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.

I am an Imposter.

By Kait Carson

Imposter syndrome: a psychological condition that is characterized by persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Okay, it’s not quite that bad. Just a temporary crisis of conscience. I hope. Or maybe it’s a simple case of underachievement. Hard to know. I have writer friends who produce multiple books in a year. One writes three to four well-written and edited books a quarter. Yes. A quarter. I take at least a year to write one book, and that doesn’t include editing. So, right now, I’m feeling less than writerish. Or am I?

I’ve got the first book in a new series out on submission and am midway through the fourth book in an existing series. Clanging around on my to-do list are the partial rewrites and final edits of a fun new series set in Key West. Not too shabby.

Any writer will tell you that imposter syndrome is a thing. I suspect any creative will tell you the same. When I worked in the legal field, we used to say we were only as good as our last billable hour. It’s similar as a creative, but different. No profession has guarantees, but the creative ones are more tenuous. A creative is always working on spec. The space between submitting a finished work and its acceptance or rejection gives birth to imposter syndrome. It matures with some measure of success when you have to do it all over again. Scary stuff.

Every creative overcomes it in their own way. In the words of Brene Brown, “You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both.” When I realize I’m wallowing in imposter syndrome, I do three things. First, I enlist the help of one of the most prolific and successful writers of our time, Stephen King, and re-read his book On Writing. It always gives me energy and perspective. Second, I make a list of what I have accomplished. Third, since we’re talking about writing, I put my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. Works every time.

What about you? How do you overcome your fear that you just can’t do it again?

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.

 

Is Your Creative Gas Tank Running On Empty? Try Switching Gears By Julie Rowe

My mother has a saying, “Switching gears is as good as a rest.” I took this bit of wisdom to heart in 2022. I’d written three romantic thriller series in a row and found myself feeling rather blah about writing another one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the thriller, suspense, and mystery genres. I love giving my protagonists a challenging mystery to solve, and I love putting them in danger while they do it. I have a fan base with expectations for a new thriller series, and I sure didn’t want to let them down.

 

However, I also recognized that it was time to do something different. I needed to change things up and switch gears. I needed to incorporate something new (to me) into my next series. I was low on creative energy, and the usual things (setting writing goals and being accountable to other writers) I did to jump-start my motivation to write weren’t working. Even brainstorming plots and characters with my writing friends didn’t help, until I added something new. A genre element that gave my main protagonist a whole new set of problems to deal with.

 

I added a paranormal element.

 

As soon as the thought occurred to me it was immediately followed by, but paranormal is dead. It’s over-done. I’ll lose readers. Unless…I put my own spin on it. I write damaged heroes. Men who’ve gone through horrible circumstances and come out the other side with long-lasting trauma. They’re flawed, stubborn, and sarcastic. The essence of my protagonists, because my female characters are often the same, didn’t need to change. What needed to change was the rules of the world they lived in.

 

What really got my creativity rolling was when my daughter asked me to write a vampire story. I rolled my eyes at that request, but then a thought occurred to me. What if I flipped the expected qualities of a vampire? Instead of a rich, powerful, and confident man who used his longer life span wisely, my vampire protagonist was the opposite of those things. Broke, shunned, and living in a well of regret. What if his hunger for power had resulted in the deaths of his wife and son, and he decided to punish himself for the rest of his very long life? What if there are only a few vampires, and becoming a vampire is only possible if the prospect has a very specific and rare gene?

 

If the greater world discovered them, one of two things would likely happen. One, they would be experimented on and used to find a way for everyone to become virtually immortal. Which would be a disaster. Most vampires become paranoid, obsessive compulsive, and controlling. Some of them lose their sanity entirely. Human beings were not designed to live for hundreds of years. Two, they’d be forced to become super-soldiers and die fighting in some stupid war.

 

The result of these what if questions is my new series, Sinners Never Die. The first book, Sinner’s Secret has this for a short pitch:

 

Bazyli Breznik used to rule the world, but now the centuries old vampire is at the bottom of the food chain. He’s broke and drives a yellow cab in NYC. He sleeps in the trunk. He’s an alcoholic. His only friends are drunks. He’s a murderer and believes he’s the most evil creature on earth. He’s wrong.

 

Here are some of the reviews from readers, old and new:

 

“Sinner's Secret by Julie Rowe offers a surprising twist on the well-worn vampire/supernatural/romance story. Thanks in large part to its main characters who are a far cry from the standard 'too beautiful to be real' male and the 'tough, but unable to trust female cop'. Julie Rowe avoids the cliches and instead gives us a story where the hero and heroine are full-bodied characters.” — Tracy Henshaw (Reviewer), NetGalley.

 

“I thought I had set vampires aside, but that was so wrong because now Julie Rowe has ventured into vampire fiction! As soon as I read the blurb, the anticipation began to build.
Readers, the anticipation was correct. This book was worth the wait! Baz is a beautifully imagined vampire. There is no bite followed by a dead, cold, hard body. There was an auto-immune disease, and I imagine many can relate to that. Baz is the curmudgeon you love- think Jason Momoa crossed with Clint Eastwood, being a Julie Rowe plot, there are plenty of exciting scenes (explosions and violence) as well as the other kind of exciting scenes. Nika was a perfect heroine to go along with Baz’s hero. His cousin and mom promise to be entertaining in a second story. I cannot wait for book two!” Reading Obsession (Educator), NetGalley.

 

“Legit a great action packed read for anyone wanting a different kind of vampire novel with some added in cop drama!” Miranda Austria, Reviewer NetGalley.

 

Switching gears creatively has made writing fun for me again, and I think that’s transferred to the page (many of the reviews mention how funny the characters are). When I’m done with this series, I will probably look for a new gear to switch to then.

 

Full-time author and workshop facilitator, Julie Rowe’s first career as a medical lab technologist in Canada took her to the Northwest Territories and Fort McMurray, Alberta, where she still resides. She loves to include medical details in her romance novels, but admits she’ll never be able to write about all her medical experiences because, “Fiction has to be believable”.

Can An Old Dog Learn New Tricks? By Kim Herdman Shapiro

Perhaps I should start this off with a quick correction. I should clarify that I am not an old dog. I am a mature canine. That sounds much better. A mature canine who has spent several decades away from the world of writing.

 

After working as a journalist for many years—some of which are chronicled in my book, Gelato with The Pope, I found myself in the aughts, newly married and the caretaker of two small children. Life as a new mom is like jumping in the deep end: a lot of frantic splashing around as you attempt to keep yours—and everyone else's—heads above water. Writing was wiped off the horizon. Survival was the only thing on my mind.

 

But time passes. With children, there is that terrible moment when you look up and realize there will be no more early morning cuddles in bed. Mom has become, if not redundant, then certainly not as essential as she once was. For me, this moment occurred during the pandemic. In the ensuing silence, the faint siren call of writing whispered softly in my ear.

 

Writing? Really? After all this time? I was rusty. Very rusty. And the world of journalism had changed dramatically from the one I had known. Did I dare attempt something new? Now, as I was staring the possibility of AARP membership right in the face?

 

Reading mysteries has been one of the literary constants in my life. From my childhood days of the Bobbsey Twins and the Happy Hollisters through to Agatha, Josephine Tey, Dorothy L. Sayers, and more modern-day favorites like Louise Penny. Surely, I had read enough mysteries to be able to write one myself!

 

But how, exactly, did one do it? I sifted through the various plotting formats - from the Hero's Journey to the Seven Point Plot Structure and the Three Act Method—before settling on Save the Cat! I like the way those 15 beats mark out the major turning points of the plot as well as structure the rising and falling tension throughout the book. I picked up a 4x4 piece of offcut plywood from Home Depot, bought a whole bunch of brightly colored sticky notes and a black marker, and started to build my outlining board. Painfully slowly, the sticky notes began to fill up with more and more text until I finally had the bones of a 40-chapter mystery staring back at me.

 

Next was Scrivener and Scapple. Scrivener gave me a way to transpose the scrawled sticky notes into chunks of fiction. And Scapple gave me a place to work out the complicated trail of red herrings and clues I scattered throughout the book.

 

So I had it. My 79,000 words of a traditional mystery. I found an editor and began revisions. Then it was time to start submitting to agents. Right off the bat, an agent requested the entire manuscript. I was thrilled, already picking out my outfit for the Edgar Awards banquet. I never heard from her again. Rinse and repeat this several times, each time my heart pricking at the request, followed by the slow and steady realization that I was not what they wanted. I blinked and two years had gone by. My mystery manuscript was still homeless.

 

This is the point where being a mature canine has its benefits. Twenty years previously, I would have probably railed against these agents and their inability to see the masterpiece in front of them. But mature canines have been around the block. Life has jostled us, sometimes roughly, over umpteen hurdles. We know, all too well, how easily things can get f@#ked up. Might these agents be right? That my manuscript was still not ready?

 

Two years in and with the help of a writer friend, I switched the whole novel from third person to Deep POV first person. And then rewrote it using the verité style of prose that had made me successful as a columnist. Things suddenly clicked. I was doing what I was good at, but tweaked and in another format. Rather than learn a new trick, I had reworked an old one. The email I had been waiting for finally landed in my inbox. My mystery series, The Wynter Island Mysteries, and the first book in the series, The Raven's Cry, had found a home with Level Best Books.

 

So, can an old dog learn new tricks? Perhaps the question should be: do we need to? After all, we mature canines have accumulated a fair number of tricks over the years. Perhaps we don't need new ones as much as we need the inspiration to use our old ones in new ways. Les Brown, Ohio politician and motivational speaker, said, "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream"[1]. I would never have believed I could start a new career as a mystery author at my age. And yet here I am, apparently chock full of tricks I had no idea I could still use.

 

Kim worked as a journalist in Canada for many years, with experience in both print and broadcast journalism. Her book, Gelato with the Pope, highlights her time as a syndicated travel columnist in the Nineties.

In addition to her syndicated column, she has written feature articles for various publications, edited a monthly children's publication in British Columbia, and had her poetry published in Do Whales Jump at Night? A Canadian Anthology of Children's Poetry. She won a Microsoft Network award for Footloose, one of the first digital e-zines on the internet.

The Raven's Cry is the first book in her new mystery series, The Wynter Island Mysteries. It is based in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and follows a journalist seeking a new beginning after undergoing trauma in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, her troubles follow her when the body of her ex washes up on an island beach. Book II, The Loon's Song, is due to be released in Spring 2024 from Level Best Books.

 

---

[1] 1992, Live Your Dreams by Les Brown, Chapter 3: The Power To Change, Quote Page 75, William Morrow and Company, New York. (Verified with scans)

How My Apparel Sales Career Led to a Writing Gig By Susie Black

My wise nana always said things rarely turn out the way you think they will, but they do happen for a reason. I had always envisioned a career as a journalist, but life had other plans. Right after my college graduation, our family had an emergency while my apparel sales rep dad was at a trade show in Atlanta. When no one from his companies could cover for him so he could attend to the emergency, Dad asked me to help. Despite having absolutely no background or interest in his business, this was my dad, so of course, I said yes. After giving me a half-hour crash course in how to sell ladies’ apparel, Dad left me alone to muddle through running the trade show. When he returned three days later, he was taken aback at how many orders I’d written. To my utter astonishment, he offered me a job as a sub-rep. Graduate school didn’t appeal to me and the opportunities for women in journalism at the time were few and far between. So, I accepted Dad’s offer, and the adventure of a lifetime began.

 

Fate brought me to the rag biz because I was destined to write about it. Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales and merchandising exec. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal that chronicles the quirky, interesting, and often challenging people I’ve encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. The journal entries are the foundation of all my writing. As a female who has succeeded in a historically male-dominated industry, it was important to me to write about the apparel business from a woman’s point of view. All of my characters are based on real people, and the central characters are all strong, successful women who have beaten the odds. Holly Schlivnik, the main character in the series, is based on me with some poetic license taken, of course. The stories all take place in the fast-paced, at times cutthroat Los Angeles ladies' swimwear industry.  

                                                                       

The most critically important skill a sales exec must have to succeed is to be a good storyteller. Fortunately, I’ve been telling stories since I learned how to talk. Since I’d never written a novel before, the only thing I knew to do was to apply the same story-telling skills I’d successfully used hawking bikinis to writing a tale.

 

One thing I’d been told over and over as a sales exec was to know your product inside out. I heard the same thing when I started writing cozy mysteries: write what you know. If you don’t know it, either do the research and learn it or don’t dare to write it. Whether you’re an author or a sales exec, you’re selling yourself, and readers, like buyers, can sniff out a phony in a heartbeat, and then you and your story are toast. So, where did my story ideas come from? I paid attention to the mantra. Write what you know. With a dollop of imagination, a pinch of angst, and a decades-long career chocked to the gills with juicy characters, I had more stories in my daily journal than time to write them.

 

I came to write in the cozy mystery genre because I love solving puzzles. My parents would certainly confirm I have always asked a lot of questions, and I am naturally curious (some narrow-minded people say I am nosy…go figure…LOL). So, writing mysteries was the natural next step for me to take. Who could push a sales exec to dream of murder and mayhem? Who else but a buyer? After completing a rather challenging conversation with an important, but difficult customer, I silently wished her a slow and painful death as I imagined how good it would feel with my hands around her scrawny neck, squeezing the life out of her. While the notion of knocking off annoying customers was wildly appealing, a horizontally striped prison uniform would make my petite body look like it was the product of a barbershop pole and a fire hydrant having a child. The viable alternative? Writing humorous murder mysteries set in the Los Angeles garment center. Brilliant and cathartic! In one fell swoop, eliminate a pain-in-the patootie buyer, avoid life in prison, and still get the order. It doesn’t get any better than that.

My life has come full-circle by leveraging a sales career into a writing gig. My advice to anyone planning a second act? Trust your gut, believe in yourself, never stop saying what if, don’t let anyone crush your dream, and always remember that regret is the worst human emotion as it is the one we can usually do little or nothing about. 

 

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector, Spanish speaker, and dedicated daily walker. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect.

Part of My Brain is Always Writing By Mary Ann Miller

My debut novel was released March 21, 2023, and in April I held a book launch party. I had no idea how many people would attend and was pleasantly surprised to see 75-80 family and friends show up. Of course, it was a nasty, cold, windy, sleeting afternoon in Chicago and maybe the free wine and dessert was the real reason for such a good turnout. In any event, several people told me that they didn’t realize I was a writer and how long had I been writing and where do my ideas come from. All standard questions, but it reminded me that part of my brain is always writing, searching for that one oddity that will make a character or situation stand out.

 

For example, I drove my niece to the airport this morning and as we sat at a stoplight, I noticed Winter Garden, my Florida hometown, is holding a fair. The kind with a Ferris wheel, cotton candy, and the bottle ring toss. In the area in front of the fair, where the cars eventually will park, was a field filled with cows. I’ve seen them there before, but what flashed through my mind was – there’s a novel in this scene. My niece’s observation was – are they going to leave the cows there during the fair? Who’s going to scoop up all the poop?

 

Even though we saw the same thing, my brain instantly wrote a book.

 

Another time, my husband, Mike, and I were heading home from the grocery store and in front of us was a very large man on an orange motorcycle. He wore an orange t-shirt, orange shorts and an orange bandana and on his feet were orange clogs. His helmet was orange with black trim and an orange backpack was strapped onto an orange saddlebag. Mike’s comment was – I like orange, but that’s too much. My thought was – a killer hiding in plain view.  He will make it into a novel someday.

 

Many writers, including myself, have driven somewhere only to get there and realize it’s not where we wanted to go. That’s because part of the brain is thinking about a scene in a book, a character who isn’t doing what we want them to do, an upcoming deadline, what to post on social media, an author book club zoom, any number of tasks that need to be done. Sometimes, my head hurts by the end of the day and it’s not because I didn’t drink my caffeine. There’s only so much room up there, and between life and writing, the space that my brain occupies is completely full.

 

Mary Ann Miller is a debut author, currently living in Florida with her husband, where she is working on the second novel in the series. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northern Illinois University and earned a paralegal certificate with Roosevelt University. Miller is a member of MWA, ITW, and Sisters in Crime and when not writing, can be found reading poolside or hosting family and friends fleeing the cold winters of the north.

 

https://oceanview-publishing.webflow.io/authors/mary-ann-miller

How Writing is Like Riding a Bicycle? by Kait Carson

Hi Peeps! I love Peeps, and since it’s spring and they are beginning to appear in stores, I thought I’d throw that in. By the way, after years of scientific testing, yellow chick Peeps are the best. So are discounted books.

 

To celebrate the re-release of Death by Sunken Treasure, I’m offering Death by Blue Water at $0.99 for a limited time.

 

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

 

You might have noticed that 2023 has been a banner year for me in terms of publication. Two novels, two anthologies, and one serial novella after a desert dry seven-year stretch of relative nothingness. How did I do that? Well, to paraphrase a movie title – Kait got her groove back!

 

Writing a novel is hard work and distractions are plentiful. When I lost my job in 2020, I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought I had finally achieved the one thing I had ALWAYS claimed to want. Uninterrupted writing time. Then I took a look at my wanna do list of story ideas and vapor locked. It was long, intimidating, and I didn’t know where to start. Like the dog who chased the car, what did I do now that I caught it?

 

I had five story ideas shouting my name that I’d backburnered while I worked twelve-hour days. Then there was the one I’d begun when I broke my wrist. Where to start? I picked out my favorite idea, noodled around, dug out notes, outlined, sketched characters, toyed with inciting incidents, and then did it all over again with the next idea. Half first chapters filled my Scrivener files. Nothing meshed, nothing flowed. Even blogs became a trial. I’d forgotten how to write. Imposter syndrome, meet performance anxiety.

 

It took a while to figure out the problem. Writing, I discovered, is like riding a bicycle. We all rode as kids, right? Have you tried riding as an adult? Those first few miles are a bit on the wobbly side. Then you hit your stride. Somewhere between mile one and five, you’re even comfortable enough to take your hands off the handlebars and trust your muscle memory.

 

The first book I wrote after my self-imposed hiatus was both fun and torture. Nothing flowed, I’d forgotten the conventions of my genre, and I’d followed so many rabbit holes it’s amazing the book ever saw the end. Writing was the important thing at this point. It didn’t matter that it was lousy, it mattered that words were populating the page. Gradually, somewhere in the middle of the second book, things changed. Words and scenes came, not easily, they rarely do, but cohesively. My characters took over, or I had the sense to listen to them. My forced “if this then what happens next” questions became, “Hey, main character, now what are you going to do?” They didn’t fail me.

 

It's still not easy, but writing now feels right and comfortable. I’m learning to budget my time between new words, edits of old, marketing, and having a blast doing it all. Yep, Kait’s got her groove back.

 

Readers and writers, how do you get your groove back?

Kait Carson is the author of two series set in the steamy tropical heat of Florida. The Catherine Swope series is set in greater Miami, and the Hayden Kent series is set in, and under, the Fabulous Florida Keys. A new series is in the works, the Maine Lodge mysteries, paying homage to Kait’s current state of residence.

Like her protagonists, Kait is an accomplished SCUBA diver, hiker, and critter lover. She lives with her husband, four rescue cats and a flock of conures in the Crown of Maine where long, dark, nights give birth to flights of fictional fantasies.

You can reach Kait and sign up for her newsletter at www.kaitcarson.com.

Best Writing Advice by Kait Carson

Someone recently asked me for my best writing advice. The question gave me pause. Faced with a newbie writer looking for guidance, I felt a heavy responsibility. Whatever I said had to be both attainable and accurate. Thousands of quotes floated through my mind. Write what you know; butt in chair, fingers on keyboard; at that very moment Hemingway’s open a vein and bleed felt like the most honest suggestion! When the haze of possibilities lifted, I gently suggested that the best advice was different for everyone, but the advice that worked for me was get out of your way and write!

 

There is no easy way to write. Well, not for most of us. I do know some authors who sit down and write a book from start to end in a week. They are the exception, though. For the rest of us, it’s like square dancing. Two steps forward, two steps back, and a do-si -o or two before the curtsey.

 

The two steps forward are easy. Those are the words that flow. It’s the back steps that will kill you. That’s when you write those flowing words, and then read a blog that purports to have a better method, or a book about writing faster, or an article about a more efficient story structure, or a…. You get the idea. If you’re like me, you look at what you’ve written, and wonder if trying out xyz will make it better, or easier, or more commercial. That means those flowing words get a rewrite, or your process is revamped. In any event, you fall prey to do-si-do and instead of moving ahead, reinvent the wheel.

 

Here's my advice. STOP THAT! Get out of the way. Put those words on the page, sit, stay, write. There is no magic formula to writing. What works for you, works for you. It may not work for Stephen King or even Hemingway, but they’re not writing your story. You are. Keep learning, of course, use suggestions from others that complement your writing style, but trust yourself first.

 

Writers and readers, do you tend to stick with what works for you or are you always seeking a better way?

Like her protagonists, Kait is an accomplished SCUBA diver, hiker, and critter lover. She lives with her husband, four rescue cats and flock of conures in the Crown of Maine where long, dark, nights give birth to flights of fictional fantasies.

You can reach Kait and sign up for her newsletter at kait@kaitcarson.com

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Finding Time to Write by Kait Carson

I have a daily routine. Do you? Mine is super simple. Vacuum up the stray kitty litter around the house, do my daily affirmations, meditate, update my gratitude journal, then write my aspirational diary entry – complete with photos. I like to look back on the year in pictures. Then it’s time to write, catch up on Facebook and Instagram, and check emails. Every so often Microsoft updates intrude on my best laid plans. I admit, I dread them. One of the recent ones, though, gave me a gift – curated news stories. I manage to sneak in some reading time daily before I move on to other stuff. There’s always something interesting.

 

Today’s must read was an Inc. interview with Richard Branson. I’ve long admired the man – a true adventurer who isn’t afraid to follow his dreams. He’s had an amazing life, marred by little controversy for someone with his very public persona. His Wikipedia page is longer than some books I’ve written. It’s filled with successes and gives honest nods to his failures and heartbreaks. And yes, he’s had more than a few. 

 

Reading his life story makes me feel tired, and like an underachiever. How does he do it? Even at his income level, he’s only got 24-hours in a day, right? My biggest struggle is finding time enough in a day to do everything I have to, much less everything I want to. In truth, finding time to write, even now when it’s my only job, is not easy. The day fills with this and that and interruptions and before I know it, the word count is in three figures, creativity has waned and my energy meter is pegged at zero.

 

Okay, back to the interview. The secret to Branson’s success is do what’s fun and time will expand to accommodate your needs. Fun. Pundits from Confucius to Mark Twain have advocated finding a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. There’s merit in the concept, but not everyone has the luxury.

 

I was fortunate to find the interview in the middle of a long day. I’d closed my writing program after 184 (count ‘em) words and was ready to sign off. Needless to say, I felt defeated. I love this story, and its characters, yet it wasn’t flowing. I knew my beginning, middle, and end and had lots of twists and turns planned, but the actual writing was hard. The last time this happened, I needed to change my point of view from third to first. This time I needed to change my point of view. I’d forgotten the joy of bringing a story to the page, the fun of creativity. Instead of weaving a gorgeous pattern of words, I was making widgets!

 

I can’t wait to get back to my stalled-out story after I finish this blog. Gotta go, words are waiting, Thank you, Sir Richard.

Trails By Mark Leichliter

At sixty, I am an aging, which by nature also means a slowing, if dedicated, trail runner. Struggling to breathe while chugging uphill on a singletrack has, for more than twenty years, proven the ideal morning writing break: still time in my head with book-thoughts and character voices but now forced underneath the focused attention required to avoid tripping over a tree root, misjudging the height of a rock step, or slipping sideways off something as innocuous as a fallen pinecone. Trails, like writing, are littered with hazards. Think about the reader too soon and I’m likely to interfere with characters trusting me enough to talk to me. Fail to think about the reader at all and the pacing becomes as slow as an old man’s uphill jog.

 

I am in the early stages of writing a new book, and reading each day’s production is not unlike scanning the details a trail reveals. Some are obvious—the tree downed by the windstorm last week; the need to allow a larger role for a character whose voice arrives full-bodied and full of innuendo; the deer leg deposited on the trail by a mountain lion or coyote; the necessity for more overt tension to appear in the opening pages to fuel curiosity. Others require greater observation—the appearance of huckleberries hiding on the underside of leaves signaling August has arrived; the dialogue response I wrote unconsciously for a character that reveals her insecure vulnerability; the dust-like smoke lingering in the sun’s morning angle indicating the winds have shifted and the fire burning on the other side of the lake will trouble fire crews; the nagging awareness that a reader will want a chapter break sooner than the voyage of discovery has yet enabled. Signs. Like footprints in the dust of a trail.

 

I still write the first draft of novels by hand. I find something useful in seeing the labor—the clutter in the margins, words scratched out, filling the hole in the paragraph—and all that ink. A slower pace allows greater vision. It is akin to that moment on a familiar trail where the sky becomes visible through the trees atop a ridge and its appearance, for a fleeting second, feels like peering within another universe. Writing at a slower pace and rereading within the inky clutter, I experience daily instances when a character will say something and offer a glimpse into a critical element of their personality or a glance into their past.

 

There is something else about a slower pace and heavy effort that links running and writing: At some turn of a switchback—seldom the same one—my thoughts shift from physical labor and from mental clutter, pain falls away, the lungs fill more readily, and a solution to a book problem arrives. People describe the “runner’s high” or “second wind,” and I can testify that the phenomenon is entirely real. For me, however, it offers more than a shift from awareness of labor to internal peace, it also brings clarity to what I am writing. Sometimes the run only reveals an important question. Often, a scene emerges or I hear a passage of dialogue in my head. Frequently I realize how two seemingly disparate parts of a book are related to one another. Once in a while, I see far ahead, like on this morning, when I forget I am running and I realize that the entire story I am telling must be moved backwards by two years, and that the reader must meet a vital character at three distinct moments in time to achieve both the logistics needed and the moment of vulnerability required for the plot to work. The feeling of clarity while running is not unlike moments at the writing desk when a word appears or a metaphor emerges that disclose important connections in the story that had escaped me. Running by letting the body do the work. Thinking by not thinking.

 

When you live among mountains, uphill runs always mean downhill descents where gravity does the work and labor has a payoff—not unlike the return to the writing desk after five miles of therapy when the pen now seems to possess new energy and lines that began to form among pine scent and trail dust lead to the next page, the next scene, the next chapter.

 

I require demanding physical exertion at some point in my writing day or my mental health—and thus my writing—suffers. In the depths of winter, when snow and ice keep me off the trails, I move my workouts into the gym where the camaraderie of friends is welcome and a different kind of distraction, yet while the workouts are hard and still reset my mind, they seldom offer the kinds of writing revelations a mountain trail presents like gifts rising out of the earth.

 

 

Mark Leichliter is the author of the crime novel The Other Side. Writing as Mark Hummel, his titles include the contemporary literary novel In the Chameleon’s Shadow, the short story collection Lost & Found, and a tragic-comedy Man, Underground is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in October 2023. He is the founding editor of bioStories Magazine (www.biostories.com), a freelance editor, and an active ghostwriter. A native of Wyoming, Mark lives in Montana’s Flathead Valley. You can learn more about his work at www.markleichliter.com.

Being Believable by Abby L. Vandiver

As a writing instructor and coach, people come to me for help when they want to pen their story. And they often find that writing it isn’t as easy as one might have thought. That it is not as simple as just sitting down to do it. Because, yes, there are secrets to writing a good book, and rules. Surprised? So was I when I first started writing. I often said, “who knew there were rules to writing. 

I’ve heard, a time or two, that everyone has a novel in them. And whether that’s true or not, it is imperative for those who plan on writing one to make sure they uncover the secrets of storytelling. Luckily, they aren’t hidden in some obscure place or only available to certain people or even at an impossible cost. All it takes is putting in the time to learn the craft.

In my opinion, a good place to start the learning process when you’re contemplating writing that book you want to pen is to write what you know. An old adage, to be sure, attributed usually to Mark Twain. But certainly, writing what you know is not where you want to end up.

Whatever you write—fiction, non-fiction, or self-help, you want your work to be authentic. Believable. It makes you, the writer, accountable and that is critical in satisfying your reader. When you write what you know, you show first-hand experiences by drawing on your own prior knowledge of things like places, subjects, and cultures. But writing only what you know will limit your reach in what you can write and stifle your imagination. It boxes you in. What is important is to turn that saying around, switch the places of the words “write” and “know.” I think the best advice is to “Know what you write.” And how do you do that?

To reach outside those firsthand knowledge boundaries, writers have to learn more. Experience more. Be more aware. Research is the key. There was a time when publishers would send authors on fact finding trips. And maybe some still do, but with such wonderful inventions like the internet, you now find it possible to write beyond your familiarity and understanding. Take the time to research your work before you even sit down to write. And along the way. Don’t do information dumps or be pedantic or boring, but know enough to be believable.

WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, and internationally best selling author, Abby L. Vandiver, is a hybrid author, being both self and traditionally published. She writes as Abby L. Vandiver/Abby Collette and Cade Bentley. Abby has always enjoyed writing, combining that with her gift for telling stories and love of mystery, she became an author.                                                                                                                                                                Amazon.com

LOCATION, LOCATION, BLOODY LOCATION By Simon Wood

 

People see a hill and think, “What a lovely place to build a home.” I see a hill and think, “What a great place to bury a body.” People see a quiet stretch of shoreline and think, “What a great place for a romantic walk.” I see a quiet stretch of shoreline and think, “What a great place to execute a snitch.” That’s the problem I have with traveling these days. I love visiting new places. I want to see the world. If I didn’t have an explorer’s heart, I never would have discovered my Julie in Costa Rica. Now when I travel, I don’t see locations, I see crime scenes.

 

I’m always on the hunt for a great locale. I say to friends, “You live in a great neighborhood. Where would the best place be to stash a body without anyone seeing me?” My friends are cool with it. They roll their eyes and entertain my fantasies. I’ve stopped asking strangers these questions. For some reason, it scares people. Who knew?

 

I’m not a keen researcher as things go. I like to lie in my stories, but I do like to go location hunting. Accidents Waiting to Happen is set in Sacramento. I’d only been there a couple of months when I got to writing it, so I needed some killing grounds. I rode around the city and its suburbs on my bicycle in search of locations. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I didn’t have much choice there, but having the bike meant I could stop anywhere I wanted to check out. 

 

I live in the Bay Area now. San Francisco isn’t so much of a cyclist’s city, so I do a lot of scouting on foot. For one of the stories in Working Stiffs, I wanted to kill someone on the Embarcadero. So I started at one end and walked to the other poking about. Sadly, I didn’t find anywhere useful but did find a site at Fort Mason. I can’t recommend Fort Mason enough to kill someone (Fictionally speaking that is. I don’t want anyone getting ideas and pointing fingers when it goes pear-shaped. All right?) 

The thing is that I don’t want to talk about the same old locations that everyone else uses in their books. This is especially a problem with the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area. There are plenty of us scribblers around fighting for a fresh perspective on the town, so I really need to get my hands dirty. Just like with methods of killing, writers want to keep it fresh and new for themselves and their readers. Well, I know I do.

 

So I’m always on the hunt for a good location with plenty of originality. It’s another reason I like to write about places outside of my usual stomping grounds. Little known places provide a wealth of killer locales. I have a tendency to go on road trips with Julie and the dog just so that we might check out somewhere I came across in a travel magazine or on TV. I just have to have my hands on a killer location.

 

Don’t be surprised if one day, you sit down next to small yet affable stranger who’ll lean in close and whisper, “Do you know any good places where I can dump a body?” Don’t panic. It’s probably me. Then again, it probably isn’t.

 

Bio: USA Today bestselling author Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist, an animal rescuer, and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated by a longhaired dachshund and six cats. He's the Anthony Award winning author of Accidents Waiting to Happen, Paying the Piper, Terminated, Deceptive Practices and the Aidy Westlake series. His book The One That Got Away is currently optioned for a movie adaptation. He’s a regular contributor to Writer’s Digest and other writing magazines. He also writes horror under the pen name of Simon Janus. Curious people can learn more at www.simonwood.net