Patterns by Nancy L. Eady

I like to sew. I’m not a designer, by any means, but between the designer’s pattern and my choice of fabric, options and fit, I can create something unique. Admittedly, the uniqueness can be unexpected, like the pair of shorts I made for my honeymoon that had the pockets sewn in backwards, but that’s another story. Patterns that fall within the same class of garment, such as patterns for dresses, pants, pillows and placemats, tend to have features in common. 

Planning is important in sewing. A single pattern can have up to 15 different ways in which the pattern pieces must be laid out depending on the size I need, the length of the garment, and the width of my fabric. I learned the hard way to circle the correct layout and triple check that I have the pieces set correctly before cutting.  

In some ways, writing for a specific genre resembles my sewing efforts. My genre of choice, crime fiction, has guidelines to meet, or it is no longer crime fiction. Subgenres are like options one can choose in a pattern, further setting the range I work within. My choices for a novel, such as location, setting, and characters, color my story the way my choices for notions, like buttons, zippers, thread, and embellishments, affect a garment. 

Both writing and sewing require persistence. I can only finish my sewing project if I work on it until it is ready to wear. Cutting it out and finishing five steps out of twelve do not give me a finished project. The same with a writing project—if I stop when I’m stuck “in the muddle in the middle,” I’ll never finish. 

That’s about where the analogy ends. I spend more creativity and effort as a writer than as a sewer. A successful manuscript requires more revisions and input from other people than a successful pair of shorts. Can you imagine the look on my neighbor’s face if I asked them if they would like an ARC of my latest shirtdress? 

Which now leads me to the decision of the day—do I work on that set of aprons I have cut out, or turn to my writing to finish out my day? 

What would you decide? 

 

A New Detective in the Streets of Houston

By M.E. Proctor

I moved to Houston, Texas, twenty-seven years ago. The town confused me. I was used to European cities where streets turned and wove at random, landmarks on every corner, neighborhoods with small shops and restaurants, trees and parks, rows of brick houses, an occasional glass building, and hard-to-find parking spots.

 For the first couple of years, I kept a map of Houston on the passenger seat of my car (this was before smart phones). I tended to get lost and wasn’t too sure where the various intersecting freeways were going. To baffle me even more, each of them had more than one name—I-10 was also the Katy Freeway (but only up to the small town of Katy, to the west), 59 was also called the Eastex, Beltway 8 was the Sam Houston or the tollway, 610 was the Loop ... Locals juggled the labels, switching them in mid-conversation. They talked about Kirby and West U, Milam and the Pierce Elevated. I had to reshuffle my mental registers. It took a while but I eventually got my bearings. I was no longer a complete outsider. In the process, slightly anarchic Houston grew on me, as it kept growing itself, and boy, has it grown in all these years.

When I decided to write a crime novel, setting it in my adoptive hometown was a no-brainer. I envisioned the streets at night, the neon lights as the background for a classic detective story with a contemporary flavor. The city that overwhelmed me as a new arrival would provide the vast and varied canvas I needed.

I dropped my private investigator, Declan Shaw, on the east side of Downtown, a former industrial waste land fit for a gloomy neo-noir movie that is slowly turning civilized one eatery and art gallery at a time. Declan’s small agency operates from his office-apartment combo on top of a refurbished warehouse with a clanging antique elevator. It matches his personality, sophistication under rough brick. To balance the equation, his business partner, Moira Perkins, lives in The Heights, an old neighborhood replete with Arts & Crafts bungalows and intricate colorful Victorians. Every time, I drive through these oak-shaded streets, I fantasize about moving there. I have to settle for enjoying the area vicariously through Moira.

Other parts of Houston are featured in Love You Till Tuesday, the first book in the Declan Shaw mystery series.

The jazz club where April Easton, the murder victim, performs is Downtown. Houston has multiple venues to catch live music, from bars to arenas, from new talent to established names. April’s apartment in a gated enclave is on the west side, half an hour away from the club at night when traffic is light. Frank Murphy, the head of Houston PD’s Homicide Division, and a friend/mentor of Declan’s also lives on the west side in a quiet neighborhood of ranch houses with unfenced and well-tended front yards where gray squirrels teem. A secondary character lives in hip and quirky Montrose, and Declan kills time between interviews at the Butterfly Center in the Museum District, perfect for pondering clues. He also wanders around the Anahuac Wildlife Refuge and the San Jacinto Monument at sunset.

I didn’t intend to give readers a complete tour of H-Town, but I believe that a complex plot needs anchoring and even if the characters are fictional it helps when they move in a world that is as close as possible to the real one.

So, what is Love You Till Tuesday about?

It starts with the murder of jazz singer, April Easton. A murder that makes no sense, and yet she appears to have been targeted. Steve Robledo, the Houston cop in charge of the investigation, has nothing to work with. Local PI Declan Shaw, who spent the night with April, has little to contribute. He’d just met her and she was asleep when he left. The case seems doomed to remain unsolved, forever open, and quickly erased from the headlines. And it would be if Declan’s accidental connection with the murder didn’t have unexpected consequences. The men responsible for April’s death are worried. Declan is known to be stubborn and nosy. There is no telling what he’ll find if he starts digging. He must be watched. He might have to be stopped. He’s a risk the killers cannot afford. The stakes are high: a major trial with the death penalty written all over it.

Amazon Link 

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. Her short story collection Family and Other Ailments (Wordwooze Publishing) is available in all the usual places. She’s currently working on a crime series. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, introducing Houston PI Declan Shaw, was recently published by Shotgun Honey. The next book in the series, Catch Me on a Blue Day, will come out in 2025. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines like Vautrin, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly. She’s a Derringer nominee for short fiction. Website: www.shawmystery.com – On Substack: meproctor.substack.com.  

 

        

Marketing. It’s not for the faint of heart.

 By Kait Carson

I’ve written about marketing before. Not much has changed. When I hear the term, my first reaction is the same one I had when the first AARP solicitation came through my mail slot. I stomped on it and tried to squish it like a bug. Didn’t work. They kept sending stuff. Eventually, I appreciated their concern and joined. Never regretted it, and it’s introduced me to some fun stuff.

Marketing is like that. Initially, the thought of putting myself out there was painful. Writers, okay, this writer, is an introvert. I’d prefer a root canal without anesthesia to thumping my drum in public. Like AARP, I kept at it. Over time, I realized that marketing, like much else in life, is not one size fits all. As a lifelong adventurer, I’ll try anything once. With marketing, if I find myself gritting my teeth and persevering only through the strength of will, I’ll never do it again. Once is enough, even if the system is viral and touted as the best thing since sliced bread. I’m looking at you, TikTok and Facebook ads. If I have fun—different story. That’s my kind of marketing. It’s also proven to be successful—for me.

While I don’t get along with Facebook ads, I enjoy Amazon ads. I’ve taken the Mark Dawson classes for each, and I know lots of people who swear by Facebook ads. I haven’t figured out my sweet spot for them, and they’re expensive since they don’t charge by the click, but by the length of time the ad runs. Amazon charges by click, and you set the parameters for the price. Both platforms track clicks and sales, so results are obvious.

Canva, recommended by blog mate Sarah Burr, has been a game changer. I’m visual and playing with photos and elements is fun. Sundays are set aside as Canva day. Since I have the paid program, I’m able to schedule posts across four of my social media platforms for the week. It’s fun, creative, and I enjoy doing it. Does it pay off in terms of sales? I can’t be certain, but sales have been steady, so it’s at least keeping my name out there.

A few months ago, I discovered another fun marketing tool. Evidoozle, a free online evidence-based card game created by mystery author Sharon Daynard and her team. The backs of the deck are book covers. There’s no charge for the author, and every time one of my books has been featured, sales have spiked. For authors, the link for information to market your book is here.

 Every marketing course I’ve ever taken has emphasized that the key to marketing is doing what you enjoy and leaving the rest behind. I enjoy the give and take of social media, creative outlets, and sharing with other authors. These types of marketing have become painless for me, and it saves a heck of a lot on dental bills from all that tooth grinding I no longer do.

Authors and readers, how do you feel about marketing on social media?

 Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries set in the Fabulous Florida Keys and is at work on a new mystery set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in True Romance, True Confessions, True Story, True Experience, and Woman’s World magazines, and in the Falchion Finalist Seventh Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime and a member of Sisters in Crime, Guppies, and Sisters in Crime New England. Visit her website at www.kaitcarson.com. While you’re there, sign up for her newsletter.

Hurricane! by Nancy L. Eady

To those of you in Florida, Georgia and northwards coping with Hurricane Helene, please know that the thoughts and prayers of all of us are with you. Should you be lucky enough to have access to power and internet while you’re coping, a big if, I have a couple of tips for you. First, when your power is out, don’t get frustrated when you flip the light switch on every time you walk in the room. Your brain knows nothing will happen, but your muscle memory runs deeper on instinct. Most of our brains aren’t quick enough to override it, even when the power has been out for days. Second, a tip I learned from my sister, almost everything can be cooked on a grill. When you reach the point where everyone’s meat in the freezer has thawed to the point of no return, you might as well grill it all and through a huge block party. Third, a most important tip for coffee lovers my father, who lives in South Florida and once hugged a coffee maker he got as a gift, taught me—coffee can be brewed in water you bring to a boil over a grill. I’m not exactly sure how, but it is possible. 

I have been through two hurricanes, both inland. The worst was Hurricane Opal. Hurricane Opal made landfall on the Gulf Coast as a Category Four hurricane and swept northward through the State of Alabama. At the time, we lived in a small town about five hours away from the Gulf; Opal was still a Category One hurricane when it swept through our area, much like Helene is forecast to do in southern Georgia. 

The morning before Hurricane Opal arrived, I happened to catch a weather report and pay attention to it. (Living that far away from the coast, hurricanes were something we noticed but they normally didn't impact us.) The weather people were saying that this storm was going to be different from anything we’d seen before and that even in our area, homeowners needed to bring in loose objects, such as lawn chairs and potted plants, which the wind could use as projectiles once the hurricane arrived. So, for the first (and so far last) time ever, I went home at lunch and brought in every single potted plant and lawn chair, and got Mark, when he got home, to tie down the porch swing and table. Then we waited.

Really, I should say, then I waited, as Mark and both of my faithful protectors at the time, our dogs Shadow and Woof, were fast asleep by nine. At ten, before any wind or rain arrived, the power went off. About an hour later, the rain started to pour down. I started to hear an unusual sound, so I went to check on it.  The rain was leaking into the house through the free-standing fireplace we had at the time. I pulled out towels and cups to catch the rain, and then went back to bed. I didn’t get much sleep; I lay in bed, watching the pine trees outside bending until their tops were horizontal to the ground, and hearing a persistent thumping somewhere against what I thought was the house. I also wondered if the huge sycamore tree towering over the side of the house would survive. The dogs never woke up. Mark says he did and watched the trees for a while too, but neither one of us said anything.

Shadow and Woof, my sleepy but fearless protectors

Morning finally came, as it always does, and the storm had blown through. (Opal’s one saving grace was that she was a fast mover.) There was a lot of damage around town; oaks, especially, had been blown over onto houses. One two-story house was completely demolished by one. 

We were fortunate; not only was the sycamore tree still standing tall in the morning, but the thumping turned out to be our tied down outdoor table, which had managed to flip itself over the deck rail during the night. The thumping was the sound of the table hitting the deck, not the house. The deck survived just fine. We were without power for probably five days, but it could have been worse. (I will admit, however, that by day three I was starting to get really frustrated.) Areas along the gulf, like Panama City, Destin and Mobile, suffered so much more damage.

So that’s my big hurricane story. I hope wherever you are in the path of the storm you stay safe, and your damage is minimal. And help is on the way; we’ve already seen the power trucks from our area driving to the staging areas where they will start the recovery efforts. 

Seeing Your Plot As An Itinerary by Connie Berry

My husband and I love to travel. We enjoy seeing new things, meeting new people, experiencing life in a different way. What we don’t love is wasting time—showing up at a National Trust property, for example, only to find that it closed for the season two weeks earlier, missing the last ferry between islands in Norway, ending up in Paris on a Sunday and Monday when many tourist sites and restaurants are closed. Yes, these things happened to us in the past.

That’s why I always do a bit of pre-planning now. Knowing how many days we have, I make an itinerary, noting the driving distance between stops. I book places to stay overnight, and I think through each day and the possibilities open to us. Where might be a good place to have lunch? Should we take the boat ride on the lake or get advance tickets to the museum? But here’s the point: our most memorable experiences are almost always things we didn’t plan (with a few photo):

Meeting an accordion maker and his wife in a small Austrian village

Joining the festivities as a bridal couple marched to church in Dubrovnik

Being serenaded by a Cornish men’s choir out for a weekend holiday in Devon (wish I could have uploaded the video!)

Seeing an elderly Italian man cry as he thanked us as Americans for liberating his small mountain village in WW2

Being kicked out of four taxis in Beijing because we didn’t understand their zoning system (or their language)

Watching Prince William’s new girlfriend, Kate Middleton, navigate the paparazzi as she arrived at a wedding in the Cotswolds (photo by one of our travel companions, Patti)

Plotting a novel is a little like planning an itinerary—at least it is for me. I’m what people call a “tent-pole” plotter. I know the major plot points, twists, and reveals in advance because I don’t want to waste time writing myself into a corner. But the best ideas usually occur to me in the process of writing.

Last week, for example, I was doing a bit of online research for my WIP when I happened upon a strange phenomenon connected to AI. I was fascinated by it and immediately saw how I could use it in my plot, adding a layer of intrigue to one of the characters and tweaking the plot to give it greater depth. I couldn’t have planned it ahead because I didn’t know it existed.

These “plot thickeners,” like serendipitous travel experiences, can’t be planned out in advance. They just happen. And when they do, they are almost always exactly right.

Thinking of my plot as an itinerary—a list of possibilities, stops along the way, with room for the unexpected—makes sense to me. My “tent poles” give me confidence to know I will make it to the end of the journey, but the spaces between them leave room for the unforeseen and fortuitous.

Do you leave room in your plot for the unexpected?

What is the best unplanned plot point you’ve ever used?

 

Who You Gonna Call? Unique Forensics Experts By Katherine Ramsland

I write crime fiction and nonfiction. Inevitably, they run together. My three novels in the Nut Cracker Investigations series feature a female forensic psychologist, Annie Hunter, who runs a PI agency from her home on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She travels, so I Scream Man is set in Savannah and South Carolina’s Low Country, with a follow-up novel, In the Damage Path, set in western South Carolina and Tennessee. The third installment, Dead-Handed, takes her to Concord, MA (Hawthorne country). I form my plots from actual cases I’ve worked or researched and include unique forensic disciplines that can introduce readers (and other writers) to something new.

 

Let me tell you about a few.

 

Annie herself is a suicidologist. As a clinical psychologist, she can do standard assessments and consult on the psychological angles of death investigations. Her unique training in suicide gives her an advantage for interpreting behavior at death scenes. She can spot when a supposed suicide is staged, for example, or see more in a suicide note than what cops are trained to see. She can perform psychological autopsies and handle city councils faced with a cluster suicide (or is it?). In the Damage Path features a narrative based on the case of the girl who persuaded her boyfriend to commit suicide. But is there more to the story? Annie thinks so.

 

A key member of Annie’s team is Natra Gawoni, a cadaver dog handler and data miner. She keeps the records straight, finds obscure info, and simplifies complex data. Her dog, Mika, can locate clandestine graves and participate in search and rescue operations. This expands the team’s investigative abilities.

 

I’ve worked on death investigation teams. It’s amazing how many different types of experts come into play. A forensic geologist for an exhumation, for example, or an anthropologist trained at a body farm. A radiologist, a medical photographer, a criminalist, a pathologist, a graphologist. When I set out to write my series, I realized that, like me, Annie can connect with a network of specialists. She has a core team, but she can reach out to a discipline that might be needed for a specific kind of case.

 

Ayden Scott is Annie’s main PI, and he’s also a forensic artist. Few readers know much about this expertise. Sometimes, Annie needs him to draw a face from unidentified remains, perhaps a skull or a decomposing face. This is a rare skill, with exacting mathematical calculations. His artist’s eye catches small details, like something in a prisoner’s tattoos, which can break a case. Ayden also coordinates with Annie’s part-time digital analyst, Joe Lochren, to tinker with tech. (I use an actual cyber tech advisor who’s offered some very cool devices and plot twists. My favorite, in Dead-Handed, is his dark web honeypot.)

 

One of the most unusual disciplines I’ve included is a forensic meteorologist. JoLynn Wilde is introduced in In the Damage Path when she provides a unique sensor mounted on a drone to calculate from trees where decomposed remains might be buried. She also discovers a possible murder during a weather event, which brings her back in Dead-Handed to investigate more such cases. The Weather Channel once aired a series, Storm Stories, which featured these experts. Since I love to use weather in my fiction, it’s useful to include an expert like JoLynn.

 

She’s also a taphonomist. She studies the many factors that affect outdoor decomposition. I’ve taken courses at body farms in Tennessee and Texas, learning how to study what happens to human remains in various condition. I’ve learned (like Ayden) to draw from decomposed faces and identify remains among the ashes in burnt buildings.

 

A controversial method I’ve used is remote viewing. Some readers think this makes my fiction paranormal, but not at all. As Annie explains, the US military used it during the 1970s-1990s as “psi research” for spying. This began at the Stanford Research Institute, a California-based think tank. SRI researchers sought real-time sight at a distance. Science writer Jim Schnable documented these experiments in Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies, and journalist Annie Jacobsen offers even more in Phenomenon: The Secret History of the U.S. Government’s Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. I use this to justify the Nut Cracker team’s experiments. Annie cites the case of a remote viewer locating Ted Bundy’s last victim. That’s in the prosecutor’s book! (And he confirmed it to me.) Thus, I coined “remote profiling” as a crossover method for last-ditch forensic investigations.

 

My most recent novel, Dead-Handed, involves toxicology, meteorology, geology, suicidology, dark web analysis, behavioral profiling, taphonomy, anthropology, end-of-life science, and a bit of literary history. As I say in the blurb: “What do Nathanial Hawthorne, William James, Scottish lore, and a purloined corpse have in common?” My own experience on death investigation teams is that multiple disciplines are often involved, so I use the opportunity to show readers what they can do.

 

_______

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology and behavioral criminology in the graduate program
at DeSales University. She has appeared as an expert on more than 250 crime documentaries and was an executive producer on Murder House Flip and A&E’s Confession of a Serial killer: BTK. The author of more than 1,800 articles and 73 books, including Confession of a Serial Killer and The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, she pens a regular blog for Psychology Today. Her fiction series features a female forensic psychologist who consults on death investigations. Dead-Handed is her most recent book.

 

Twenty Years Before the Masthead by Martha Reed

I’ve been mentoring a newbie author these last few months, helping her find her path to publication. Initially, I hesitated to accept the assignment. I wasn’t sure if the advice I had to share would have any practical value. I’m happy to report that my little bird is ready to fly. She’s taking her thriller manuscript, query letter, and elevator pitch to Sleuthfest agents this week.

So much of what we writers do is figuring out the process as we blindly follow our dreams. The publication world seems to be constantly undergoing rewrites, reassignments, and renovation. Literary editors peel off the publishing houses to become independent agents. Boutique small presses open and close like rare night blooming flowers. Others launch with optimistic fanfare only to burn out in a few short years when the owners finally grasp how much 24/7 involvement and dedication it takes. The awards – Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, IPPY, Macavity, Shamus come and go in their annual passage. Crime fiction conferences rotate across the country like constellations in the night sky.

We authors scramble to keep up, not only researching and writing this year’s new book, but also doing the marketing and promotional heavy lifting. We develop interesting and esoteric PowerPoint presentations to share with book clubs and library patrons as we try to make or maintain that all too vital connection to our crime fiction community and our mystery readership. We order business cards, build Wix websites, and email newsletters all the while hoping for enough decent reviews to trip Amazon's and Goodread's unseen and almighty promotional algorithms. And then we pause before clicking our wireless mouse, afraid to go look at the sales data and royalty payouts.

Is it worth it?

For me, the answer is: Yes. Sitting down every day to work on my manuscript is my sacred time. It doesn’t matter if I’m drafting or editing. The joyous feeling I get is the same.

My newbie author asked me if I ever got tired of it. I have been doing this for almost two decades. True, sometimes I get tired of sitting in my chair, but I never tire of losing myself in the zone while searching for the perfect word or turn of phrase. I adore it when I catch myself saying, “Yes, that’s it,” out loud.

Before my book gets published and goes public, I’m spending private time in my own private world. During those two or three hours each day, it’s between the book and me. Researching fascinating details and plumbing deep rabbit holes keeps my brain alert and engaged. The annual conferences give me a great reason to fearlessly travel to new cities and distant shores and revisit my writerly friends. After nearly twenty years, it’s so ingrained I can’t imagine what my reality would be like without my writing life.

How about you? What drives you to enter the fictional world and write your stories?

Plotting by Nancy L. Eady

 So, what do Frances, a golden retriever, Scout, a Maine coon cat, Sarge, an African Gray parrot, Vanessa, their owner, and a blessing of the animals ceremony have in common? Right now, I don’t really know. But when I volunteered to contribute a short story to our holiday offerings on Writers Who Kill, the five of them popped in my mind asking to be used in connection with a mystery. 

Frances is insisting on being the point of view character so far; Scout and Sarge are happy to let her do the heavy lifting, and quite frankly, Vanessa would just prefer to ignore the whole thing. I am casting around for a suitable mystery for these four characters and the Christmas season. Maybe one of the trees the church uses to decorate disappears under mysterious circumstances along with sundry ornaments?  

In addition to figuring out a mystery that fits with my characters, I also have to figure out the antagonist and how to come up with the (for me) obligatory happy ending. I really like happy endings. Not everyone does, and not every story calls for one, but it’s my story until the characters completely take over, and I’m going to try to convince everyone about the need for a happy ending.  

I’m also hoping I inject some humor into the concoction. One of my favorite things to do is make people laugh.  

Now is the point in plotting where I send everything to my subconscious to work on while I do other things. Usually (sometimes?) (maybe?) what pops out is at least the rudiments of the story I want to write. Unless my subconscious decides to chuck all of them and make me work on something else….

How do you go about plotting your novels and stories? 

Refilling the Well by Annette Dashofy

Last weekend, I typed those two amazing little words on the last page of Honeywell Mystery #4.

 

The End.

 

I sent the completed second draft off to my beta-readers and took a deep breath. Note: it’s not due to my editor until December 1, which is coming up fast, but at this stage, I’d usually have about six more weeks before that deadline. To have more than two months feels luxurious.

 

For most of the last decade, when I completed one book, I immediately jumped into the next, since there was always another deadline looming. Yes, I do have another book under contract (Honeywell #5), but it’s not due until December 2025. It sounds better than it is when you realize that I have no real clue what that one’s about. I had an idea, but the ending of #4 threw a monkey wrench into my plan.

 

Anyway, I’ve sent off my WIP and find myself with no clue about the next book as well as a few weeks of mostly down time. What to do with myself???

Leaving on a jet plane

 

As I’m writing this, I am relaxing in Aztec, New Mexico. Those of you who know me or who have read No Way Home (Zoe Chambers #5) are aware that one of my dearest friends lives here. I used to come out for a week or so every year. Then the pandemic hit, and some other issues followed. This is my first trip to the Four Corners since 2019.

 

Note: it’s not a long stay because I left Kensi Kitty at home with The Dad, and she is not happy. But she is getting her pills.

 

I’m not doing research while I’m here. I have no immediate plans to set another story in Anne Hillerman territory. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but it’s not on my writing radar. What is on my radar is a lot of relaxing and catching up with my friend, Leta. We’ve pretty much been talking nonstop since I landed.

 

I’m refilling the well. Writing book after book after book eventually depletes the creative reservoirs. I’ve taken a day here, a day there to get away from my computer for a few hours, but it’s been ages since I’ve really kicked back and did nothing.

 

So, I’m doing (mostly) nothing. We’ve eaten out a couple of times at a local restaurant here in Aztec, and we drove up to Durango, Colorado, for lunch at the Strater Hotel, which apparently is haunted. We’ve driven the back roads and taken in the scenery.

The Diamond Belle Saloon at
the "haunted" Strater Hotel, Durango, CO

Exceptional Fish & Chips at
the Diamond Belle Saloon

Rubia's in Aztex, NM

 

And I haven’t written anything except this post.

 

But…

 

I can feel the juices starting to flow. With a clear mind and a rested body, a new plot is starting to gel.

 

The creative well is refilling.

 

Fellow writers, do you take time off between books to do something…anything…other than writing? Readers, what do you like to do when you have a week off from real life?

 

  

Surviving the Editing Process by Judy L Murray

I’ve just finished the first editing phase for my fourth book in The Chesapeake Bay Mystery Series and sent it to my editor at Level Best Books. Now I’ve thrown myself prostrate across my couch. Literally.

Most authors, once they complete the first draft, and all its rewrites along the way, breathe an enormous sigh of relief. We’ve done it! We’ve got it down! It’s a book! My heart beats fast. I do a mental happy dance and break out my favorite cocktail to celebrate the moment. My husband sighs with relief. He foolishly thinks he might see me more than twenty minutes a day. Perhaps we can watch a BritBox mystery together or take a day trip?

But authors know first draft completion is just phase one of a very long process. I look forward to editing, confident I’ll enjoy whipping through my pages and wrapping them up in a big email red bow within a few days. I rub my hands in anticipation. That’s when my personal Editing Process Editor raises her ugly head and sneers at paragraph after paragraph. My cat, Watson, protests with "Are we done yet?"

Here are my basic steps that help me survive editing hell:

Step one: I open Review tool in Microsoft Word. Some authors prefer Scrivener and other software. In Review, I work through each scene, deleting and inserting copy. As I move along, I add New Comments within Review and note any concerns I will address later. New Comments create an automatic list along the right side of the screen. Once I’ve endured discovering my story’s lapses, I return to these comments and revise, again, and again.

Step Two: I move on to checking for all too frequently used words. I’ve collected a number of helpful lists. Words like said, maybe, that, and look. It’s a very long list. I’ll be curious how many other authors enter a stage of shock when they insert a word into ‘Find’ and, for example, see 186 uses of ‘think’ or ‘know’ appear. Heaven save me!

As painstaking as this process seems, I find these searches extremely useful. It isn’t just about reducing word frequency; it’s how I’m often forced to rethink an entire paragraph. It’s hard work but each time I change or delete the word I overused, my story improves considerably. For me, it’s an excellent way to push myself beyond my instinctive word use boundaries. Typically I’ll devote four or five long days to this stage, but the number of improvements I make to the quality of my story as a result astounds me. It’s tedious but rewarding.

Step Three: My last task is one mentioned during a Zoom meeting for Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime. I start again and return to Review, choosing Read Aloud. I then listen to the entire book. You can adjust the voice and speed of the reader. It’s a very lengthy procedure and I’ll admit I nod off throughout my day. I listen not just for context but for spelling and punctuation errors. Again, I’m amazed at how much listening to my novel flushes them out. Some authors prefer to read their drafts aloud. I find it too easy to gloss over errors because of my familiarity with the storyline.

There are many resources to help us through revisions. I found these two helpful:
Refuse to Be Done, How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell.
Mystery Writers of America University Dialogue Class given by Donna Andrews August 7, 2024. MWA and SinC provide excellent webinars on revising. Their fees are miniscule compared to the quality of education they provide.

As many of you know, the developmental editor will put their red pencil to my precious story. I’ll hold my breath as I open her response and read her comments. For the next few weeks I can take a little time off while ramping up some marketing efforts I’ve neglected.

Everyone has their own way of surviving the editing process. I’ll look forward to hearing other’s suggestions. I’m sure you have many to share. If you haven’t discovered my award-winning series yet, you’re missing a treat.

Ever onward Authors!

Bibliophilic Friday: The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Over three thousand years in the future, a New York City police detective named Elijah Baley is charged by his Commissioner with solving a politically sensitive murder. But the politics of the Cities, huge concrete and steel caves that exist mostly underground and support between 10 to 20 million people each, differ vastly from the politics of today. 

There are over 800 Cities on Earth.  In Elijah’s world, families live in community facilities with private rooms for the family, but shared bathrooms and kitchens that are more like cafeterias. Earth’s inhabitants no longer live in open spaces, but in the confines of the Cities’ steel caves. For many Earth people, walking outside under an open sky is unthinkable and uncomfortable, if not debilitating. In the less distant past, because of the pressures of expanding population, Earth colonized space, but the colonies grew in isolationist directions and limited immigration from Earth to the barest trickle. (Colonists are called “Spacers” by Earth people).  The colonies have vastly outpaced Earth technologically—for example, they have robots that are almost indistinguishable from humans. Earth, on the other hand, adamantly opposes the use of robots in the Cities because they fear they will take away jobs from humans who need them. 

New York City is also the location of “Spacetown,” a space port where those few Spacers who have business on Earth land. 

Elijah is tasked with solving the murder of a prominent colonist, Dr. Sarton, a task he is reluctant to undertake especially when he is told one condition of the task is that he must partner with R. Daneel Olivaw, one of the humanoid robots Earth (and Elijah) are so opposed to. 

In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov wrote a brilliant novel blending two popular genres, science fiction and mystery, that rarely get a chance to mix. The novel is even more fantastic when you consider that it was written in 1959, a world where PCs and the internet were every bit as much science fiction as the world Asimov created in his novel. 

Every good story has more than one subplot, and without diminishing the mystery one iota, Asimov also explores the reactions and social consequences living in the Cities has created for the people of Earth, and the social interaction between his two dissimilar detectives, Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. 

Without giving it away, the solution to the mystery is both believable and satisfying, as is the resolution of the other plots in the book. If you like mysteries, or science fiction, give The Caves of Steel a try. Who knows? It may encourage you to explore whichever of the two genres you are less familiar with. And even if it doesn’t, it’s a fun book to read. 

Starting a New Series by Marilyn Levinson

Recently, Booked on Murder, the eighth book in my Haunted Library series was released. I knew this would be the final book in the series because now my sleuth's story arc was complete. Carrie Singleton had evolved from a lost, unsettled young woman to become a responsible, involved and established member of her community surrounded by people who loved her. Many readers were sad that I'd ended the series, and I felt a few pangs myself. I would miss writing about Carrie and Dylan and their friends in Clover Ridge, but it was time to move on. I looked forward to embarking on my new adventure.

Ever since I visited San Juan Island in Washington State a few years ago, I've been planning to set my next mystery series on an island. But my island would be smaller and closer to home, peopled with dissenting family members who loved one another but had different plans for the future of the island. And so I created Dickens Island and plonked it down in the middle of the  Long Island Sound between Long Island and Connecticut. Dickens Island is its own small world, yet a ferry connects it to Long Island, and Manhattan is but an hour's drive away.

Starting a new series requires a good deal of preparation. Details must be carefully thought out because setting and characters play important roles throughout the series. I spent a good deal of time creating the island itself--its topography, the layout of streets and important sites, houses and the village. Of most importance is my cast of characters, especially my sleuth and those closest to her. I am lucky that my characters appear to me fully formed. I love exploring their relationships, their secrets and their growth throughout the series.

My sleuth, Delia Dickens, is a divorced woman approaching forty. For the past twelve years she was living and working in Manhattan while her parents raised Connor, her fifteen-year-old son, on the island. Now Delia is back on the island again, living with Connor in the Victorian home her grandmother has left her. Her father has asked Delia to revitalize the Dickens General Store the family owns as he tries to stall every update she proposes. 

Delia's Uncle Brad, her father's brother, also has difficulty making changes to the island. As president of the town council, he has balked at establishing a ferry line to Connecticut and creating new housing. This infuriates his wife Reenie, the island's manager. She is tired of Brad shooting down all her suggestions to bring in more residents and attractions to the island. What's more, Reenie is convinced that Brad's having an affair with Missy, a new addition to the council. And when Missy's found murdered, Delia finds herself obliged to prove that neither her aunt nor her uncle is the killer.

Aside from the murders, there are many elements that go into creating a cozy series. When Delia comes home from the general store, the pile of rags she sees on the porch turns out to be a snoozing bearded collie that followed her son home. Where did the dog come from? The mystery is easily solved, and the dog, renamed Riley, remains with Delia and Connor.

 A secret room, the ghost of Delia's grandmother, a hidden journal, a pirate's treasure, a date with the man who broke Delia's heart twenty years earlier are a few more components of Death on Dickens Island, the first book in the series. Many more will appear in future books as the series continues.

How do you go about planning a new mystery series? What is the first element you create?

An Interview With Josh Pachter

by Grace Topping

After a long career writing crime fiction, spanning decades, short story author Josh Pachter switched gears and wrote his first novel for younger readers, First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet. Another big change for Josh—he wrote it for young readers. It was a pleasure talking to Josh about his novel and its upcoming release on September 24, 2024. 

 

 

First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet

When June Knight—the fourteen-year-old spokeskid for Yummy Nibbles, "the dog food dogs love more than people love people food"— decides that she wants to break into the movies, her agent Morty comes up with a scheme to get her some national publicity: June pretends to sue her parents for emancipation and moves into the attic of a nearby boarding house, where neighborhood vandals have altered the ROOM TO LET sign out front to read ROOMY TOILET.

 

When things begin mysteriously disappearing from the other residents' rooms, newcomer June is the obvious suspect, and to prove her innocence she takes on the most important role of her career and plays sleuth. Each of the Roomy Toilet's wacky tenants has secrets to conceal, and the book builds to a conclusion packed with multiple surprises and happy endings for everyone—well, almost everyone....

                                                                                                     www.joshpachter.com

 

Welcome, Josh, to Writers Who Kill.

 

First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet is a charming book that can be enjoyed by both young readers and adults. You've been aiming your fiction at adult readers for more than half a century. What inspired you to write a book for younger readers? Have you written any other stories for younger readers?

I’m delighted you enjoyed the book, Grace. It was my hope that, like a Disney movie, it would be fun for both youngsters and adults. Thanks.

Some years ago, my brother’s daughter Aly asked me, “Uncle Josh, how come you only write stories for grownups? Why don’t you ever write a story for kids?” I was about to give her one of those condescending fake replies that grownups often fob off on children, when I thought Why should I lie to my niece? So I told her the truth: “I guess I never thought about it.” And she looked up at me and said, “Well, I bet you’re thinking about it now!” 

 

Sure enough, I was, and First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet was the result. Level Best Books offered me a three-book contract, but I’d just retired from a fifty-year career in education and wanted to take a break from meeting deadlines, so I signed for just the one book. I’m working on a second adventure for June Knight, though … slowly but surely.

 

At the urging of her agent, June Knight, the face of the Yummy Nibbles dog food commercials, sues her parents for emancipation, purely for publicity. What inspired you to write June’s story?

 

Every month, I do the cryptic crossword at the back of Harper’s Magazine. Cryptics involve a lot of intricate wordplay, so I’ve gotten used to thinking in wordplay terms. At some point I saw a “Room To Let” sign out in the world and realized that a bit of graffiti would turn that into “Roomy ToiLet”—and June’s story evolved from that observation.

Meanwhile, one of my all-time favorite books is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I hope that First Week Free captures some of the spirit of that book, though the plot and characters are all very different.  

 

June’s agent Morty is a fun character and provides a nice dash of humor. Do you often include humor or comic relief in your stories?

 

I’m glad you found Morty fun and funny. I like to laugh, and in my day-to-day life I’m a sucker for corny jokes and puns. I don’t consciously try to “write funny,” though, because I think humor relies so much on gestures and tone of voice that I have no idea how to capture it using nothing but words on a page or a screen. As I wrote Morty’s dialogue, I had Mel Brooks’ Miracle Max from The Princess Bride in mind, and that character—played in the film by Billy Crystal—was so hilarious that it was inevitable for Morty to be a fun, funny character.

 

With the setting in a rooming house, the book almost has the feel of a different age, yet it is a very much up-to-date story. What did the rooming house setting provide your story?

 

Mrs. Smedleigh’s boarding house gave me the opportunity to put a number of characters in close proximity, each with a very different personality and backstory. Also, “closed-circle” mysteries like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None have always fascinated me, and the private world of the boarding house allowed me to play with that concept.

 

First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet has a fun twist at the end. How much of this story did you plan, or did it come to you as you wrote it?

 

For my short fiction, I generally have the whole plot worked out in my head before I begin to write. For First Week Free, I roughed out a chapter-by-chapter outline on paper and even drew a detailed map of the boarding house. As I did the actual writing, though, I came to some realizations that weren’t part of my outline, so some of the multiple twists at the end of the book came from pantsing rather than plotting.

 

You have the distinction of having short stories published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in several decades. Please tell us about that.

 

I sold my first short story to EQMM in 1968, when I was sixteen years old, which made me the second-youngest person ever to appear in that paragon of publications. (The youngest was James Yaffe, who in the 1940s sold them a story he wrote when he was only fifteen.) In 2009, I became the first (and remain the only) person to appear in EQMM’s “Department of First Stories” twice, with a story I wrote collaboratively with my daughter, Rebecca K. Jones (whose third courtroom novel, Staying the Course, comes out from Bella Books this fall and is available now for pre-order). I first sold to AHMM in 1972, and my stories still occasionally appear there, but I’m a much more active contributor to EQMM.

You’ve contributed to and edited a number of anthologies, including stories inspired by the songs of different performers, for example, Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Billy Joel. What is the appeal of these music inspired anthologies?

 

To my regret, I don’t play any musical instruments, and my singing voice would clear a room in seconds flat. I love listening to music, though, especially to singer/songwriters and the rock ’n’ roll bands of my g-g-generation. I kind of fell into editing my first “inspired by” anthology, The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell—long story; ask me sometime when you see me—but I had so much fun putting it together that I decided to do another one (The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett), and it just kind of snowballed from there. My seventh (Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Grateful Dead) will be out this fall, and numbers eight (Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim) and nine (Cryin’ Shame: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Lyle Lovett) are scheduled for publication in 2025.

 

In principle, the books appeal to four different categories of readers: those who are fans of the music that inspired the stories, those who enjoy crime fiction, those who for whatever reason like my work, and those who are fans of one or more of the contributors.

Your bibliography shows an amazing list of publications. Do you ever dust off older ones or rewrite a story to bring it up to date?

 

Not usually, no, but there’ve been a couple of exceptions, one of which is First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet. I originally wrote it more than a decade ago, but although I’d sold more than fifty short stories by then I had absolutely no idea how to sell a novel, let alone one aimed at kids, so the manuscript lingered on my hard drive for a long time. When I heard that Level Best Books was starting Level Elevate, an imprint for younger readers, I opened the file and reread it and thought it was worth submitting—but first I updated it, trading June’s iPod, for example, in for an iPhone.

 

One other exception is “Invitation to a Murder,” which appeared in EQMM way back in 1972. It was the only story I ever dreamed: I woke up in the middle of the night with the idea fully formed and scribbled it down, then went back to sleep. When I got up the next morning and picked up my notebook, I expected to find illegible gibberish, but a workable idea was there—and it made real-world sense, not just dream sense. Over the next nine months, I wrote at least a dozen drafts, but I just couldn’t seem to get it exactly right. I finally gave up, sent what I had to EQMM editor Frederic Dannay and asked him for his advice—and he sent me a contract and published the story. It’s been reprinted more often than anything else I’ve ever written, and every time I get asked for reprint permission, I tinker with it. I still don’t think it’s quite right, but I believe I’m getting closer….

 

You are well known for your short stories, but your first novel, Dutch Threat, was recently released. What motivated you to write a novel after a long career writing short stories?

 

As with First Week Free, I started work on Dutch Threat quite a while ago. I’m not sure whether or not I’ve got attention-deficit disorder, but the idea of staying focused long enough to write an entire novel has always terrified me, so I kept adding bits and pieces but never whipped the book into submittable shape until I got an email from Leya Booth at Genius Book Publishing. She’d published several collections of short stories by the amazing David Dean—who just recently won the EQMM Readers Award for the third time—and she asked him to recommend another author she could publish. David kindly suggested me, and Leya wanted to know if I had a book that was looking for a home. Given her interest, I finally finished Dutch Threat and sent it to her, and she liked it and published it last October. I was very grateful to see it named a finalist for Left Coast Crime’s Best Debut Mystery Lefty Award, Malice Domestic’s Best First Mystery Novel Agatha Award, and the Mystery Readers International’s Best First Mystery Macavity Award.

Dutch Threat is set in Amsterdam. From what I understand, you have lived there and visit often. In addition, you have also translated short stories and novels from Dutch into English. Please tell us about that.

 

Yes, I lived in Amsterdam for several years during the late 1970s and early ’80s, and although you don’t really need to speak Dutch to get along in The Netherlands, I didn’t think it was fair to ask the people around me to speak my language instead of their own, so I learned me enough Dutch to get along. In the mid-’80s, I was asked to translate two of Janwillem van de Wetering’s short stories from Dutch to English for EQMM, and one of them—“There Goes Ravelaar!”—wound up an Edgar finalist. Twenty years later, when Janet Hutchings decided to launch the magazine’s “Passport to Crime” department, featuring a translated story in every issue, she asked me to find a story by a Dutch author for her. I did, and then I found another one … and by now I’ve done dozens of translations of stories by both Dutch and Flemish crime writers. I’ve also translated comic books, memoirs, and three crime novels (René Appel’s The Amsterdam Lawyer and Bavo Dhooge’s Styx and Santa Monica).

 

You’ve recently traveled extensively through Japan. Did your travels inspire you to write stories in new settings?

 

My wife Laurie and I are avid travelers, and I almost always wind up setting a story in the places we visit. I do in fact have a Japan story in the September/October issue of EQMM, and there’s another one coming out next year in a British anthology I don’t think I’m allowed to comment on just yet. The EQMM story, oddly enough, was written before Laurie and I spent a month in Japan. It’s called “The Wind Phone,” and I wrote it after doing extensive online research. (The anthology story was written after we got back from our trip, and it’s based largely on things we experienced during our time in Tokyo. Stay tuned….)

 

Is there a publication that your stories have yet to be included in that is on your bucket list?

 

Hmm. I’d love to see my work included in either or both of the two annual “Year’s Best” collections, one edited by Otto Penzler and the other by Steph Cha. I had stories in the 1985 and 1987 editions of The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, edited by Edward D. Hoch, but that was a long time ago. It’d be great if Otto and/or Steph were to consider my fiction worthy of inclusion in their books.

 

You have received numerous awards and accolades. Which one gives you the most satisfaction?

Well, I don’t know about “numerous,” Grace, but thanks! Things I’ve written, edited, and/or translated have been finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Lefty, Thriller, Derringer, Macavity, and EQMM Reader awards, and have won several Derringers. I was deeply honored in 2020 to receive the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, especially since that award is named after my old friend Ed Hoch. But I think the most satisfaction to date came in 2019, when I finished second in the EQMM Reader Award balloting for a story called “50.” That story was published in the magazine’s November/December 2018 issue, exactly half a century after my first appearance in EQMM, and it features the protagonist of that first story, now half a century older. “50” was a deeply personal story for me, and the fact that it resonated with readers was extremely gratifying.

What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned since you started writing?

 

This is probably not what you’re looking for, but the most valuable thing I’ve learned since I started writing has nothing to do with writing. In the years since my first publication, I learned how to be a good dad and a good husband, and those lessons have been more valuable than anything else I’ve ever learned in my life. 

 

What is next for you? Can we expect any more novels? 

 

As I said earlier, I’m slowly working on a second adventure for June Knight, and I’ve had readers ask me for another book about Jack Farmer and Jet Schilders, the protagonists of Dutch Threat. Those are back-burner projects, though. In the near future, look for a bunch of new short stories coming out in 2024 and 2025, new translations in EQMM and Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and new anthologies.

 

Thank you, Josh.

 

 

For more information about Josh and his numerous stories, check out his webpage: www.joshpachter.com. First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet is available for preorder at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DH7V5J9P.

 

 

Grace Topping is the author of the Laura Bishop Mysteries Series.