as we meet her various annoying relatives, one of whom turns out to have killed her with a hatpin to the skull.

Evil and creative, for sure.

And also entirely wrong.

Any writer with a couple of working brain cells could tell you it’s a huge mistake to kill off such an appealing character. As a matter of fact, Amy was happy to tell me herself, taking up a spot in my brain and refusing to leave as I started the first read-through of the manuscript.

Normally, I don’t have a traditional first draft. I do a quick edit of the previous day’s pages at the beginning of the next morning’s work as a way to get into the story. But I wrote this draft during NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month project many writers do in November.  Under the NaNoWriMo rules, you’re supposed to write as many words as possible and edit later.

Which I did.

There was a point, as I was writing the scene of Amy’s shiva (the traditional Jewish equivalent of calling hours) when I wondered what on earth I was doing. But then, the drive to finish the day’s words took over, and I kept on going.

NaNoWriMo has become problematic in the two years since I wrote the original Mayhem, but I learned my lesson during that read-through. About two chapters in, I started to get a nagging little feeling it wasn’t working. A tiny whisper: maybe this isn’t the right plotline.
By the end of the read-through, it was a scream. A window-shattering, Munch-painting howl of absolute anguish. Followed by several days of abject despair.

What on earth do you do when you’ve committed to something entirely wrong?

Well, I tried denial.

Maybe it was really okay, and I was just borrowing trouble as my Scottish grandmother
(and Christan Shaw’s, too!) used to say. I read it again. Nope. Still a mess, and it all stemmed from Amy’s murder.

So, there was nothing for it.

At the end of the day, it’s my work, and my name’s on it. It’s got to be the best it can possibly be when I turn it in. And killing off the bat mitzvah girl is a mistake.

You probably know how this ends by now.

Yep. Somewhere around three-quarters of the book ended up in the digital dustbin. And I started writing again. Without, thank you very much, an eye to daily word count targets.

The plot still revolves around the death of that rotten businessman at the cannon firing, and a land-use issue still becomes motive for murder. But, with a little inspiration from a real-life dispute over a Revolutionary War site in New York, Christian and her friends use their expertise on possible artifacts. And Amy’s very much alive, involved in the land-use issue, and studying for her bat mitzvah.

Now, the bat mitzvah is the setting for the big denouement – and Amy, unfortunate murder victim in the original draft – has the satisfaction of unmasking a killer.  Any more is a spoiler, so let’s just say Amy is a great addition to the cast in her new lease on fictional life.

Obviously, I’ve learned the hard way to think twice about who I kill. And to listen to that little caution voice. And The Stuff of Mayhem is a much, much better book.

So mazeltov to Amy…and me!

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 writes short stories and novels including the Old Stuff and Ella Shane series, both from Level Best Books. Her stories, under her own name, and as Nikki Knight, have been in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, Mystery Magazine, and others, 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 Co-VP of the New York/Tri-State Sisters in Crime Chapter. She, her husband, and son live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

Novelists are often asked where they get their ideas. All writers know it’s an impossible question. Is there a muse that creeps into the writer’s nook, sprinkling idea dust across her desk? Perhaps. Maybe it’s divine intervention or a deceased writer channeling characters and scenes into the writer’s mind as she toils over the blank page.
 
All writers have their own approach. My ideas are stolen from everyday life, like a thief on the prowl for anything unusual, hilarious, gross or bizarre. I generally don’t have to look far as these things organically cross my path. The key is to pay attention and when it hits, I jot down observations on foolscap yellow notepads with an arsenal of rolling writer pens.
 
In my recently published kid-lit novel titled Ruby and The Boss Cricket, there’s an antique dresser discovered by Ruby, the protagonist, and the dresser is inhabited by an orchestra of crickets led by the Boss Cricket. The idea for the novel came when I discovered a dresser dumped by the curbside destined for the landfill. The dresser was scratched and water stained, but I know a thing or two about bringing old furniture back to life, so I hauled it home and refurbished it. Later that day I was skimming the pool and found a dead mole in the filter basket. I analyzed the waterlogged mole before putting it to rest in the woods. That night there was a cricket hiding in my room, chirping away at 2 a.m., causing sudden-onset insomnia. The foolscap notes from that day read: bossy cricket…jalopy dresser…drowned mole. I Googled mole and cricket and discovered that there is such a thing as a mole cricket. And so began the ideas for the first book in the Inspire Island series.
 
The sequel’s main character, Galvin the Tomte, was inspired by an adorable gnome garden statue that captivated my imagination. What if Galvin came to life and created mischief? What if only one girl could see him? What if they got together with Ruby and the Boss Cricket? The story took off from there and the novel will be published by Level Best Books in December 2025.
 
Recently, my spry 85-year-old mother popped over for lunch. We spent a lovely afternoon together on an otherwise bleak winter day, and I walked her to her car when it was time to leave.
 
“Be careful when you backup,” I said, pointing across the road. “I’m parked directly behind you.”
 
“I’ll try my best,” she said, grinning and revving her green Toyota Camry.
 
Cruuuunch.
 
She backed up into the bumper of my SUV, pumped the brakes, gunned the car into drive, and peeled down the block like Kurt Russell in Death Proof.
 
Foolscap entry: Short story idea. Working title Hitskip based on police slang for a hit-and-run. Mother hits daughter’s car, speeds home to her retirement community, finds her book called Old School Hacks, and whips up a toothpaste concoction to buff out the scratch on her car. The green Camry paint and the toothpaste concoction is a Leprechaun attraction-agent. Soon the elderly mother’s apartment is inundated with leprechauns…The ending hasn’t hit me yet, but I have my pad and pen ready for when it shows up. Perhaps I should invite my mother to lunch again.

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Julie Sampson is the author of two novels, The Eye in the Ceiling and The Winter Hexagon, and two non-fiction books, Elite Wrestling and Beginning Wrestling. Ruby and the Boss Cricket is the first novel in the Inspire Island Middle Grade series. 

There’s a lot to love about cozy mysteries. Almost always, they begin in a picturesque small town filled with quirky characters we can easily imagine as our neighbors and friends.
 
While a thriller might keep us on the edge of our seats, a cozy mystery pulls us into our favorite reading chair with a cup of hot coffee or tea. Even the covers of cozies are warm and fuzzy, with bright colors and pun-filled titles.
 
Once we have selected our book, we can settle in for a fun read, where the language is clean and the murder takes place off-screen. Within the first chapters, we get acquainted with the village, find our way to the local library, and pick up a little gossip along the way.
 
The conclusion of a cozy must be as satisfying as playing an old-fashioned game of Clue, where the crime fits nicely into a logical outcome. “Naturally, Col. Mustard committed the murder with a candlestick in the kitchen,” we will announce to ourselves when the book ends. “That is exactly what I predicted.”
 
All of these aspects of a cozy mystery make us feel as comfortable as when we’re padding around in our pajamas at home. But the undisputed star of the cozy mystery is the amateur sleuth. She (because most are women) stumbles into a murder scene and quickly realizes she must solve the crime. No one else is as capable as she, for this dangerous task.
 
When others question the sleuth’s reasoning, she adeptly argues her point with one of several reasonable explanations:
 
“The murder occurred on my property.”
“I knew the victim.”
Or, “I’m on the suspect list and must clear my name.”
 
Without hesitation, she throws herself wholeheartedly into the search for the killer. As readers, we abandon all logic to support her zeal. In fact, we fall in love with her enthusiasm.
 
We adore the amateur sleuth because she is an ordinary person, placed into an extraordinary situation. We understand her, and admire her. Like us, she’s an everyday woman, taking on the world to get the job done in her own community. Before we know it, we have pledged our allegiance to her cause and are determined to help her identify the murderer and bring him to justice.
 
Never mind that the professionals want her to quit meddling in their case, the amateur sleuth cannot be stopped. Whether she is a bookstore owner, a nosy senior citizen, or an inquisitive news reporter, our main character is always a few steps ahead of the real detectives. We love to root for the underdog, and the amateur sleuth gives us plenty of opportunity.
 
She is generally likeable and well intentioned, even when she puts herself in harm’s way. She has no real training for the task, though she’s pretty good at solving puzzles, or dabbling in research on the Internet. Whatever her background, she is confident of her ability to be of assistance. Naturally, we are drawn to her: we see ourselves, in her adventures.
 
In some cases, the amateur sleuth has “super powers” that contribute to her success—ESP, or a connection to a well-informed ghost, perhaps. While cozy mysteries with a hint of the supernatural are fun to read, my favorites are still the ones that feature a smart, loveable, imperfect woman who solves the case with nothing but her wits, hard work, and a little help from her friends.
 
Inevitably, the cozy mystery plot is filled with twists and turns that keep our amateur sleuth guessing until the end of the story. Despite all the setbacks, the amateur keeps going. She surprises us with her resourcefulness, driving around all the obstacles until she finds her way to the end. And we, her loyal companions, are happy to be along for the ride.
 
Anna St. John writes cozy mysteries featuring a mature yet feisty former crime reporter, Josie Posey, as the amateur sleuth. Her debut novel, DOOMED BY BLOOMS, was released by Level Best Books in February 2023, followed by CLOCKED OUT in 2024. DOLLED UP FOR MURDER is the third book in the Josie Posey Mystery Series. Anna is a former journalist, award-winning advertising copywriter, and ad agency owner. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Kansas Authors Club. 

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. 

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“When you die, I believe, God isn’t going to ask you what you published.  God’s going to ask you what you wrote.” (McNally, T.M. “Big Dogs and Little Dogs,” in Martone, Michael, and Susan Neville. 2006. Rules of thumb: 73 authors reveal their fiction writing fixations. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books).

There’s a certain wisdom to that remark, but, with all due respect to McNally and to God, the Almighty isn’t in my target demographic.  God, perhaps, will read my unpublished manuscripts, but the ladies in the Hungry Readers Book Club won’t read my books unless they’re published.

Now that The Other has been released, I find myself pondering two questions that readers often ask me.

Where do your story ideas come from?

Every book starts from an idea. Where do these story ideas come from? In the case of The Other, I found the story idea when I went down a rabbit hole. I trust you know what I mean. You start out searching for a certain bit of information. You have the best of intentions, but something grabs your attention, and you’re pulled just a little bit off course. Then there’s another grabber, and another, and before you know it, you’ve lost sight of your original question and instead you’ve spent the day reading about Camp Wille und Macht. At least, that’s what I did.

Camp Wille und Macht was the first Nazi youth camp in America, established in the summer of 1934 on the banks of  the Delaware-Raritan Canal. It only stayed open for a few weeks, but it became the prototype for camps in New York and New Jersey, as well as other sites scattered across the country.

I don’t write nonfiction. But I believe that fiction can reveal emotional truths in a way that a strictly factual account cannot. I set out to write a fictional account of a Nazi youth camp, on a fictional canal in a fictional New Jersey. And like most writers of fiction, I started with a simple What if?

What if the lock tender on the canal was Jewish? What would his  life be like if one hundred teenagers dressed in brown shirts erected tents in a field that abutted his home? What if those brown shirts spent their days marching along the towpath?
And then I asked myself, What if those brown shirts returned today? What would you do to protect your family if the Nazis came to town?

When does the book become real to you?

When I first get the idea for a book, the story exists in my head, only. I’ll carry that imaginary world around in my head for months, perhaps years. There are milestones along the way. A finished manuscript. A book contract. Final edits. A book cover. Advanced Reader Copies. The book release.

Then something remarkable happens. After the book is published, a stranger reads the book. Maybe you. And the story that was stuck in my head, gets stuck in your head too. That’s when the book becomes real to me. When the story that was stuck in my head, through the magic of reading, gets stuck in your head too.

The Other is a story of faith lost and faith found. Although the story is fictional, the problem of hate is all too real. And it is not ancient history.

If you read The Other, if the story gets stuck in your head, perhaps you’ll spare a moment to reach out and let me know. That’s the reality that makes a writer start thinking about the next great story.

Jeff Markowitz is the author of six mysteries, including the award-winning dark comedy, Death and White Diamonds. Jeff spent more than forty years creating community-based programs and services in New Jersey for children and adults with autism, including twenty-five years as President and Executive Director of the Life Skills Resource Center, before retiring in 2018 to devote more time to writing. In October 2021, a puzzle hunt based on Jeff’s novella, Motive for Murder raised more than $1 million for at-risk children in NYC. Jeff is a past President of the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Monmouth Junction NJ with his wife Carol and two cats, Vergil and Aeneas. 


 

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.
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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 got hooked on reading mysteries early. My dad was a sea captain on a cargo ship and his ports of call were along the eastern seaboard of the United States. I’d give him a list of books I wanted, and he’d scour the bookstores for me. He’d come home with Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and Hardy Boys books. The characters were kids a little older than me, and the mystery was something that had to do with family or friends.
 
Soon enough, I moved on to Agatha Christie, followed by Carolyn Hart and Sue Grafton. Those were books that made me stop and say, “I want to do this one day”.
 
Why did I read mysteries so much?
 
There was a puzzle to be solved. Often, there was a murder. And figuring out who did it kept me turning the pages. I loved, absolutely loved, figuring out who did it. But more than that, I needed to know why.
 
The main characters were always someone who tried to do their best and come up with answers. They weren’t always police officers, sometimes they were just regular people. Women were smart, resourceful, and courageous. They solved crimes differently than men did. And they didn’t wait around to be rescued by some guy. They did it themselves.
 
The mysteries I read took me to different places around the world, far from my small village along St. Mary’s Bay. The details provided by the authors painted the settings well.

Mysteries provided me with an escape, one page at a time. Justice was served. The bad guy/girl got caught and sent away. 
 
In my first book for Level Best Books, Death at the Scottish Broch, I’ve worked to include the pieces of mysteries that I’ve enjoyed as a reader.
 
My main character, Dr. Mia Reid, is an archaeologist. She’s smart and resourceful. And not afraid to stand up for herself, her students, or for Ethan, the victim in this book. Ethan isn’t only Mia’s colleague; he’s a good friend. And his death rocks Mia to her core.

Mia digs deep to learn who killed Ethan and why they did. She also defends him against charges of artifact smuggling. She’s determined to clear his name and solve his murder.

The supporting cast of characters helps the story unfold. Mia can lean on them for feedback and a different perspective. They include locals from the Isle of Skye; the students working with Mia on the dig; Mia’s Gran back in Lakeview City; and Mia’s former lover, Luke Forbes, who’s now working for Interpol. Each of them contributes to the narrative in their own way.
 
The location for Death at the Scottish Broch is the Isle of Skye, in Scotland. It’s a magical place. Brooding mountains, green valleys, waterfalls, lochs, and the people. And it’s a little remote. You take a ferry or cross a bridge to get there. The area where I’ve set the dig is rugged, windy, and isolated. A perfect setting for a mystery.
 
 
So, yes. Mysteries matter. They can entertain, educate, and provide the reader with an escape from everyday life.  
 
If my books provide a reader with a few hours of entertainment and escape from the real world, I’m happy.
 
Thanks for reading!
 

Rose Kerr writes mysteries featuring strong, smart, women protagonists who must draw on their wits and resourcefulness to solve the crime.

Rose was born in a small community in Nova Scotia and has traveled across Canada.

Her working career included employment in figure skating, non-profit organizations, and in distance education.

More recently, Rose and her husband have moved to Southern Ontario. When she isn’t writing, Rose and her husband enjoy exploring the new region.
 

Winston Churchill is credited with saying “Never, never, never give up.”  Even though attempting to be a published author isn’t the same as surviving the Nazis’ bombings, Churchill’s mantra has echoed in my head for decades and has helped me keep my spirits afloat through pages and years of rejection letters, or worse, the echo of silence.

While I often say that I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was seven, it wasn’t until I received my MFA in my 40’s that I felt worthy enough to officially try. Did I need the MFA to write? No, but I did need it for courage, community, and a push—I had to write to justify the graduate school expense. Also, craft, as we know, can be taught, and I did have a lot to learn. I still do.

But, two, three, four years out of graduate school, and I still hadn’t published my original novel. No agent had an interest in me, and I grew tired of rewriting it over and over and over to make it better. (Was I actually making it better, anyway?) 
Then, by chance, I took a seminar given by Steve Berry, successful thriller writer. He shared that his first seven novels were still in a drawer. “Keep writing,” he said to the class.

His comment gave me permission to start a new story. That novel didn’t sell either. 
I wrote a third one. It also didn’t sell.

So, I wrote a fourth. Then a fifth. 
With the sixth, I thought I had a winner. Who isn’t intrigued by the Lizzie Borden saga? Nope. Struck out again.

All six novels are still in a “drawer,” so to speak.

Another turning point came when I gave up my search for a literary agent. I’m not anti-agent, at all, but coming up with a different mindset was freeing. The first glimmer of this idea came from a zoom conference that had representation from the three main avenues to publication: self-published, traditionally published with an agent, and traditionally published without an agent.  The latter had had an agent, for years, who never sold his book. He finally struck out on his own and landed a contract with a small press.

I also attended a conference where multiple writers spoke of agents who had found editors who were interested in publishing their work, but the editorial board of the publishing houses voted the works down. 
I thought of my years of struggling to find an agent to only have another round of disappointment heaped on if the agent never sold my work. “Why let two hundred and fifty people dictate my writing career?” I said to myself.  I know there are more than two hundred and fifty agents, but it seemed for my genre, I kept running into the same ones online and at conferences. Going beyond the agent process mentally opened me up to new possibilities. 
My friend and fellow writer, Cheryl, always says that until we actually land a book contract, we write in the dark. Even though we have feedback in our writers’ groups, we never know if what we’re really doing just needs a tweak here or there, because, commercially, agents and editors dismiss us. We have no true validation of our work.

One day, I also asked Cheryl for creative advice. “Should I rewrite my fifth or sixth novel, or start the Midcoast Maine Mystery series?” I had pages of notes for the 3M series, as I call it.

“Start fresh,” she said. “Start that series.” 
As she said the words, a raven sat on a branch outside of my window. 
“Ok,” I said, “and my protagonist’s name is Raven.”

Raven Oueltte was born in my seventh novel, Blaze Orange. The book was set up to fit into a series mold, not to compromise myself or to write to the market, but to recognize that if I wanted to be a true mystery writer, I could follow a character-driven plot formula with all the ideas that I had been gathering. Yes, Maine is a character too. There’s a reason so many mystery writers live here. 
Finally, my story worked! Level Best Books will publish Blaze Orange, the first in a series, in January.  I couldn’t be more elated.  Fourteen years and seven novels later. While I always say to never give up, and I hadn’t, it still all feels like a dream.

If you have a dream, whatever it is, keep at it—keep learning, and listening to feedback, and trying again, and again, and again. Unless it’s becoming a ski jumper in the next Olympics, chances are it’s never too late for you either.

​Allison Keeton lives in Maine with her muse, Tom, and their two dogs. 

She has twice been accepted into Rutger University’s invitation-only writers’ conference and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Additionally, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University.

Besides writing mysteries, she has written numerous business articles and published a book on job hunting called Ace that Interview. She also writes a creative non-fiction blog, Largest Ball of Twine.

Close your eyes and try to remember the last time you heard an accent. Was it spoken by a friend, a colleague, someone in line at the store, or maybe a telemarketer? What were the first assumptions that came to mind when you heard those accented phrases or words? Whatever you thought, your perception or judgment was likely shaped by both personal experience and the media.

In entertainment, accents are used to establish a character in seconds. Think Gloria Pritchett’s passionate Columbian lilt in Modern Family, Kamala Nandiwadal’s Indian inflection in Never Have I Ever, or (Nintendo) Mario’s Italian cadence. Accents hint at a character’s background without the use of words or action scenes, reflecting society’s diversity. But accents aren’t simple tools to play with as their portrayal leads to social categorization (the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups) and prompts conversations on authenticity, diversity, and stereotyping.
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A ”new comer” in the “accent realm” is Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a speech disorder I explore in Threads of Deception, my novel about a criminal attorney who switches career paths after a bomb destroyed her firm and left her with a French-sounding speech disorder. But FAS is more than an amusing plot twist, it challenges our notion of linguistic identity and what it means to sound foreign or native.

Accents aren’t just flavors—they shape perceptions of intelligence and what it means to be American. Did you know that Americans speak roughly 30 major dialects of English and that there are more than 350 languages spoken in the United States? Consequently, the US hosts a large number of accents, reflecting the country’s history and beautiful tapestry of cultures.
But, some accents, like the General American accent and the Queen’s English, have always had a superior status, gifting its speakers with assumed authority, intellect, or prestige, while others suffer from opposite assumptions. This bias places Claire Fontaine, the California-born-and-raised protagonist of Threads of Deception, under a constant microscope, her competence and presence being questioned. Though portrayed humorously, similarly to Adrian Monk’s obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias in the series Monk, the concept of accent discrimination is an important matter which requires attention.

The same is true with speech disorders. Individuals with conditions like lisp, stutter, or dysarthria often face additional layers of judgment based on how they speak. Just as with accents, society often attaches unfair assumptions about intelligence, capability, or even personality to those with speech impediments. This reality stresses the need for accurate and sensitive representation in media, as it directly impacts the perceptions and treatment of individuals dealing with such challenges.

Research has shown that media representation of accents shape how we view them and the people who speak with them. When accents become punchlines or stereotypes, it's not just harmless fun— such practice can fuel prejudice and keep harmful stereotypes alive. That is why storytellers need to handle accents with care and abandon the clichés in favor of authentic and nuanced representations. Speech impediments should be subject to the same considerations.

Through our stories, we can challenge stereotypes, champion inclusivity, and celebrate the wonderful diversity of our world. By including characters with accents or speech disorders authentically and respectfully, we not only enrich our narratives but also contribute to a more compassionate and understanding society.

Elle Jauffret is a French-born American lawyer, former criminal attorney for the California Attorney General’s office, and culinary enthusiast. She holds a Master of Laws from Université Côte d’Azur Law School (France) and a Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University Law School (USA). She is an avid consumer of mystery and adventure stories in all forms, especially escape rooms. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters In Crime, and International Thriller Writers. She lives in Southern California with her family. You can find her at https://ellejauffret.com or on social media @ellejauffret.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Is there any parallel between performing and writing?

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

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

I’m not going there!

• What surprises readers about the worlds you describe?

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

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

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

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

 
Erica’s questions for Lori:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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