Cynthia Varady's Blog

Turning Japanese: Misheard Lyric

Years ago, my husband and I were describing radio stations and how they work to our eight-year-old son. Being a digital native, he had a hard time wrapping his head around the inability to skip songs or listen to anything he wished, as many times as he wanted.

During the lesson in the old-timey days, we started playing music we’d grown up with. Inevitably, Turning Japanese by The Vapors popped up on the playlist. In natural 80s-child fashion, we began singing along and dancing around the kitchen, then came the bridge.

I sang one thing, and my husband sang another. We stopped immediately and began bickering over who was correct. Was it his ‘Psycho Ranger’ or my ‘Cyclone Ranger’?

What we thought would be a quick internet search for a misheard lyric turned to a rabbit hole to a song analysis, which dipped its toe in the pool of casual racism.

Let’s inspect Turning Japanese by The Vapors.

The Misheard Lyric

In 1980, The Vapors released their second single, Turning Japanese, from their album New Clear Days. They felt they had a hit on their hands, and they were right. Radio stations ate it up. It hit the top ten in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In the US, it hit the top-40.

New Clear Days (1980) The Vapors, United Artists.

Upon the album’s LP release, Psyched Lone Ranger appeared on the lyric sheet. However, other releases showed the lyric to be Cyclone Ranger, referencing the 1935 film of the same name about cattle rustlers who go straight, but their reputations precede them.

Cyclone Ranger (1935) Spectrum Films.

Astute viewers will note that neither of the “official” lyrics is what my husband and I were singing. However, we still find ourselves in a quandary. Two original sources for two different lyrics. So, damnit! What ‌the hell is the band singing?

In a tweet from May 2020, someone asked The Vapor’s official Twitter account, “What’s a cyclone ranger?” To which The Vapors responded, “No idea. We prefer Psyched Lone Ranger, which is the actual lyric.”

Ah, success. Wait. What the hell is a Psyched Lone Ranger? Answers beget more questions. Damn you, Internet!

The Song Analysis

Let’s set the nonsense lyrics aside for the moment and see if the broader context of the song will give us some clues as to the meaning of Psyched Lone Ranger.

Being from the US, I had heard that Turning Japanese referred to a British euphemism for masturbation because our eyes get all squinty at the point of climax. Yeah, it’s problematic.

However, that definition is a US invention. The phrase “Turning Japanese” is not British slang for rubbing one out, nor does it have anything to do with the song’s meaning.

Let’s look at the song’s opening lyrics: 

I’ve got your picture
Of me and you
You wrote, “I love you.”
I wrote, “Me too.”

Both the narrator and the person pictured in the image have written professions of their feelings to each other: You wrote, “I love you” / I wrote, “Me too.”

Another reading of the song is of a stalker pursuing their ex. The stalker’s interpretation hinges on the second verse:

I've got your picture, I've got your picture
I'd like a million of you, all 'round my cell
I want a doctor to take a picture
So I can see you from inside as well

‘Cell’ is an interesting word choice. Some interpretations take ‘cell’ to mean a prison cell, which would explain the narrator’s separation from the person in the photo, and reinforces the stalking angle. ‘Cell’ could also refer to a padded cell in a mental institution.

However, if this song hadn’t been released in 1980, the stalking angle would hold more weight. Any of us who have lived through the 80s knows stalking wasn’t considered a crime back then, unless you lived in Scotland, where anti-harassment laws were written as part of Scottish common law under Breach of the Peace.

In the UK, anti-stalking laws didn’t appear on the books until 1997 with the Protection from Harassment Act. However, the UK had laws against telephone and postal harassment with the Telecommunications Act of 1984 and the Malicious Communication Act of 1988.

The US got the drop on the UK when in 1991, California passed an Anti-Stalking Law after actor Rebecca Schafer was shot to death on her doorstep by a crazed fan who had harassed her for months. Sadly, the California law focused more on protecting celebrities than on the average Joe.

A different interpretation of the word cell is a monk’s bedroom, which is strictly utilitarian for sleeping, praying, and self-imposed isolation, unlike a prison or a padded cell. Wherever the narrator is, he’s not having any fun.

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark

The narrator has gone from a partying, sex-crazed, womanizing, sin-lover to involuntary celibate. This feels like the perfect time for an incel joke…Hm…anyway, moving on.

The tone of the song shifts from the first verse to the second. The photo is not enough. The narrator wants more. He wants to see their insides as well. While the reference to an X-ray is benign, it gives the feeling that it’s only the beginning of his obsession. Staring at this picture instead of moving on is turning his world upside down. Contrary to the upbeat music, here is a guy on the precipice of doing something drastic to the person in the photo, the person who has dumped him.

So, what exactly is a psyched lone ranger?Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a psyched Lone Ranger, everyone.

Psyched has a range of meanings, from mentally prepared to intimidate to enthusiastic. A psyched lone ranger can be someone mentally ready for something or prepared to frighten the competition. Coupled with the addition of “avoids,” we see an image of an angry loner who no one wants to be around. His grief sets him apart from his friends and family, and he doesn’t recognize anyone around him. He is a stranger in his own land.

We’ve all been there—dumped and heartbroken, talking nonstop about our ex, crying into our beer. Heartbroken people can be insufferable, but a broken-hearted person on the edge of insanity would be like an amped-up vigilante in a mask, with a derogatorily named sidekick.

I think I’m turning Japanese—The (Racist?) Hook 

David Fenton, The Vapor’s lead singer, wrote in 2021 for Songwriting Magazine about how he penned Turning Japanese. Based on his own suffering love life, Fenton had written most of the song, including the melody, but hadn’t settled on a hook yet. Then one evening, as he fell asleep, the phrase, ‘I’m turning Japanese,’ popped into his head. He wrote it down and presented it to the band the following day.

According to Fenton, the phrase Turning Japanese could have been anything; Turning Cantonese, Portuguese, Beninese, Lebanese. Fenton attempted to create a metaphor that encapsulated how heartbreak and teen angst can make one feel like a foreigner in their own skin. Sometimes we feel like we’re turning into something unexpected. The unexpected transformation they went with was Japanese, which, I suppose, to a bunch of British kids might have seemed as far from the UK as one could get.

Teen Wolf (1985) Atlantic Releasing Corporation

If you read through the lyrics, the chorus is the only place that mentions Japanese. The song isn’t about anything remotely Asian. There isn’t much to support the claim that the song is racially motivated and derogatory toward Asian cultures or peoples. It’s just a terrible metaphor. 

The Riff

The song begins with a musical expression called the Oriental riff. This quintessential riff alerts Westerners that something Asian is about to happen. A gong usually accompanies it, and when you hear it, you can assume something racist is coming.

Sixteen Candles (1985) Universal

The Oriental riff was written for the 1847 stage show, The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin.

The riff is constructed from the pentatonic scale, used heavily in traditional Asian music, and sounds Asian to the casual Western listener, but it is an American invention. Thomas Comer most likely composed the phrase for the Aladdin Quickstep. The original musical expression comprised just the first four notes of what we recognize today. After the first four, the tune could go wherever the composer fancied. Those first four notes built the foundation for the Oriental riff.

Aladdin and his wonderful lampThe Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Aladdin and his wonderful lamp.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1898. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/i...

But it wasn’t until the 1880s that the Oriental riff took hold. The pentatonic scale swept through Western music as the blues rose in popularity. Racial tensions surrounding Asians in America reached a boiling point, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years.

Two years after the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, California Representative Thomas J. Geary proposed the Geary Act, which extended the Chinese Exclusion Act by an additional decade. Not the best legacy.

“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose,” cartoon by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, July 23, 1870.

By the 1920s, the Oriental riff became what we recognize today and has been used in iconic songs like Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, China Girl by David Bowie, and A Passage to Bangkok by Rush, just to name a few. It’s also appeared in a host of movies and cartoons, almost all of which are better off forgotten. There was even a parody response to The Vapors called Turning Hakujin by Steve Dahl and Teenage Radiation. More recently, Asian artists have re-appropriated the Oriental riff, and it appears in the Super Mario Land video game soundtrack, composed by Japanese musician Hirokazu Tanaka.

The Take Away

Turning Japanese is a catchy 80s pop song that rocketed The Vapors to one-hit-wonder fame. Contrary to popular belief, Turning Japanese is a break-up song about a guy who’s slowly going insane over the loss of his relationship. The chorus, which befuddled audiences worldwide, scrambled to give meaning to the nonsense lyrics.

American audiences started the rumor that Turning Japanese meant masturbating and looking Asian while climaxing. This mildly racist idea was most likely fueled by the use of a musical expression, the Oriental riff, which has historically been used in a racist fashion.

Sources

“Actress’s Murder Led to Tougher Anti-Stalking Laws: The killing 25 years ago of actress-model Rebecca Schaeffer has given stars greater protection from obsessed fans” (2014). The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/actress-murder-led-tougher-anti-718274/.

“Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,” (2021). History.com. Retrieved July 4, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/immigr....

Chow, Kate, (2014). “How the ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ Melody Came to Represent Asia.” NPR. Retrieved July 1, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/08/28/338622840/how-the-kung-fu-fighting-melody-came-to-represent-asia

“The Cyclone Ranger,” (1935). IMDB. Retrieved on July 4, 2021, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026253/

“Dadadada-da-da-dun-dun-daa!: The Asian Riff”. Adoption.com: China Adoption blog. February 19, 2007. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012. Retrieved June 28, 2021.

Favorite melodies from the grand Chinese spectacle of Aladdin (1847). Historic New England. Retrieved June 24, 2021, from https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/capobject/?refd=EP001.10.TMP.062

Peter, (2019). “The origin of the “Oriental Riff,” The Aladdin Quick Step. Inside the Musical Mind. Retrieved July 18, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/202107270...

Thomas Comer. “The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection.” John Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and University Museums. Retrieved June 24, 2021, from https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/people/thomas-comer

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Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale!

Hello, Readers!

I’m excited to announce that The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost and The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder, will be available as part of a promotion on Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale!

This is a chance to get my book, along with books from many other great authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading. You will find the promo here starting on July 1, so save the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward this email to the avid readers in your life! Thank you for your help and support! Happy reading!

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All those who sign up as paying members get The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost and The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder for free!

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Folklore, Fiction, and Fresh Reads

Back to School + A Book Sale + 3 Must Read Authors

Hi friends,

I hope this finds you all well and reading something that stirs your soul.

I’ve got a few exciting updates to share—some personal, some literary, and all parts of this wild, wonderful writing journey we’re on together.

I’m Going Back to School!

This fall, I’m diving deep into the world of myth, legend, and storytelling by starting my Master’s in English with a concentration in Folklore at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.

I’ve always been fascinated by the stories we tell to explain the world—and now I get to explore them academically, creatively, and in a community of fellow folklore nerds (if that’s you too, we should definitely talk). Expect to see even more myth, magic, and memory in my future writing!

Book Sale Alert!

To celebrate this new chapter, I’ve put my first two novels, The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost and The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder, on sale for a limited time!

If you love Southern Gothic, ghost stories with heart, or quiet magic tangled up in family secrets, this one’s for you.

Uninvited Ghost (Only $.99 through May 30!)
Clock Tower Murder (Only $1.99 through May 30!)

And if you’ve already read them and loved them, I’d be forever grateful if you left a quick review—it helps other readers discover the books more than you know.

3 Writers I’m Loving Right Now

Books are best when shared. Here are three incredible writers and books I think you’ll love:

The Village Cafe in the Loire by Gillian Harvey

Ambitious Becky Thorne heads to the Loire to evict a grumpy tenant from her inherited café and get her life back on track—only to find that the village, its secrets, and one infuriatingly handsome man might just change everything.

Eleven Letters by Jared Morrison

Tucked in a closet, a lifetime of love letters reminded me that the truest stories—of kindness, courage, and quiet devotion—rarely make headlines, but they’re the ones worth telling.

Secrets, Ghosts and Whispers by Sarah Lewin

When Beth returns to Spirit Town to bury her parents, she never expects to stay—let alone uncover time slips, ghostly voices, and magical secrets that blur the line between past and present as she’s drawn into another mystery that could unravel everything she thought she knew.

Support indie and small press authors. Buy, borrow, review, or just share their work with a friend. Every bit helps keep the stories flowing.

Stay in Touch

If you’ve got book recs, folklore faves, or burning ghost story questions, hit reply—I love hearing from you. And if you’re not already following me, find your favorite social connection on LinkTree, and say hi!

Thanks for being part of this creative journey. I’ll be back soon with more tales, book news, and a sneak peek into my folklore studies.

With gratitude and ghost stories,
Cynthia Varady

Become a Patreon Member (it’s free)

By becoming a free Patreon member, you receive exclusive content, like photos, short stories, and early release chapters.

All those who sign up as paying members get The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost and The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder for free!

Become a Member

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Rolla, Missouri 2025 Tornado

We were never in Kansas…someone should tell the weather.

Last summer, I moved to the small(ish) town of Rolla, Missouri. I say smallish because compared to where I grew up, it seems huge, but compared with actual cities, it’s tiny. Because there’s a university here, there are amenities not offered in towns with similar populations. We have a bowling alley, two hospitals, a movie theater, a water park, several arcades, and a handful of full-sized grocery stores to choose from.

The star shows Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri, which is about an hour north of Rolla.

Overall, it’s a pleasant little town to live in, until tornado season.

Starting in April, the region is beset upon by strong winds, low pressure fronts, and frequent thunderstorms. This weather soup is the perfect recipe for twisters.

Last year, my husband forged ahead to the Midwest while my son and I stayed in Portland, Oregon to finish out the school year. Right on cue, Rolla got its first tornado warning on April 1st. Over the course of the month, the town received four warnings, usually hitting between the hours of 11 pm and 4 am. None of these warning resulted in tornadoes, luckily.

Before embarking on our journey east, my husband and I decided that since we were moving to tornado country, we should at the very least see what we were getting ourselves into. We researched historic tornado maps of the area and happily discovered that a tornado hadn’t hit Rolla in the last 80 years.

Tornadoes by month, by Katie Wheatley from www.ustornadoes.com. Follow the link to watch the progress of tornadoes across the US by month. We’re located that in the bare patch in the lower middle part of Missouri. The geography of the area keeps most of the tornadoes at bay.

Secure in knowing that weather data and everyone we spoke with that tornadoes aren’t really a worry in the area, we bought a house and settled into small town life.

Typical for spring, an alert was sent out for a severe thunderstorm on Friday, March 14. Winds of 60 mph were expected with softball sized hail and torrential downpours. We made sure all the doors and window were locked. Anything that could blow away was brought inside or secured in the yard. We were stocked with candles and all of our flashlight had batteries.

Strong winds battered the town all day, making it hard to drive, much less be outdoors. Then around seven, black, ominous clouds poured across the sky. We all waited for the rain and lightning to begin, but nothing came. The wind got louder and shook the house, then, shortly after 8 in the evening, our emergency radio went off, tell us to take shelter. Next, the tornado siren nearby began blaring.

Minutes after taking this video, we received the tornado warning.

With tornadoes, the usual advice is to take shelter in an interior room, preferably a bathroom inside the tub, if possible, covering yourself with pillows. The pipes help tether the heavy tub to the building and give you a place to hunker in case the roof gets ripped off your home. The big misconception about tornadoes is that people will get sucked up into them. However, these occurrences, once a rarity, are becoming a genuine threat.

Extreme weather is driving more F5 tornadoes with wind speeds peaking over 300 mph and vortexes over a mile wide across the country. These mega storms can level whole towns, killing most anything in their paths. Yet, the largest problem with tornadoes remains flying debris.

Since there are four of us, too many for a single bathtub, we took shelter in the hallway, well away from windows. As the alarms sounded, the rain started. Wind whipped hail against the windows with a force I was sure would shatter them. Then the lights flickered, went off for a moment, popped back on, flickered again, and went out for good. A few minutes later, the wind died down, the sirens quieted, leaving us to listen to the rain pound against the roof.

The Aftermath

A few people on the street had solar powered yard lights. Their batteries charged from the sunny day, popped on, cutting through the pitch of the streets. Fallen tree limbs littered our quiet cul-de-sac. The wind still whipping the winter-bare branches that had remained attached to their trunks.

The next morning, the sky was clear. The sodden ground squelched muddy water up around the soles of our shoes. We lost a few branches from our short-leaf pine in the yard, and the power was still off. Other than that, we had survived the storm unscathed. The town was another matter.

We ventured out the find ice and an ice chest and, to our dismay and awe, found the town in tatters. A little over a 100 yards from our front porch, an EF2 tornado had roared through Lion’s Club Park, downing trees like children’s building blocks. Some were ripped clear from the ground, their roots thick with mud.

A shopping center farther down Bishop Avenue (Highway 63) was leveled. The strong winds crushing the plate-glass windows, sweeping away the contents, leaving nothing by a mangled pile of debris behind. All along the street, power poles were snapped like toothpicks, leaving a third of the city without power.

The Tornado’s Path

The tornado cut a path diagonally through town. It hopped over a couple of blocks on Highway 72 to set down again, hitting several schools, plunging trees into homes, and ripping roofs off older buildings. One school near our house was so badly damaged, it will be closed for the rest of the school year.

An image from weather.gov shows the path of the EF-2 tornado that came through Rolla. It had peak winds of 120 mph. It touched down 4 miles SE of Doolittle and tracked northeast through southeastern portions of Rolla. The tornado passed over I-44, lifting shortly after south of the Little Prairie Conservation area. The tornado lasted two minutes, left an eight-mile track of destruction, with a max width of 175 yards.

The storm system that dropped a relatively small twister on our town deposited 19 tornadoes across the state of Missouri, killing 12 people. The same system plagued the Midwest to the Eastern seaboard from March 13 to the 16, causing around 116 tornadoes, leaving 30 dead across eight states.

The Destruction  A fallen tree in the cemetery behind our house.  Branches littered the sidewalk and paths around our neighborhood.

As I sit here writing, we are again under a tornado watch. The weather is warm and stormy with high winds. Hopefully, if any touchdown, it is in unpopulated areas. I, for one, am done with tornadoes, but the season is just kicking off.

The park across the street from my house, as well as the shopping center in the direct path of the tornado.

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A Note to a Great Writer: Remembering Tom Robbins

A Chance Encounter

When I was in my early twenties, I found a book in a thrift store, and its cover captivated me. A desert scene complete with pyramid and palm trees gave it a parched feel. In the center, a large, Pileated Woodpecker carried an unlit match in its beak. Save for the bird, the cover mimicked a pack of Camel cigarettes. Stretching across the top, blue stenciled lettering arched above the airborne bird declaring, Still Life with Woodpecker. The author’s name, one Tom Robbins, seemed familiar, but I knew I hadn’t run across his books before. Intrigued, I bought it and headed home, excited and curious to see what lay waiting within its pages.

The next few days, I spent every second I could with Princess Leigh-Cheri and Bernard Mickey “Woodpecker” Wrangle as they navigated environmentalism, sex, and bombs. It is not your typical love story, which was fine by me.

Mystical Coincidences

One afternoon, I lay on my bed, the house to myself, which was a rare occurrence as I had no less that five roommates, my nose deep in Still Life when there was a knock at my window. Startled, and a little astonished, as my window was about six feet from the ground, I peaked through the curtains. Imagine my confusion when I found our modest front patch of grass empty. I shrugged and settled onto my pillow and got back to the sexy happenings between the pages.

I made it only a few paragraphs before the phantom knocker stuck again. This time, however, I was less engrossed, and noted that the knocking came from the top of the window, not the bottom. This realization made my heartbeat quicken. Was someone on the roof? If so, why would they choose that vantage point to knock on a window? Surely they were about to fall, having to lean over the eves.

I pulled the curtain aside again and, this time, glanced up. Imagine my wonderment when I found a Pileated Woodpecker clinging to the top of my windowsill. His beady black eye caught mine, and we regarded one another through the rippled glass. Feeling that I was not a threat, or that he could fly away before I pounced, he turned back to the old house, and drilled his pointy beak into the rotting wood of my window in search of juicy grubs.

The sight of the woodpecker threw me. I had never seen one before, having recently moved to Northern California from the desert. I had grown up with birds that were the color of dust and the size of golf balls. This beauty, with his crimson plumage and checkerboard undercarriage, was something to behold. The coincidence that he matched perfectly with the cover of the book held in my hand didn’t escape me, and this chance encounter cemented in my soul a special place for Robbin’s work. Yet, let’s be clear, Robbin’s mastery of his craft had already awakened a love affair with his writing that would last me the rest of my days. The synchronicity between the bird and the book was the type of magical occurrence Robbins’s novels are famous for, and it made the book even more special.

Photo by 48states: Tom Robbins in San Francisco at a reading sponsored by Booksmith.A Lifelong Fan is Born

Still Life with Woodpecker was my first tango with the offbeat world of Tom Robbins, but by no means my last. I was hooked. Like an addict in need of my next fix, I began hanging around the local used bookstore, perusing the R section in search of more novels by Mr. Robbins. His strong female characters, references to religion, and unorthodox plots kept me wanting more. I found a group of kindred readers, all lovers of Bonanza Jellybean, Pan, Wolfmother Wallpaper, and the silver, Catholic spoon traveling with a painted stick and a can of beans in a quest to find an airstream modified to look like a Thanksgiving turkey.

How to Blow Meeting Your Hero

Ten years after I discovered Still Life in a dusty thrift store, I had amassed a modest collection of Robins’s novels (It would have to be small. At the time of his death, two days day before the writing of this, he had only penned eight full novels, a collection of short stories and essays, one novella, and an autobiography), I got to meet the man himself.

Now, they say, never meet your heros. But I may counter, never meet your fans. I was so excited that when I finally got to the front of the line, my arms laden with hard covers, I spouted, “Does your hand hurt?” referring to his signing hundreds of books that evening. He gazed over his sunglasses at me, eyebrows raised in what I could only interpret as irritation, and said, “Yeah, a little.” And then it was over and I was crestfallen. Of all the words that could have come out of mouth, I wasted them on an absolute cliché.

The Life of a Legend

Tom Robbins passed away at the ripe age of 92 on February 9, 2025. Critics and readers alike celebrate him as one of America’s greatest writers, and his novels earned him numerous awards, including Bumbershoot Golden Umbrella Award for Lifetime Achievement (1997); Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia (2012); the Willamette Writers’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2015). Robbins enjoyed a colorful life including dropping acid with Timothy Leary, rubbing elbows with Terrance McKenna, hanging out with mythologist Joesph Campbell, studying mythology in Italy and Greece with Robert Bly, working as an art critic for the Seattle Times, hosting a radio show, and taking part as a board member for The Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas which is dedicated to fostering the creative writing of kiddos ages six to 18.

Over twenty years after happening across Still Life, I am still enthralled by Robbins’s work. His prose changed the way I viewed the written word and how I absorbed future books. His ability to craft metaphors alone would take me a lifetime to grasp, and I still wouldn’t hold a candle to his genius.

We will remember Tom Robbins, a poet and southern gentleman. As one of the finest writers to grace our fair planet. I believe it’s time to dust off my copy of Skinny Legs and All, and take the rest of the day off with a cold drink and spicy Mexican food.

Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer. — Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.411, Bantam

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A Valentine’s Day Mystery to Die For: The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder

If you’re a fan of cozy mysteries with richly atmospheric storytelling, mark your calendars—The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder by Cynthia Varady is hitting shelves this Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2025! Available now for pre-order, this rollicking whodunit promises to be the perfect companion for a cozy night of suspense and intrigue.

Get Your CopyWhat’s the Buzz About?

In the magical town of Pandemonium, where enchantment and mystery intermingle, the death of Matt Hader, the head of the clock tower committee, sends shockwaves through the community. Found in a locked room of the town’s iconic clock tower, Matt’s murder is as baffling as it is gruesome, leaving no clear leads but plenty of suspects.

Enter Mahogany: a pragmatic and fiercely independent young woman harboring a family secret that has her questioning her very identity. Along with her shapeshifting demon familiar, Bazgul—a sarcastic tarantula who never hesitates to voice his opinion—Mahogany is determined to uncover the truth behind Matt’s murder.

Joining her are Evelina, her fae best friend and the town’s favorite barista, whose knack for brewing truth-telling pastries proves invaluable; Guy Miller, a witty and enigmatic ghost that only Mahogany can see and hear; and Tony Applegate, the charming newcomer with a shadowy past that threatens his budding friendship with Mahogany and Evelina.

The suspects are a colorful lot, each with their own motive to kill Matt:Saree Fenquoth, the jealous wife, simmering over Matt’s lingering attachment to his ex-wife, Lilac Delldini.Whit Briteba, a passionate activist, determined to change the clock tower’s chimes and rid the town of Matt’s influence.Ace Chestier, Matt’s colleague, whose mounting gambling debts to the Remus Brothers, raises more than a few eyebrows.Lilac Delldini, Matt’s fiery ex-wife, who left him for Whit but remained entangled in his life.The Remus Brothers, notorious gangsters with ties to an underground gambling ring—and more secrets than the clock tower’s ancient gears.

As Mahogany and her friends dig deeper into the tangled web of secrets and lies, they must navigate Pandemonium’s eccentric community, dodge the stern and sharp-eyed Detective Teresa Sawyer, and uncover the truth before they themselves become targets.

The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder is a witty and spellbinding cozy mystery filled with magical twists, colorful characters, and a heroine who’s learning that sometimes, uncovering the truth means embracing who you really are.

Perfect for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be all about roses and chocolates. For readers who prefer a little mystery with their romance, The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder offers the perfect mix of suspense and heart. Whether you’re spending the evening curled up solo or with a fellow mystery lover, this book will captivate you.

Pre-Order Now!

Don’t miss your chance to get your hands on The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder. Pre-order your copy today and be among the first to uncover the secrets hidden in the shadows of the clock tower.

So, will you solve the mystery before the final page? There’s only one way to find out.

Tick-tock

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Year End Roundup

Hello, Readers!

I hope this Holiday Season finds you warm, happy and healthy.

The temperatures in Missouri have fluctuated from let’s take a walk pleasant, to you couldn’t pay me to go outside cold.

We’ve set up our tree, decorated cookies, wrapped gifts, and watched enough holiday films to last until next year.

It’s the time of year for reflection and goal setting for the next revolution around the sun. My list is short, but not any less lofty than previous years:

Be more patient with myself and others.Make time to exercise and eat wellDistribute Pandemonium Book 2Apply to grad school

A few of those items are pretty standard. We can always be more patience, especially with ourselves. Caring for my mom and raising my son has spread me pretty thin.

Most of us could use a few more days a week at the gym or out walking. I’ve made a pretty good habit of working out at least three days a week for the last few months. Stepping on the scale still hurts my feelings, but I can still button my jeans, so I’ll take the win.

It’s happened. Yesterday I sent off the final draft of The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder to my editor!

I can’t express how good it feels to have it off my desk and in someone else’s camp for a while.

As soon as it comes back to me, I will plan my pre-order strategy.

And finally, yes. You read that right. I am applying for grad school…again.

This time, instead of Library Science, I’m going for a Literature degree. My long game is to teach at the university level, maybe overseas? We’ll see how it goes. I need to get accepted first.

While You Wait for Book 2

From now until January 1st, 2025, The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost is part of Smashword’s End of Year Sale.

Get your ebook copy for Free. Yes, that’s right. Free, along with thousands of other discounted titles.

Get Your Free CopyThe Girl with the Uninvited Ghost in the Library

You read that right. The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost is now available on Multnomah County’s Library e-book collection as part of the Library Writers Project.

My book is now on the Multnomah County’s Library Libby app and can be checked out through OverDrive.

This selection by the library places The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost in front of over 80,000 active library users and is now discoverable in the library catalog.

Become a Patreon Member (it’s free)

By becoming a free Patreon member, you receive exclusive content, like photos, short stories, and early release chapters.

Become a Member

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Smashwords Winter Sale 2024

Hello, Readers!

I’m excited to announce that my book, The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost, will be available as part of a Smashwords Winter Sale 2024, starting December 12 through January 1! This is a chance to get my book, along with books from many other talented authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading.

You will find the promo here starting on December 12, so save the link: https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward this post to the avid readers in your life!

Thank you for your help and support!

Happy reading!

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My Love-Hate Relationship with eReaders

This post contains affiliate links.

I am a self-professed bibliophile. As a kid, I would feign sickness to stay home from school in order to finish a good book (thank you Christopher Pike for all the wonderful days). I have bookshelves brimming with bound volumes of the written word. In my possession, there are books on science, language, travel, every genre of fiction, biographies, history, graphic novels, children’s picture books (mine, not my son’s), comic collections. Well, you get the point. I love books. So when my husband brought home an eReader, I was resistant to its charms, but slowly, it won me over. A little anyhow. I still have my reservations about eBooks.

Girls will be Girls Dancing Witches Coffee Mug What I love about eReaders:The Embedded Dictionary

Back in the olden days, running across an unknown word required sifting through an actual dictionary made of paper, usually containing nearly a thousand pages. If you were a hardcore word nerd, you may have had a multi-volume collection like the Funk & Wagnalls, two volume set I grew up with (and which still sit on my shelves). I actually used to read these for fun. The digital age has replaced the carrying of print dictionaries around. Now all we have to do it use our smart phones, tablets, or laptop to look an unknown word up via the internet. Even better still, most eReaders have a built-in dictionary that is activated by simply tapping the word. This is possibly my favorite feature of eReaders. Having the embedded dictionary is incredibly handy and makes readers much more likely to look up words they don’t know.

Their Lightweight

I recently had to deal with a very painful bout of tendentious in my right thumb known as de Quervain’s tendonitis or “mommy’s thumb,” and holding heavy, clumsy books aggravated it to no end. Our eReader allowed me to read without excruciating pain.

Lots of Books in one Compact Place

The idea of carrying a small library of about twenty to thirty books everywhere without having to lug around several suitcases is a dream come true. Now when I’m traveling, I can take several books with me at once without having to negotiate with my suitcase where I’m going to keep them all. This is especially handy when reading a series, and you don’t want to wait until you land to continue your obsession with Katniss and the rebel alliance.

Instant Gratification

Much like buying a book from a mortar and brick establishment, with eBooks you can download and read immediately. No more waiting for books to arrive in the post.

Fewer Trees Die

Besides making moving house easier (no more packing up several boxes of heavy book), you can now rest easy knowing that more trees are being pardoned from the fate of being ground into pulp for our fiction needs.

Adjustable Font Size

Some hefty books have itty bitty type font, and can strain the eyes. This issue is easily adjusted by an eReader.

My eReader GripesBook Signings

Seeing your favorite author speak, and then queuing up with other excited fans to have said author sign your battered and well loved copy of their work, is the perfect Saturday night for a book nerd. You can have an author sign an eReader, but that would just be silly.

Borrowing and Lending Becomes a Hassle

You just finished a book you loved, and all you want to do it loan or gift it to someone you think will love it as much as you. However, it’s an eBook. There is no loaning or gifting unless you jump through some hoops. You can’t leave it behind in the airport, coffee shop, or trade it at a take-a-book-leave-a-book area for others to enjoy.

Pesky touch screens

While eReaders may be lighter and easier to handle if you suffer from a hand or wrist injury, using one with a touch screen can be a pain if dropped. Dropping a book in the middle of reading and losing your place can be inconvenient, but you can usually find your place fairly easily. When you drop an eReader with a touch screen, and scramble to keep it from hitting the floor, touching the screen on its way down, you may spiral yourself several pages forward or backward. Having to “flip” through your eBook to locate your current page with 1 to 2 second load times is a recipe for annoyance. Tap. Wait. Scan. Tap. Wait. Scan. Tap. Wait. Scan. You can probably guess this has happened to me on more than one occasion. Also, dropping your eReader in just the wrong way can shatter a screen whereas a paperback would just bounce.

Electronics Don’t Like Water

To be fair, neither do print books, but if you drop a book in the tub while reading in the suds, you can still read it after it dries out. It may be three times larger and wrinkled, but it still functions in the manner originally intended. Not so with an eReader. Much like cellphones, once those circuits take a dip, it’s game over. Hopefully, it’s still under warranty. My suggestion is to not take them in the bath or pool, ever.

Edgar Allen Poe “Raven” CandleCost

A book may run you anywhere from a few bucks to around $20, but eReaders, depending on the model and brand, can cost upwards of several hundred dollars, and you still have to pay for books on top of that.

Batteries

Print books are a pretty amazing technology. All you really need is a light source, and you’re set. Unless you’re housed in an environment where the term “lights out” is a something you can’t control (prison, summer camp, mental institution, or have no electricity), you can read whenever you wish. Not so with an eReader. Make sure you pack your charger when you leave town, and have maximum battery life when you start your trek or you might have to spend your flight talking to the person next to you.

The Learning Curve

Print books are easy to use; open and read. However, there is a bit of a learning curve for eReaders. If you ever wanted to know what else librarians do to help the public, know that they spend a great deal of time helping patrons navigate the digital world, including cellphones, eReaders, and setting up and using email. Some eReaders allow you to take notes, highlight sections, and look up words, however if you are unfamiliar with how these functions work, you can easily lose your place, and have to “flip” through the eBook looking for your spot. And considering the propitiatory nature of eReaders, each one will operate differently.

Propitiatory Branding

While there are many more apps and eReaders on the market now than at the advent of of the ebook revolution, there is still an issue with cross platform reading. Say, you buy a book for a particular reader, and in the future you decide to go with a different brand, you may not be able to port your existing library to your new device. This means you’ll have to purchase your books twice.

These last two are irritatingly capitalistic. They are what make me hate eReaders the most.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

True, this is more of a publishing issue rather than an eReader tiff, but it has still cost me money and hours of frustration. Imagine reading a book, to have all the pages suddenly say, “To continue reading, please enter the credit card number you used to purchase this book.” WTF? Didn’t you buy the book? Why to you have to reprove this? What if it was a gift? Do I now have to ask the person who gave it to me for their credit card information? Yes. Yes, you do. Turns out with DRM, you don’t in fact own the eBooks you “purchase.” You are essentially renting them for a time from the publisher who has kept all rights to it.

I’ve purchased eBooks before that have required a third party app be to “unlocked” in order to actually read. This is completely asinine. It’s akin to buying a book that is padlocked. In order to read it, you need to go to another store, locate the key, and then unlock what you just bought. Thankfully, you only have to do this second step once, unless you live overseas with a reader and books purchased elsewhere.

Cross Border Stupidity

When I lived in Canada, DRM got on ly last nerve regarding the use of my eReader. I’d purchased the reader in the Sates, but Canada didn’t allow the use of it in the country. So there I was with a reader I couldn’t use because I couldn’t download the key necessary to open the file. So there I was, stuck with a useless digital file I’d paid for, that I couldn’t use, and couldn’t get a refund because I’d already downloaded the file. Hate the DRM. There are ways around DRM, but I will not talk about that here.

So, as you can see, my cons outnumber the pros, but they don’t outweigh them. I like my eReader and find it has some great functions and abilities. I like the lightweight nature of eReaders, the convenience of multiple titles in one spot, and the thrill of buying a new title is the same whether it’s print or digital. But all things said, I still love the simplicity of print books, and will always find a place for them in my heart and home.

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Bazgul and Patreon Sneak Peeks

Team Bazgul

For those of you who’ve read my first book, The Girl with the Uninvited Ghost, you may have developed a bit of a crush on Bazgul, Mahogany’s demon familiar.

One of the major pieces of feedback I received from beta readers was, ‘More Bazgul.’ I couldn’t agree more. We all need more Bazgul. So I delivered. Book two, The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder, has way more Bazgul.

Building Bazgul’s Character

At first, Bazgul was more of a sidekick. But as the book developed, I involved more of the supporting characters with their own points of view. This moved the narrative from a singular main character to more of an ensemble cast. Now readers can get to get inside the mind of Bazgul. See how he feels and thinks, what motivated him.

As I ready the second book, The Girl and the Clock Tower Murder for its December release, I have added chapters and sent others to the trash. As new chapters develop, I share them on my Patreon. A recent new chapter features Bazgul in the form or a puppy.

Shape Shifting

Since I can’t draw, I inputted a description of what I wanted him to look like into Microsoft Designer and boy, I was anything by disappointed. AI nailed it. I couldn’t have wished for a better version of Bazgul as a puppy if I tried.

If you’re interested in getting a gander at what our favorite demon spider might look like as a puppy, you can join my Patreon (it’s free) to get sneak peaks and access to exclusive content.

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