Kindness, Community – and Murder?

 By Cindy Brown

Kindness is my criteria, for well, almost, everything. It’s a “must” in my friends. It’s how I found my husband after a string of short-lived relationships. And my favorite books, TV, or movies all have kindness at their core. Oh, I don’t mind evil characters—I do love mysteries, after all. But I want good to triumph over evil, or at least give it a good kick in the pants.

Community is also really important to me. I love waving to neighbors on the street, being greeted by name when I walk into a place, or hanging out with groups of people with a shared goal or interest. I’m lucky to get this feeling of community from my neighbors, art class friends, fellow volunteers, church members, community gardeners, and my writer friends (more about that later).

What does all this have to do with mystery and murder, you ask? If you read cozy mysteries, you’ve probably noticed the kindness and community inherent in their small towns, knitting circles, and coffeeshops. But more serious mystery authors—like Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, and William Kent Krueger— imbue their stories and characters with those qualities, too. In all their books, the murders are a way to explore human connections: to think about why people do the things they do, why some are bent on destruction, why some are victimized, and why others come to their aid.

That’s what I explore, too, and you’ll find that kindness and community connect all my books, including my new serious mystery, Echoes of the Lost (May 12^th from Ooligan Press), which explores the need for community and connection, and the consequences that follow their loss. I’m thrilled that early reviews acknowledge my focus, like this one from Booklist: “Brown’s latest, set amidst the houseless community in Portland, Oregon, features heartbreak, tragedy, and violence juxtaposed against heartwarming generosity, bravery, and humor…A superbly written story that highlights the massive social issue of houselessness and that will appeal to those who enjoy twisty mysteries combined with feel-good stories that deliver a strong social message.”

I can’t write about kindness and community without talking about my Hen friends (former Henery Press authors) at Writers Who Kill. Thanks, Kait, Annette, and Grace for your support and kindness. I feel lucky to be a part of your community. 

If readers would like to be a part of my community, they can find me at cindybrownwriter.com, or sign up for The Slightly Silly Newsletter on Substack.

A Review of In the Spirit of French Murder by E. B. Davis

  

After moving to France, Tabitha Knight has a new friend in fellow expat and Cordon Bleu student Julia Child, whose culinary tips can come in quite handy. But something’s cooking in postwar Paris, and it isn’t just cheese soufflé…

Tabitha has enjoyed an entertaining afternoon in Julia’s kitchen, but her return home is a bit jarring. As she arrives at her grandfather’s rue de l’Universitémansion, a woman bursts out the door babbling about messages from spirits and a warning Grand-père must heed. Oncle Rafe angrily sends the woman on her way, and neither man will answer Tabitha’s questions.

It’s not the last she sees of the mysterious visitor. While she’s on a date that evening, she’s accosted by her again—and learns that Madame Vierca is a medium who claims to have visions of a dark fate that awaits Grand-père and Oncle Rafe. The very next night, Tabitha’s messieurs host a soiree at their new restaurant, inviting fellow Resistance fighters from the war known as the Nine Bluets. To commemorate the work of the Resistance network, the vase on the dinner table sports nine of the pretty blue flowers.

But shortly after the revelers leave the restaurant, one of Grand-père’s old friends is found dead on the street . . . and one of the nine flowers is missing from the vase. When a second member of the Nine Bluets is found poisoned the next day, and a bluet flower is left with the body, Tabitha cannot ignore Madame Vierca’s frightening predictions about her dear messieurs. She has no choice but to share her suspicions and fears with the enigmatic and unruffled Inspecteur Merveille.

Tabitha soon finds herself caught up in an investigation that takes her and Merveille to the seediest, most dangerous parts of the Left Bank—home of strange, fantastical legends, disquieting events, and unusual people. As she and Merveille desperately try to find a killer, they know they don’t have much time before the rest of the Nine Bluets are targeted . . . including Grand-père and Oncle Rafe.

Amazon.com

 

In the Spirit of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge, the fourth book in the An American in Paris Mystery series, will be released by Kensington today. I’ve previously interviewed Colleen Cambridge, who writes two other mystery series. She’s a busy writer so I chose to review this book instead.

 

I loved In the Spirit of French Murder because the plot and backstory were tied together. By solving the mystery, main character Tabitha learns more about her grandfather and uncle, their trials and tribulations of working for the resistance during WWII and the often-sad consequences of their doing so. Julia Child, Tabitha’s neighbor and American cohort, doesn’t appear as often and isn’t a part of the solution, which I missed. Instead, Tabitha confides in Inspecteur Merveille, her heartthrob, who gives her subtle clues that he, too, feels attraction.  C’est si bon!    

 

A project left over from the last book in the series, Grandfather’s and Uncle Rafe’s restoration of a restaurant to pre-WWII conditions, wiping out the memories of Nazis who claimed it during the preoccupation, is now complete. The plot engages when they celebrate the restaurant’s opening by inviting their resistance working group, called the Nine Bluets (nine blue flowers). Tabitha connects the deaths of those attending as, one by one, they are murdered. She fears for her grandfather’s and uncle’s lives, motivating her to find the guilty party.

 

There is an element of mysticism due to a medium who predicts the deaths and the appearance of the Old Man Who Appears After Midnight, a Parisian legend, who makes his presence known to Tabitha. He tells her why evidence disappeared without a trace, just as he does. She is bewildered, and yet glad to have experienced his legend and explanation.

 

Colleen Cambridge’s books epitomize what Parisian mysteries should be. The tone of her books illustrates the style and charm inherent in the City of Lights, mysterious unto itself. When Tabitha solves the present crime and anticipates the budding future, the glory and horror of the past is revealed, set on top of a city that is much more than what is seems.  Santé!     

Do Your Characters Inhabit Their Space? by Martha Reed

Being an author is a gift that keeps on giving. When I first started writing I thought that someday I would fully master the craft and from that point forward writing novels would become easier, almost formulaic. As I begin to draft my new and seventh novel I can attest that I’ve learned something new, wholly different, and wildly surprising from the previous six books for my continuing creative writing education.

In my first novel I went to a lot of trouble describing my characters in extensive detail. I specified height, eye and hair color, general build, and any accoutrements like nose rings or RayBan aviator sunglasses they habitually wore. I wanted to make sure I gave the reader a complete overall character snapshot. But I’ve learned since then that readers don’t really need this level of character detail. They may not even want it.

“Books allow us certain freedoms – we are free to be mentally active when we read; we are full participants in the making (the imaging) of a narrative. … then maybe this is a crucial component of why we love written stories. … Sometimes we only want to see very little.” – Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read.

Showing a character’s reaction to an incident or even how they inhabit the space they’re in may be more telling than offering the reader a lot of physical details. Instead of authoritatively saying that my character is morbidly obese, I’ll describe a teak deck chair that alarmingly cracks when he sits on it. This not only plants the suggestion of a character’s visual description more viscerely it also compels the reader to become a willing co-creator to the tale as they engage their imagination.

I recently had an epiphany over constructing my new novel’s timeline. Because I was a total newbie, my first Nantucket Mystery, The Choking Game was a completely soup-to-nuts linear telling because that’s the way I’d been taught to write in Journalism classes: inciting incident, puzzling middle, and conclusive, wrapped up, and satisfying ending. The Nature of the Grave, my second book was much the same although it offered readers a deeper dive into family backstory. It was my third installment, No Rest for the Wicked where I boldly stepped into uncharted territory by creating two linked yet separated by the passage of time plots.

My next bold step may be using first-person and multiple POVs but I’m not quite there yet.

I raised another thought provoking idea when I rifled through my unfinished story archive while cleaning my desk. Some of these odd bits and bobs were so stale they listed my twenty-year-old Aspinwall PA street address with my contact information. And yet when I reviewed them some of these ideas were yes, seriously ahead of their time but still gold: human sex trafficking, distrust of authority, voter restrictions, and rampant political corruption. It’s almost like they needed to marinate or be incubated before they were ready to pop.

Now I’ve come to believe that creative stories aren’t meant to be static like a forced march. There will be creative energy ebbs and flows, and that’s okay. As long as I continue to show up, the tale that needs to be told will be. Stories patiently wait for their right moment, and the truth will out. They may never have been meant to be linear.

“William James describes the impossible attempt to introspectively examine our own consciousness as ‘trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.’” – Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read.

How about your creative experience? As you travel the writerly path, what have you learned?

Procrastination and Writer's Block by Nancy L. Eady

Procrastination is my constant companion.  After all, why put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow?  The problem with procrastination is that sooner or later the deadline arrives anyhow, and you still are faced with the necessity of completing the task on time.  Writer’s block is similar.  

Over time, I have picked up a few “favorite” tasks to do in procrastination mode.  On my list of necessary evils, housework falls somewhere between doing my tax returns and getting a tetanus shot, unless I have a major deadline.  Then housework shoots right up to the top of my list of priorities.  My apartment in college was cleanest right before exams.  

Reading is a good thing to do any time, but it definitely works for procrastination purposes.  Even better than reading for procrastination on a writing project is something like a computer game, which puts me at a computer with my fingers moving, giving me the illusion of accomplishing something.  Googling random pieces of information on the computer are another procrastination tool.  

Sadly, no matter what side efforts I drift into, the river of time pushes forward, and the deadline continues to approach.  If the deadline involves writing, as for me it usually does, whether inspired or not, I reach a moment where I must force myself into a chair, put my fingers on the keyboard and start producing words.  Even if what comes out is boring twaddle, at least I have something to work with and edit.  Sometimes, the words I thought were the absolute worst as I was writing them turn out to be much better than expected.

Have you any good tips for breaking either writer’s block or procrastination cycles?  I could certainly use them. 

 

Murder Methods, Revisited by Edith Maxwell

I'm pleased to welcome Edith Maxwell as today's guest blogger! 

Thanks for inviting me back to Writers Who Kill, Annette! I’m delighted to hang out here for a pre-celebration of A Poisonous Pour, the third Cece Barton mystery, which releases on Tuesday.

Seven years ago, when I was a guest here, I took close notice of the name of the blog and wrote about all the ways I had fictionally killed people in my books. Since it’s been a minute, and I’ve had about two dozen more books published in those seven years, I hope you’ll forgive me for revisiting the topic.

In the 2019 post, I offered the following list: 

·         Gun – 3

·         Some form of poison – 7

·         Knife or very sharp object – 7

·         Garrote – 2

·         Strangle – 2

·         Pitchfork – 1

·         Push resulting in fatal injury – 3

Those didn’t include the murder methods in my more than a dozen published short stories at the time (I now have three dozen short crime stories in print, with one that might or might not have won an Agatha Award last night!). 

So how’s my list looking today, with my 38^th book about to release?

·              Gun – 4

·              Some form of poison – 10

·              Biological toxin - 4

·              Knife or very sharp object – 9

·              Garrote – 2

·              Strangle – 3

·              Pitchfork – 1

·              Push resulting in fatal injury – 3

·              Heavy object – 6

·              Allergen – 2

·              Starvation – 1

·              Botched surgery – 1

·              Smothering - 1

Note: Some of my books include more than one murder, and the list includes two written but not yet published Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, thus the numbers in the list add up to more than 38. 

I’m clearly fond of killing people with poisons and biological toxins. I closely follow any workshop or conference session presented by Luci Zahray, the pharmacologist who goes by The Poison Lady. She’s great at suggesting commonly available drugs and plants that are lethal.

I also like to use heavy objects (including bocce balls), but I was surprised, when I tracked down all the murder weapons in my books, that I used guns four times. One of those was in my first mystery, Speaking of Murder. Another time was in the first Country Store mystery, and two were in my historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries. I don’t know anything about guns – neither do my protagonists – and I’m not really interested in learning. It’s no surprise that having a gun as the murder weapon came early in my career as an author. Now it just seems too easy.

Sometimes the title gives away the murder weapon. In Strangled Eggs and Ham, I kind of had to use strangulation to kill the victim. Four Leaf Cleaver? You got it. Also for Deadly Crush, Cece Barton #2, where the victim is found crushed under an auto shop lift. These books are centered in the wine industry in northern California, and the crush is also when they extract the juice from the grapes. Double meanings are always good in a title. 

That brings us to A Poisonous Pour, the new book. Want to guess the murder weapon? You’ll have to read the book to learn which poison. 

Readers: What’s your favorite fictional way to knock someone off? I’ll send one commenter a copy of the new book. 

At the Memorial Day weekend classic car show and wine tasting, northern California wine bar owner Cece Barton witnesses heated discussions with local vintage car owners and overbearing association director Regan Greene. After Regan is later murdered, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing to clear the name of Cece’s elderly but muckraking neighbor. But they’ll have to act quickly to investigate various suspects in the case before the trail goes sour. 

Maddie Day writes the Cece Barton Mysteries and other gentle and historical mysteries; as Edith Maxwell, she writes Agatha-Award nominated short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Writing is Like Running

By Kait Carson

Many of you know I’m a runner. More when I lived in Florida than now. Maine has these things called hills. Something I never trained on and tend to avoid. Still, come spring and early summer, I’m out there running the circumference of our mowed field. On the hill. I should know better.

My running days began in the 1970s. I belonged to The Book of the Month Club, and I bought Jim Fixx’s book, The Complete Book of Running. I ran daily until Son of Sam appeared and murdered women in Kissena Park, six houses from mine and home to my running trail. Screech. Slide to a stop. After Sam’s capture, I took up the sport again, and then we lost Jim Fixx. Running might not be all it was cracked up to be, and I stopped.

Then I started working for lawyers. I’m sorry. I know several of my blogmates are Bar members, but truly, lawyers were the proximate cause of my rededication to the sport. Legal work is stressful. Running provided an outlet, and all the law firms I worked for fielded teams for the Miami Corporate Run. I never was much for racing. Not that I’m not competitive. Boy howdy, I am. It’s just that I’m SSSSSLLLLLOOOOWWWW, but preparing for and running is a great team-building exercise and it’s fun. Group suffering is the best.

What in the Sam Hill (who was Sam Hill? Anyone know?) does any of this have to do with writing? Oh, more than you think.

The hardest part of running isn’t ticking off miles. It’s lacing up the shoes. The hardest part of writing isn’t accumulating the word count. It’s butt in chair, fingers on keyboard. Once you get past the prelims, clear sailing. Not.

As with running, writing, at least my writing, proceeds in fits and starts. New ideas bring endless hours of plotting, pounding out chapters, working up characters, red herrings, clues, and research. Then, here comes the hill. Life gets in the way, or something doesn’t flow, or, and this happened to me twice, a key bit of story changes or disappears and it’s back to the drawing board. The setbacks may be temporary or permanent, but either way, they slow you down, or, in the case of losing a publisher (or agent) put your writing life on hold.

Then there are the days, weeks, and months when the ideas flow and you wish for a second set of hands to pound the keyboard. In running, this is called the runner’s high. It’s a real thing, and it is directly analogous to a writer’s high. When it’s good, it’s good, and the author knows it. Those are moments to crave and cherish. True confessions—I’m in one of those periods now, and I wish I could bottle it.

As an aside, lawyers figured in my writing life as well, and they are the reason I use a pen name. You see, in my first book, I killed off a lawyer. The book was a work of fiction, but after twenty years in the legal field, people knew me, and the firms I worked for, and I wanted to avoid the ever-popular game of pin the crime on the attorney!

How about you? Where are you in your writing life? Smooth sailing, on hold, or laboring up the hill?

Kait Carson writes the Hayden Kent Mysteries, set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and is at work on a new mystery series set in her adopted state of Maine. Her short fiction has been nationally published in the True Confessions magazines and in Woman’s World. Kait’s short story, “Gutted, Filleted, and Fried”, appeared in the Silver Falchion Award nominated Guppy Anthology Hook, Line, and Sinker. Her nonfiction essay was included in the Agatha Award-winning book Writing the Cozy Mystery. She is a former President of the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, a member of Sisters in Crime, and Guppies.

 

Life in a New House by Nancy L. Eady

Life in a new house is fun, once you overlook the whole unpacking gig. Even so, I’ve had to make adjustments.  

Remotes that are more than a simple on/off switch with up and down arrows to move the channels on the TV defeat me. Worse than that, they conspire against me. I can hit a sequence of keys on any remote more complicated than the aforesaid on/off model and nothing happens. My husband hits the same sequence of keys on the same remote and the thing does somersaults to keep him happy.  The new TV’s remote has forty-two buttons. Even though Mark showed me what to do before he went to bed last night, it was a lost cause. I was trying to finish an episode of "New Tricks."  All the remote revealed was a show about a colonial ship buried in Manhattan.

The charge cord for the laptop is still missing.  I desperately need it for my writing.  We have managed to locate every other charge card for every electronic device any of us own, as well as a few extra. Those last will be placed with honor into the graveyard for lost cords, otherwise known as the second drawer in my nightstand. That’s probably where they came from in the first place when we packed up the old house. Some of those cords have been with us since the mid-90’s.  

Even after five years, I never was certain which light switch went with which light in the old house, so why I thought I’d learn them here in two weeks is anybody’s guess. At least in this house, every switch you touch turns something on or off. In the old house, the electrician put in a lot of three switch switchboxes, every one of which had at least one switch that did nothing. I never did learn why. 

The irrigation system is a great feature to have, but it has a learning curve too. I bumped something on it by mistake the other day, lost the program, and tried to reschedule it. Wonder of wonders, it came on at the time I programmed into it. It must have stopped listening to me after that.  When I stepped out of the house three hours later to run an errand, it was still running. 

What adjustments have you made when moving into a new home or apartment? 

The Art of Imperfection by Connie Berry

 

Most of you know I grew up in the antiques trade. My parents taught me things—recognizing silver hallmarks, for example, understanding the process of creating cloisonné, and identifying the brush techniques used in oil paintings. 

I wish I’d paid more attention!

One thing I will always remember is the “lemons to lemonade” technique used by Chinese porcelain makers. When they experienced a drip or imperfection in the glazing process, they often embraced it rather than discarding the piece and starting over. This photo of a small bowl I own shows how a few unintentional drips were turned into a tiny pattern.

Ancient Roman artists viewed perfection as a trait of the gods and would often make small, intentional errors as an act of human humility. This idea carried into the medieval period where master stone carvers incorporated intentional errors into the great cathedrals (usually where no one could see them). In the same period, monks copying Scripture might turn ink spills into small creatures or patterns in the margins of illustrated manuscripts.

What about books? Someone told me once that there’s no such thing as a perfect book. Is it true? I don’t know, but I remember after publishing my first Kate Hamilton novel when a reader contacted me through my website to point out that in one chapter, Kate uses her cellphone to take photographs while several chapters earlier she had surrendered that same phone to the police. Yikes. How did I not see that? How did my beta readers and small army of copy editors not see the mistake either? In another book, I have two Mondays in a row. Good grief.

Well, I’m not alone. Here’s a few famous typos, contradictions, and continuity errors:

*     * In Iliad by Homer (650 – 600 B.C.), Menelaos kills Pylaimenes in combat; however later in the story, Pylaimenes is still alive to witness the death of his son.
·       In Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (1591), a ship sails between Milan and Verona, both of which are landlocked.
·       In Julius Caesar (1599), a clock strikes, centuries before clocks were invented.
·       The so-called “Wicked Bible” of 1631 tells us “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery.” The printers were fined £300 pounds each and their licenses were revoked. Most of the 1,000 copies were destroyed.
·       Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) includes a scene where Crusoe swims naked to a shipwreck but then fills his pockets with useful items found there.
·       Lady Bertram’s pug in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) is a male. Later, however, he is expecting a litter of puppies.
·       In Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlett (1887), Watson’s war wound was to his shoulder. In The Sign of Four (1889), it had mysteriously moved to his leg.
·       In Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1937), the American heiress Linnet Doyle says they met her guardian, Andrew Pennington, at Cook’s Hotel in Cairo. Later her husband says they met him at Shepheard’s, another Cairo hotel—which is a second error since in a third place in the story, we’re told the Doyles stayed at the Mena House Hotel.

I refrain from mentioning more current errors and typos to protect my fellow authors. No one is perfect and neither are our books. Which simply proves we’re human. We could take a life lesson from this. As long as there is life, failures need never be final. In fact, it’s often out of failure that success comes…or at least a great story.

Do you have a story of a mistake or imperfection you turned into something wonderful? 

The Poisonous Pour by Maddie Day: A Review by E. B. Davis

  

Since moving from L.A. to California’s verdant wine country, widowed single mom Cece Barton has gone from Colinas wine bar manager to wine bar owner—with a chaser of sleuthing . . .

It’s Memorial Day weekend and Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley is buzzing with activity. For Cece, business at Vino y Vida is going great, as is her romance with new beau, Benjamin. Meanwhile, Cece’s neighbor, Richard Flora, is stirring up controversy with his newest article, an exposé of Regan Greene, power-hungry director of a valley district organization. Also in the mix is the town’s big classic car show, paired with wine tastings . . .

At the show, Cece spots Regan, who is displaying her restored green ’72 Thunderbird convertible. As Cece pours tastes, she witnesses several heated discussions with Regan—including an argument with wine afficionado and new Colinas hardware store owner Greg Jardis. Otherwise, all goes smoothly—until Sunday brings shocking news. Regan has been murdered . . .

Rumors fly that Richard may have orchestrated the homicide—or even committed it. But Cece knows that’s absurd. And others in Cece’s orbit seem to have discomfiting connections to Regan, from Cece’s employee, Dane, to her winemaking teacher’s sister, Yolanda, to Colinas Mayor Guittierez. And after Yolanda visits the wine bar, Benjamin says he recognizes her from a road race.

Determined to clear Richard’s name, and failing to extract any clues from detectives, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing. But they’ll have to act quickly, before the trail goes sour . . .

Amazon.com

 

A Poisonous Pour is the third book in Maddie Day’s (Edith Maxwell) Cece Barton mystery series. Kensington will release it on April 28^th.

 

I am at a disadvantage because I missed reading the first two books. From the current book, the reader derives that Cece Barton has moved to Colinas, CA, in wine country, after her divorce to be with her twin sister, Allie, a real estate agent. Although Cece is described as a single mother, her daughter is an adult, studying in Japan, so we don’t see much of that aspect in Cece’s character. Cece now owns a wine bar in the center of the historic district housed in an adobe building. Most of the wines she serves are from local wine makers. A big question I have is how Cece managed to own the bar, which was formerly owned by the town, for free—an arrangement somehow orchestrated by Allie. But then, that question may have been answered in a previous book.

 

  

At a town car show where Cece is displaying her 1966 Ford Mustang, she witnesses Regan Greene, the director of a regional organization, have arguments with three people, including one of her two servers at the wine bar, the town’s mayor, and the new owner of the hardware store. Regan is
murdered the following night. When Cece investigates Regan’s office, she discovers that her assistant hated her and doesn’t mind a bit that she’s dead. Eventually, the instrument of the murder is discovered to be poisonous wine, but anyone could have injected poison through the cork so that clue doesn’t eliminate suspects.

 

One character I loved is Cece’s ninety-two-year-old neighbor, Richard Flora, a former journalist who still writes the occasional feature. Cece and he find friendship in their backyard gardens where Cece’s two cats wander. One of Richard’s recent articles focused on Regan because of her clashes with the town government. Richard is at first considered a suspect because of his article, in which a sharp perspective on Regan’s management is apparent, but town detective Kelly Daniell gives him only a brief glance.

 

Henry and Ed are a married couple and friends of Cece’s. Henry owns an art gallery. Ed owns a local diner. Both host venues for Cece to investigate and trade informational tips.

 

Another character I loved is Ouro, a golden retriever, who is owned by JJ, a female friend of Cece’s and a vintage car mechanic. He hangs out at the shop with JJ and protects her at her yurt, where they live. Ouro helps Cece when the villain threatens her.

 

The book was a cozy likeable read with a rich backstory and enough twists that it kept me captivated until the last page. The question that remains, which will motivate me to pick up the next book in the series, is what Cece’s beau Benjamin does for a living. His job is a secret!   

E. B. Davis

Getting Ready to Celebrate Malice Domestic 2026

 by Paula Gail Benson

This year, Writers Who Kill has so much to celebrate at Malice Domestic, which will be held this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland. We are all excited for the recognition being given to our blogging partners. Not only is Annette Dashofy the guest of honor, but also Annette,  Connie Berry, and Marilyn Levinson are Agatha finalists! Many congratulations to our partners and to all the folks who have worked so diligently to prepare and present what has become like an annual reunion party. It will no doubt be glorious!

Ashley-Ruth Bernier

I’m delighted to get the party started with brief interviews from the finalists for Best Short Story and Best Debut Novel. Each year, I’m always impressed with the authors in these categories. They visited yesterday on The Stiletto Gang and today we’ll continue the conversation. Please note that the links will take you to the nominated short stories.

To learn more about these talented authors, just click on their names in the BIOS section and that will take you to their websites.

 

Best Short Story

Six-Armed Robbery by Ashley-Ruth Bernier, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous

Baby Love by Barb Goffman, Double Crossing Van Dine

Lola’s Last Dance by Kerry Hammond, Celluloid Crimes

Boss Cat Rules by Nikki Knight, Malice Domestic Mystery Most Humorous

While the Iron is Hot by Edith Maxwell, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

 

QUESTION: Each of you has chosen a unique setting for your story. How has the setting influenced your plot development?

Ashley-Ruth: Like the vast majority of my stories, Six-Armed Robbery takes place in St. Thomas, Us. Virgin Islands. I’m a 7th generation Virgin Islander, and grew up on St. Thomas. It’s a wonderful place to live and a gorgeous setting in which to grow up. My oldest three kids were born there as well!

I try to highlight some aspect of Virgin Islands life in my stories, and in this one, it’s the fauna. Specifically, the creepy fauna that has terrified many a VI lady for countless generations! Maybe frogs, roaches, iguanas, geckos, and gungolos aren’t scary for everyone, but I know plenty of my countrywomen would agree with me that they aren’t exactly a comforting sight, either.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but we all grew up hearing the same admonition about gungolos. I’m okay with snakes, iguanas, and lizards, but like Sister Alice, I’ll give a gungolo its space every time.

Barb Goffman

Barb: I set "Baby Love" in a small town, which was necessary for the story to work. The premise of the story is that the main character, a PI, has a rich wife who keeps trying to lure her husband into bed so she can get pregnant, but at every turn she's thwarted—all her seductive moves give her husband an idea of where to look next for clues. In order for the wife to be able to keep trying to entice her husband, he needs to not only work from home but to have a current case that keeps him close to home. So I have him hired to find the next-door neighbor's missing dog. The neighbor fears poor little Brody has been stolen to be used as a dogfighting bait dog. (Don't worry; he wasn't.) The husband inspects the neighbor's yard and surrounding area for clues, talks to other neighbors, does online research, and relies on his knowledge of people in the small town thanks to his involvement in the local Kiwanis club. The wife tries to seduce him while he is investigating, approaching him, standing alluringly by their bedroom window, and more.

The story needed to be set in a place with grass and soil, with streetlamps outside homes, where there are friendly neighbors, local online newspapers, civic organizations, and not a lot of traffic (people and cars). All of these aspects of the setting enabled the PI to further his investigation. I also had the town have no known dogfighting, despite the dog owner's fears, which meant the town police wouldn't take the time to search for what they viewed as an escaped dog. That gave my PI free rein to investigate without having to deal with officers working the same case. I also needed the wife to be able to show off her assets, so to speak, so she needed to live in a place where she could stand seductively by her window without fear that someone other than her husband might see her. If "Baby Love" was not set in a small town, where all of these details could be put to work, the story itself would not have worked.

Kerry Hammond

Kerry: My story takes place in what some might call a "seedy" setting. Lola is a dancer at a club, but I don't want my readers to dismiss her as frivolous or inconsequential. I wanted her story to be compelling and I wanted readers of all types to identify with her no matter what she did for a living.

Nikki: My plots grow out of the world of the characters. This story started with Neptune, but he’s part of the larger Vermont Radio Mysteries setting, as the Boss Cat of the small-town radio station. While the murder itself was designed especially so Neptune could witness it from his window, the motivation is something very specific to that little Vermont town. No spoilers, but it relates to the kind of land-use issues I covered years ago when I worked at, yes, a small Vermont radio station. Though, sadly, we didn’t have an amateur sleuth cat!

Nikki Knight

Edith: The setting for "While the Iron is Hot" is a north-of-Boston modest home near the coast that two of the characters never leave. The narrator, Natasha, comes and goes several times. Because she grew up there, she knows where and how to use the surroundings to her benefit. I've also lived in that area for decades, and being familiar with the terrain and the seasons makes the writing come more easily.

Edith Maxwell

 QUESTION: What have you learned from writing short stories that benefits any length or genre of writing?

Ashley-Ruth: Establish the energy of your story quickly, and sustain it throughout. Is it funny and light? Sweet and poignant? Shadowy and suspenseful? Begin in that vein and drop your readers into the mood that will carry them throughout the entire story. I’ve found that this kind of momentum keeps readers hooked and makes for a story that feels connected and complete.

Barb: Short stories require focus. You want to keep driving the plot forward. And you want to keep your writing tight and interesting. To do that, you want to keep reviewing your word choices to see if you can say something more clearly, with more forceful verbs and intriguing adjectives. You want to make your setting do double duty, if possible, not just showing where the story is set but helping to set the tone and move the plot forward. These skills can be put to good use in any genre, at any word length.

Kerry: I’ve learned to be concise and that everything you include in the final product must move the plot or character forward. Readers want a compelling story, not fluff or filler words.

Nikki: Start with the fact line. Whatever the length of the story, if you know the details of the crime, who solves it, and how, you have your roadmap. You can add scenery, and take useful side trips, but as long as you always keep track of the main fact line, you won’t get lost.

Edith: Focus! Whether it's a story of three thousand words or seventy-three thousand, every character, every word, every action needs to mean something and must move the story forward.  Of course, novels have more room than short fiction to explore subplots and secondary relationships. As in a short story, it all needs to be important.

 

Best First Novel

Whiskey Business by Adrian Andover

Murder in the Crazy Mountains by K. L. Borges

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Player Elimination by Shelly Jones

Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg

 

QUESTION: How much of your own background or characteristics are incorporated into your novel?

Adrian Andover

Adrian: There's so much of myself in my novel, Whiskey Business—not so much my life experiences, but rather my emotional center. Even though my protagonist, Reece Parker, leads a life that is different from my own, I draw a lot from my own questions, passions, fears, doubts, ideas, and emotions when I write. I'd say there's a little bit of me in all of the characters. There are no characters that "are" me, but I do believe that when you finish reading the book, you'd understand who I am as a person a bit more. I've always written as a way to express what I'm feeling inside, and some of my loved ones have confirmed that they can feel my spirit in the story.

 

K.L.: A lot! So many little pieces of the story are inspired by actual events in my past that either happened to myself or friends. Many were things I had forgotten about until they bubbled up, clamoring to be included, as I wrote. The protagonist is essentially myself as I would be if I existed in her reality. Write what you know, right?

 

K.L. Borges

Sandra: I’m not a professional soul food chef, though I too was partially raised on the west side of Chicago and teethed on the fare of my Southern forebears. Like Savvy Summers, I’m a second generation migration of the Great Migration, when some six million souls made their way from the segregated South, to urban areas in the North and West.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Shelly Jones

Shelly: Like Wren and her nerdy board gaming besties, I too am very nerdy and love board games. I own a few hundred (not an exaggeration) and often have gaming weekends with my friends (when I’m not holed up writing away…). At the same time, I am very introverted and need a lot of down time to process and regroup, even after interacting with my closest friends (ala Charlie in my books). I also live in a small college town, like my books, and love being able to walk down to the bookstore/coffee shop and the farmer’s market each weekend. Having grown up in a much larger city, small town living is definitely for me.

 

Michael Rigg

Michael: Though I no longer practice law, I’m still an active member of the bar. I’m not a medical professional, though I’ve been involved with various medical personnel/experts over the years when I was in active practice. My brother is a physician (though now retired, I believe), so much of my medical information comes from him. In terms of personal characteristics, my protagonist is much like me, introverted and duty-bound. My professional career was mostly associated with the U.S. Navy, either active duty, reserve, or as a civilian. So, you’ll find that many of my characters, including the protagonist, have a military background. I might not have the experience to write from the point of view of a different gender/orientation/ethnicity than mine, but I feel fairly comfortable in “writing Navy” or other military branch, where the dedication to mission accomplishment transcends many interpersonal differences/backgrounds. And, at one point in my career, I earned certification as a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner, so I use those personality-types in adding depth to characters/character reactions.

 

QUESTION: How did you determine who your protagonist would be? Will this be part of a series? If so, what is in store for your next novel?

 

Adrian: My protagonist, Reece Parker, was born from the setting of the novel. Before I knew who'd be telling the story, I knew that I wanted to set a cozy mystery in a literary-themed cocktail and mocktail lounge. From there, I figured my protagonist would be a mixologist. Once I had a really good understanding of the setting, I spent a lot of time developing Reece's character, and now I feel like he's a real person.

 

I'm very excited to share that Whiskey Business is part of a series, and the next book is coming out on June 30, 2026. It's called Pour Choices, and it's available for pre-order now. The next installment takes place during an August heat wave in Hope Mills. Reece and the Subplot crew are hosting their first-ever Comedy and Cocktails night. When the comedian they hire tells some jokes that go too far during her set, she's found floating in the nearby Delaware River the next morning. With his best friend Nate tied up in the investigation, Reece commits to figuring out whodunit. I can't wait to share the story with the world in a couple of months

 

K.L.: The whole story started as a very involved daydream spun out during a long car trip, and I absolutely put a fictionalized version of myself into the leading role. Once I decided to put the story into a book, I kept that character the same. Why change horses in midstream?

 

Yes, Murder in the Crazy Mountains is the first in a series of at least three books. In the second book, to be released on October 14th, 2026, we again meet the same main characters, in the same Helena, Montana, dog rescue. This time, they become involved in a shady dog rescue from Butte, following the untimely and suspicious death of a friend who transported dogs for the Butte operation. Bodies pile up, and they find themselves fighting to stay alive long enough to solve the mystery!

 

All the books will be set in this Montana dog rescue and involve the same main characters, with readers able to learn about different aspects of animal rescue and different types of dogs or other animals, as they enjoy fast-paced, suspenseful mysteries that contain enough humor to keep from becoming dark.

 

Sandra: Influenced by the late Barbara Neeley’s protagonist sleuth in her quarter of Blanche White novels, I wanted to write a mature protagonist who was shrewd, smart, sexy, and as her nickname suggests—savvy.

 

Shelly: While Player Elimination revolves mostly around Wren Winters, it was important to me that she had friends who supported her and added to solving the mystery. Just like in a board game, the interaction between players is important and I wanted to pay homage to the idea of gathering around the table to play together by having my board gaming besties gather clues and share them out. Each character contributes in a meaningful way to the mystery and to each other’s lives, so that really their friendship is the heart of the story. Player Elimination is book one in the Wren Winters series, followed by Murder, She Rolled and Game Over, both of which are available now. I’m nearly finished with the first draft of my next novel, which is the beginning of a new series about a former medical examiner who moves back to her Catskill Mountain hometown and takes a job at the local community college when her sister dies unexpectedly.

 

Michael: I’ve always been fascinated by medico-legal (forensic) issues and procedures in crime solving, so I determined that my protagonist would be a Coroner, if possible. Without going into a lot of detail, the Louisiana Coroner System is unique. The Coroner is responsible for death investigations (autopsies) in designated cases, coordinating sexual assault examinations, and being involved in the mental health (commitment) process. That diversity provides wide latitude for a writer to craft twists and turns in a novel, which is why I settled on Louisiana/New Orleans as the location for my novels. Voices of the Elysian Fields is the first novel in a series. The second novel, Shadows of Frenchmen, is scheduled for release by Level Best Books on May 5, 2026.

 

Short Story Authors’ BIOS

 

Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier’s work appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023, and other esteemed anthologies. Originally from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Ashley-Ruth writes mysteries highlighting the vibrant culture of her home. Ashley-Ruth is a 2022 winner of the North Carolina Writers Network's Jacobs-Jones award, a 2023 Short Mystery Fiction Society Derringer finalist, a Killer Nashville Claymore finalist, a 2024 recipient of Mystery Writers of America's Barbara Neely grant for Black mystery writers, and a 2026 Agatha and Derringer Award nominee. THE BUSH TEA MURDER is her first novel-length work. She currently lives with her family and teaches first grade in Apex, North Carolina.

 

Barb Goffman has been a finalist for major short story crime-fiction awards fifty times, forty-seven for writing and three for editing. She’s won the Agatha four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Readers Award once each. She’s also won the Derringer for editing, and in 2024 the Short Mystery Fiction Society awarded her the Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Barb works as a freelance editor, often focusing on cozy and traditional mysteries. She also is an associate editor at Black Cat Weekly.

 

Kerry Hammond decided to give up the practice of law to commit crimes—on the page. She is a two-time Agatha Award nominated author whose short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, and Sisters in Crime. One of those stories was chosen for inclusion in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Amor Towles. Her love of travel means that her stories often take place in foreign locales she has (or wants to) visit, or while her characters are enroute to their next adventure. She’s a huge fan of the subtle surprise and is happiest when her readers don’t see the ending coming. She lives in Denver with her husband, who is her favorite travel companion. Kerry also writes downloadable Murder Mystery Party games at BlameTheButler.com

 

Nikki Knight (Kathleen Marple Kalb) is an author/anchor/mom…not in that order. The Agatha-nominated author of short stories and novels, she’s also a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award-winning anchor of New York City's #1 weekend morning show on 1010 WINS Radio. Her work includes fourteen mysteries across four series, and short stories in top mystery magazines, anthologies, and online, with recognition in National Excellence in Storytelling, Black Orchid Novella, and Derringer competitions. Active in writers’ groups, she is a Marketing and Communications Liaison on the National Board of Sisters in Crime, and a past VP of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and NY/Tri-State SinC. She and her family live in a Connecticut house owned by a large calico cat.

 

Agatha-winning and Macavity-nominated author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she authors the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. She also wrote two Lauren Rousseau Mysteries. Maxwell lives north of Boston with her beau, their sweet cat Martin, and her organic garden; she blogs with the other Wicked Authors and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

 

Debut Authors’ BIOS

Adrian Andover is the author of Whiskey Business, his Lefty Award-winning and Agatha Award-nominated debut novel and the first entry in the Mixology Lounge Mysteries series. In 2020, Andover was living alone in a 200-square-foot studio apartment at the height of the pandemic when he found a joyful respite in cozy mysteries. Not seeing many gay men represented in the genre, he set out to write his own. When he's not reading, writing, revising, or publishing a story, he enjoys taking long walks, attending live music events, spending time with friends, and tasting craft cocktails around his chosen hometown of Asbury Park, NJ.

 

Born and raised in Idaho, K.L. Borges moved to Montana over thirty years ago. She and her husband raised their three children there, alongside a series of herding dogs. K.L. Borges was a math teacher at a private Billings high school (Go, Rams!) for a decade, following an earlier career as an environmental engineer. Borges is an active volunteer in the animal rescue community of south-central Montana, a member of the Billings Gem and Mineral Society and is a member of Sisters in Crime. She and her husband can often be found enjoying the Montana outdoors with their two blue heelers. Murder in the Crazy Mountains is her first book; it has been nominated for an Agatha Award.

 

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of three award-winning novels. The River Where Blood is Born (American Library Association Black Caucus Award), Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him (Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction)and Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes (won the Malice Minotaur Award and is a finalist for the Edgar and Agatha Awards). Savvy Summers and the Po’boy Perils releases in July 2026. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works are widely published and produced. She coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her professional recognitions include the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Globe Soup Story Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts.

 

Shelly Jones (they/them) is a professor at a small college in upstate New York, where they teach classes in transmedia storytelling, the mystery genre, and writing. A Pushcart nominee and Best Microfiction finalist, their creative works have been published in F&SF, Apex, and elsewhere. Their novel, Player Elimination, was nominated for the 2026 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. When they aren’t grading or writing, Shelly can often be found hiking in the woods or playing a board game while their cats look on.

 

Michael Rigg, an attorney for more than four decades, writes mysteries and thrillers set in two very different locations: Virginia Beach (where he lives) and New Orleans (which he visits as often as possible “for research,” including participation in three Mardi Gras Krewes). He is a retired Navy Judge Advocate and a retired civilian government attorney, formerly working for the Department of the Navy Office of the General Counsel. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and both the Sisters in Crime national organization and its Southeastern Virginia Chapter—Mystery by the Sea.