Mary Angela's Blog, page 5

Guest Post: The “Magical Formula” for Writing Fiction

Today on the blog is Gilian Baker, author of Blogging is Murder, and she discusses academic writing versus fiction writing in her guest post. I look forward to reading her debut novel, just released Feb. 19.

About Gilian Baker

Gilian Baker is a former writing and literature professor who finally threw in the towel and decided to just show ‘em how it’s done. She has gone on to forge a life outside of academia by adding blogger & ghostwriter to her CV. She currently uses her geeky superpowers only for good to entertain cozy mystery readers the world over. When she’s not plotting murder, you can find her puttering in her vegetable garden, knitting in front of the fire, snuggled up with her husband watching British mysteries or discussing literary theory with her daughter.

In her next life, she fervently hopes to come back as a cat, though she understands that would be going down the karmic ladder. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona with her family and their three pampered felines.

Contact Gilian Baker directly at mailto:Gilianbakerauthor@gmail.com

BLOGGING IS MURDER on Amazon

BLOGGING IS MURDER on Goodreads

GILIAN BAKER’S WEBSITE

BOOK TRAILER

The “Magical Formula” for Writing Fiction

I began writing Blogging is Murder for fun—to have a creative outlet. I wrote most of the day, every day, but I’d never written fiction. I didn’t worry that I didn’t knowing how to structure a cozy mystery plot or how to flesh out a cozy protagonist that fans would love. I just wrote.

I’d always wanted to write fiction, but questioned whether I had it in me. After all, I’d been trained to write academically—literary analysis and criticism. I knew I was a good writer—I made my living from writing. But could I write fiction?

When I decided to take a chance and finish the story of Blogging is Murder to publish, that’s when I began studying how to write fiction, specifically cozy mysteries. Then, I wrote the story. The biggest surprise of the whole process was that it wasn’t unfamiliar to me at all—it was the same writing process I used for writing academic tomes.

As an English professor, I understood the writing process, of course I did. But I had in my head that the writing process for fiction would be magically different from the one used for non-fiction. I’d never tried to write it before, so how did I know? I’d never even taken a fiction writing course during my years as a student. In fact, I’d stayed far away from such courses, worried I’d fail miserably. It was safer to stay in the realm of analyzing obscure literary texts where I had the use of theory to structure my thesis.

No, there is no thesis as such in fiction. However, the steps in the process were strikingly similar:

I came up with an idea that I thought might just work
I researched to verify the idea was indeed plausible
I wrote a zero draft, just letting it pour out of me. I didn’t worry about repeating myself or getting everything just so. I only wrote.
When I came up against a concept or plot twist I was unsure about, I journaled until I decided on the direction that felt right or that I could make work.
I researched again to verify the plausibility of the direction I planned to go.
I completed steps 3-5 over and over until I got to the end.
When I had a sudden burst of inspiration, I stopped in my tracks and wrote it down in my always-present notebook.
I went back into the text and fixed “holes” in my argument or plot.
I took the zero draft and turned it into a first draft, then a second, etc.

Halfway through the process, it occurred to me that there isn’t any magical writing process for fiction. It’s the same one I’d used for years. What a revelation! Really, it was. And it made me feel more secure in my ability to write something other cozy mystery fans would want to read.

Of course, we all have our own writing process, and I’ve encouraged students for years to find theirs and then use it faithfully. But I would never have guessed that I’d need to remind myself of that.

Now that Blogging is Murder is available to readers, I’ve started working on the second book in the Jade Blackwell Mysteries series. And I’m using the same “magical formula” that I’ve had at my disposal all along.

If you want to see how cyber-stalking, hemlock and blogging mingle to create a delightful cozy mystery, get a copy of Blogging is Murder.

Though she was certainly born with all the traits of a world-class private detective, blogger Jade Blackwell believed she would do nothing more than solve the murders in her latest favorite cozy mystery book.

Set in mountainous south-eastern Wyoming, Jade Blackwell lives in a log home in the quaint village of Aspen Falls with her husband, Christian and daughter Penelope (Ellie). She left her life as a tenured college English professor at the University of Wyoming four years ago, sick of the bureaucracy, mounds of essays to grade and apathetic students. She turns to blogging and ghostwriting as her new career.

Jade’s promising career as a blogger halts abruptly when she learns of a hacker who is controlling her friend and fellow blogger Liz Collin’s business remotely. When the hacker is found dead in her home, Liz is thrown in jail.

Determined to help her friend regain her life and livelihood, Jade teams up with Liz’s reluctant lawyer, Gabriel Langdon, to get Liz off the hook and out of jail. What she learns will break the case wide open, while unraveling her faith in humanity and the safety she feels living in the Rocky Mountain hamlet she calls home.

An exciting thrill ride from the first page, to the last. Read Gilian Baker’s Blogging is Murder, the first book in the Jade Blackwell cozy mystery series!

 

Unconditional Love

 

This semester, I’m teaching a humanities course, and my class is writing a credo based on NPR’s series This I Believe (www.thisibelieve.org). I was so intrigued with their responses that I decided to share mine here:

 

 

 

Five years ago, my husband and I were sitting in a room, waiting for our daughters to finish ballet class. I remember it being one of the first times we had been alone, without a child hanging around our knees. We were fresh out of the toddler phase and hadn’t communicated forever, or so it seemed. I was tired. Exhausted, really. This is the thing I remember most. I remember yawning and tears coming to my eyes and not being able to stop them.

My husband noticed and reached for my hand. What had happened? What was wrong? Part of it was insomnia. I had quit a medication that affected my sleep; I hadn’t slept well for days. And there were other side effects, side effects that I didn’t want to share but finally did. After I relayed the hurt I had kept hidden for weeks, he said everything was going to be okay. That I was going to be okay. And I believed him, not because I knew I would but because he loved me even if I weren’t.

Relieved, I looked up for the first time since sitting down. I imagine when he is an old man, his eyebrows will look a little like Einstein’s, arched and gray; they have just the right amount of defiance. It was then that I realized one of them looked sparse, not all together there. “What happened to your eyebrow?” I asked. He didn’t say a word, but his face began to change. His smile made me smile before he could explain. “It fell out.” He shrugged. “New blood pressure medication.”

We both started to laugh, not the giddy laughter of the children waiting for the next dance class, but the universal laughter of human beings. The bored parents in the small, boxy room must have had quite a start. Honestly, I didn’t even think about them until later. For that moment, it was just us. My husband’s eyebrows would grow back, I would start sleeping, but it didn’t matter. If they had never grown back, I wouldn’t have cared. And I knew he felt the same about my problems.

To love unconditionally is a give in. We all know we’re supposed to do it. But when someone truly does, it makes the world a little less scary. When we know we’re being loved not for the things that we have (or don’t have) but the people we are, it makes us less hesitant, brave even. It gives us the courage to be ourselves.

In the world today, there are a lot of conditions to the love we give: native/foreign, black/white, rich/poor, republican/democrat. Conditions make love so hard. They make love an uphill battle and a stingy thing. But if we take those conditions away, if we see people for who they truly are, the world and all its inhabitants become worthy of our love.

Crime, Crunches, and the Creative Process

January is the time of year when we’re at our best: we’ve made resolutions, and we’re doing our darnedest to stick to them. Hands down, it should be my best month for working out, so why hasn’t it been?

Truth be known, I’m not much of a fitness enthusiast. I like to walk my dog when it’s nice out; that’s the extent of my athleticism. My zeal comes in short bursts right around New Year’s and swimsuit season. But there is one activity I’ve stuck with over the last few years, and that’s Zumba. I mean, who can resist a class where you can shake your bon-bon to “Uptown Funk?” It’s great. But lately, I’ve been struggling. I’ve still been showing up. I’m just not altogether there.

Zumba is pretty intense and incredibly fun; it’s not your grandma’s foxtrot (though I have a feeling, with enough practice, I could turn the foxtrot into something really intense). My class consists of forty-five minutes of steady Latin dance, and it can be hard to follow along to a new song or step. What I’m saying is that I have to pay attention if I don’t want to embarrass myself, which can easily be done even when I’m alert. And herein lies the problem.

Instead of paying attention, I’ve been plotting a murder (fictional, of course). Twenty minutes in, and I realize I’m just going through the Zumba motions—and badly at that. My head is too busy going through different suspect scenarios to focus on squats or shimmies. By the time I walk out the door at eight o’clock, I’m looking over my shoulder, convinced someone is waiting in the wings.

Maybe it’s an occupational habit. I am finished with my second book and thinking about the third in the series. Could Professor Prather take up Zumba? Though the idea is not completely without appeal (in fact, it makes me laugh out loud), I know this mystery probably has more to do with my creative process than my series.

Even when I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing. And while being distracted isn’t the best way to beat belly flab, it can be a great way to invent a mystery. The how, when, and where of novel writing take a lot of real-life walking around. They are as important as sitting down in front of the computer and typing.

So I’ll keep going to class because I know it’s good for me, physically and mentally. It gives me the time and space I need to think about writing. It also gives me the perfect excuse to sing along to Pitbull.

 

Readers, how are your resolutions going? Are there any activities you do that serve a dual purpose?

 

 

 

The Gift of Time

Christmas is a very special time for me; it has been since I was a little girl. One of my favorite childhood memories is putting up lights with my dad. We had a beautiful house with a street-facing living room window, and around it, we would tack lights. It wasn’t like the houses you see today, with lights in perfect rows edging the rooftops. No, this was different. My dad would start at the top of the inside window, and I would stand beside him. I would hold the tacks in my hand while he secured the strand, and around the window we’d go, I holding the tacks, he pushing in each one carefully. Because he was an extremely diligent man, decorating would take time, so we would talk. One of his favorite things to ask me was, “What do you think?” And I would say, “About what?” And he would answer, “About life and death and all the things in between.” Looking back, that’s what we were doing. All the things in between.

One year, we did all six windows on the side of our house. It was a great feat, and he and I were very proud. But at some time during the project, we began trading jests. Maybe I was staring off into space, or maybe I was criticizing him for placing the lights too close together or too far apart. If you have kids, as I do, you know they are very good at critiquing your handy work. Anyway, at one point during the exchange, he dubbed me “an inexperienced tack handler.” For the rest of his life, we laughed about it, and I was always his inexperienced tack handler.

Later we would move from this house, and it was devastating for both of us. I don’t remember putting up lights on the new house. But I do remember planting trees, three blue spruces that still stand in the backyard today. Like with the lights, I remember me standing next to him, probably holding the tree spikes or the rubber hammer, something inconsequential. Yet this, too, it is one of my strongest memories.

When I think about it, it’s no wonder I miss him so much this time of year. Though Dad wasn’t a big gift giver, what he did give was his time, and I realize now this was the greatest gift of all. Whenever I was lonely or troubled, even as a grown woman, I would call home, secretly hoping he’d answer the phone. Much to my mom’s chagrin, he was only too happy to drop everything and have coffee or cupcakes, and preferably both. (He had a terrible sweet tooth.) When my eldest daughter was a toddler, he and my mom called her the cupcake princess, but I know the real reason I made so many cupcakes when she was young. They were for Dad. Baking was my way of thanking him for spending yet another moment with me.

You know, after writing this post, I remembered what it was I used to say to my dad. I used to reply, “It’s pretty good, Dad.” I guess that would still be my answer today. Life is pretty darn good. We only need know how to spend it.

I hope you have a really good Christmas and a happy New Year.

Turkey: It’s what’s for dinner

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, there are two things on my mind: buying the turkey and cooking the turkey. But first, let me remind you that a couple eBooks of An Act of Murder are still up for grabs at my Amazon giveaway—no poultry skills needed to enter! https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/bad03b10c9775048

The idea of the Thanksgiving Day meal, to me, is complicated. I have one oven, one stove, one fridge, and fifteen dishes to serve. For this English professor, the math seems off. A feasible solution to the problem would be the local grocery store, which promises to serve up to ten of my closest friends and family members for $99.00 if I order today. Ten people, one low cost, no Russian roulette with the “new” recipes that monopolize my holidays? It’s the logical choice.

Unfortunately, I (like generations of women before me) don’t make the logical choice when it comes to Thanksgiving. Even those of us who don’t pride ourselves on our culinary skills feel the need to toss a frozen turkey or two around the grocery store bins this time of year. “That looks like a good one,” my husband says as I rummage through the icy box. I immediately dismiss his input. “Those old birds get tough.” Puzzled look. “How do you know it’s old?” Eye roll. As if I need to answer that question.

But I’ve learned a few actual things about turkeys over the years. The most important thing? Make sure you thaw it out. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But if you’re reading this, and it’s two days before Thanksgiving, and you just bought a frozen bird—seriously, you don’t have a chance. Take it back and get fresh, or save it for Christmas. Think about hamburger. A lousy pound of hamburger takes more than a day to thaw in the fridge. Why do we think our turkeys can magically thaw in twice that amount of time? Buy your ten-fifteen pound turkey the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and put it in the fridge.

About three years ago, I started brining my turkeys. Brining requires you to prepare your turkey the day before, which solved all my thawing problems tout suite. If my turkey isn’t completely thawed, I know a full day—not hour—before I cook it. I’ve tried some really expensive brines that taste wonderful, but come on. I’m a teacher. In South Dakota. So the brining recipe I’m sharing with you today is an inexpensive one I came across in a Taste of Home magazine last year. Follow the recipe to the letter, and you will have a happy, healthy, stress-free Thanksgiving.

Open your favorite bottle of wine.
Pour a large glass.
Drink.
You are ready to holiday. Click on the link below to make the recipe!

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/fresh-herb-brined-turkey

Book Launch

It’s hard to believe the day I’ve been waiting for has finally come! Just over a year ago, Camel Press accepted An Act of Murder for publication. In that year, so much has changed. I went from thinking the book was ready to knowing it was ready. Little did I realize then that quite a difference exists between those two. Publication has been an incredible learning experience, one that I wouldn’t change for all the extra hours of sleep in the world.

I celebrated the launch by signing books at Zandbroz Variety, an independent bookseller in downtown Sioux Falls, SD. It’s wonderful to have an independent store that cares about local authors, and I was grateful to the owner and staff at Zandbroz for being so generous and accommodating. I had a strong turnout and sold out of books within the first hour. Luckily, I had an extra box with me (something one writer told me she is never without)! We mowed through those in the next hour.

The best aspect of the book signing, though, was talking to readers. A voracious reader myself, I love talking about books—not just my own! I met a woman in a book club that had sixteen members. I was completely jealous but kept my envy to myself and instead handed her sixteen bookmarks. I met a group of young readers, and one reader surprised me by inquiring about my favorite quote from An Act of Murder. Ask me my favorite quotes from famous authors, and I could probably rattle off three or four, but I was silent for a good two or three minutes until I remembered a sentence in the prologue that I particularly like.

Of course my dear family and friends showed up as well, and I felt thankful to have so many truly good people in my life. My daughters were probably my best marketers, dropping not-so-subtle hints to passersby about the awesome mystery writer signing books inside. And my mom? Well, I’m just glad she didn’t show up with a news crew from CNN. Nothing is impossible when she is involved!

Serious thanks, though, to everybody who did come out. Your support made my debut of An Act of Murder a day I will always treasure!

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” –The Great Gatsby

Fall is my favorite time of year. In South Dakota, the seasons change like traffic lights, from green to gold to red. There isn’t any in between; one day it’s so hot your tank top feels too thick, the next, you can’t imagine why you didn’t break out the fuzzy coat. The change became clear smack dab in the middle of last week when I was dropping off the kids at school. “What? Why didn’t you grab your jacket? What were you thinking?” Of course I was only vocalizing my own guilt at not remembering for them. In the chaos that is school mornings, forgetting to breathe seems possible.

That a.m. hustle weaves its way into the crisp days of autumn; there are new, important things to do. Signing planners, practicing instruments, packing lunches—they become a numbered list I check off one day at a time. Yes, we arrived at the dance studio and bought new tap shoes. Check! The girls can now proceed to learn an art form they will thank me for when they go off to Broadway. Watching from the window, I can feel the palpable excitement in their shuffle-ball-changes.

In my college classes, too, I feel the rush of enthusiasm from my students, and I suddenly remember why I teach. Despite what others might say about this generation, my students find new ways to surprise me with their excitement and compassion every day, like my first day of class.

For the first time in ten years, I am teaching at a new school. I don’t know my way around, and the campus is like a maze of Winchester Mansion staircases. I go into my first classroom, and being in an old building, it is small and claustrophobic. But I have twenty-five smiling faces staring at me. I will be okay. Then I go to turn on the computer, nothing. I can’t even get the login screen to appear, and looking around the room, I notice there isn’t a clock in sight. How will I be able to tell when my fifty minutes are up? Of course I don’t wear a watch, and my phone? Well, that’s somewhere in my office halfway across campus. But if I just have a marker, I can write on the board. With a marker in my hand, I am invincible. I look down the length of the whiteboard tray: nothing. The marker genie must have confiscated them. At this point, it’s senseless to play it cool because the students know something is amiss, and well, I’ve never been very good at playing it cool anyway. I admit it is my first day, a confession that could turn dangerous in a room full of people who view me as an authority.

After class, as I trudged down a staircase that I hoped led outside, a couple of girls came up to me and asked why I had switched schools and how old were my kids. It was nothing, really, just polite conversation. But it’s sometimes meaningless conversations like these that end up meaning a great deal. My step lighter now, I continued walking toward my office in the library, and as I did, I remembered. Like a memory ignited by a sight or sound or smell, it came back to me all at once: this is why I love the fall.

Tell me, readers, what is your favorite fall memory? I would love to hear!

Confessions of a Cozy Mystery Writer

I confess: I’m suspicious of labels. It’s been my experience that when I start labeling things, I miss out on the nuances of the thing I’m labeling. So up until last weekend, I was hesitant to call my novel a cozy mystery, for if I called it a cozy, would readers expect recipes and be disappointed when they didn’t find any? Instead, I used words like traditional to describe it, which made me feel connected to the literary tradition of those Golden Age writers, such as Agatha Christie, whom I admire. But after attending the Writers’ Police Conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I no longer sidestep the cozy moniker.

I, like all writers who attended, was there to gain knowledge about police procedures, writing faux pas, and lethal ingredients I could use to kill off people in future novels. In my peasant top and dangling earrings, I began the weekend with a bus ride to stop number one on my itinerary: the Green Bay Maximum Security Prison. The jewelry was the first thing to go.

You can see by the picture it’s a foreboding place, but in a good, mystery writer sort of way. There was a rumor circulating that the basement, which had once housed juveniles, is haunted. I might get in on that. As the fifth metal gate clanged behind me and I learned the prison was on lockdown for the third employee assault, however, the haunted basement lost its allure. Only later that night were my nerves soothed with some great conversations and an ice-cold beer. Plus there was a raffle going on; I was back in familiar territory.

The next two days, I attended several terrific classes and talked to many authors who were writing thrillers, horror novels, and true crime books about serial killers and psychopaths. When they asked me about my upcoming novel, I tossed out the word “cozy” faster than an EMT applying a tourniquet, and never have I been more thankful for the classification.

I think cozy has almost become synonymous with easy, and that’s another reason I had resisted the category—until now. The plot, or the puzzle, of a mystery should never be easy to solve, and writers in all subgenres work hard on this element. But after my time in Green Bay, I realize my readers will feel cozy while reading the novel—at least I hope they do. The town of Copper Bluff is quaint, the people are charming, and if a dead body didn’t show up in the theater, readers might never believe anything torrid ever happens there at all.

Has there been a time in your life, readers, when you have resisted a label? How and why? I’d love to hear from you!

Balancing Work and Children: the Unsolved Mystery

It’s July, and for a writer who is also a teacher, summer means work. It’s the time of year when I don’t have to worry about lesson plans or papers and can focus on writing new material. Unfortunately, summer doesn’t signify the same thing to my children. For them, summer is a time to swim, bike, and play foursquare—all activities that take me away from my computer screen. And although foursquare can be played with three people, it’s much more fun when mom is there to make fun of. Still, even my kids would have to admit my game is improving.

Those times that I don’t participate, though, I feel bad. As I sit downstairs, I wonder about the noise being made above my head: was it a cat, a dog, or a kid that just collided with the floor? And how many times can one cupboard door be slammed? It seems innumerable. My kids are older, I tell myself, seven and ten. They don’t need their mom to play. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty for the things happening (or not happening) around the house.

The other night as we sat down to eat dinner, my daughter asked me for a glass of milk. With a sigh, I stood up and reached into the cupboard. To my chagrin, the only glass left was a bar glass that read Jack Daniels. Really? Jack Daniels? But between writing and children, I hadn’t had time to think about the dishes, and my husband had been away at work all day. Yes, my daughter would be drinking her milk from a bar glass, and while it didn’t bother her at all, it made me wonder if I was a second-class mom.

As we ate and talked and laughed, the glass was forgotten. It was replaced by the great feeling of family. At the end of the dinner, as my daughter was helping me clear the table, she said, “I like how this glass curves. It’s cool.” I couldn’t help but secretly smile. It didn’t really matter how many glasses I washed, or didn’t, in this case. It mattered that we had shared dinner as a family.

It’s moments like these that force me to redefine family and work. For me, writing doesn’t mean absolute silence and zero interruptions, and motherhood doesn’t mean coordinating dinnerware and perfected play schedules—although both started out with these ideals in mind. I realize I can be committed to my writing and my kids, even during these hectic days of summer.

Crime and wine? A perfect time

So what do mystery lovers do on their days off? They drink wine and solve crimes! Recently, I attended a murder mystery dinner show at Calico Skies Vineyard and Winery. If you haven’t been to Calico Skies,

and you live in or are traveling to northwest Iowa, you should plan a visit this summer. A forty-minute drive southeast of Sioux Falls, SD, Calico Skies is a beautiful winery set up high on a hill. Their wine is delightful, and although I usually prefer reds, their Frontenac Gris is one of my favorites. Besides wine tasting, they host a multitude of other events, including weddings and parties.

On the night I went, they were hosting a mystery dinner show by Upstage Productions called Mayberry R.I.P. The price of the ticket was $45 and included an appetizer, main course, and dessert. The show was hilarious, and dinner guests played minor roles in the comedy. Before the performance, the actors asked guests if they would like to read a small part when prompted. If you’re like me and unsure about “acting” on the fly, especially after a few glasses of wine, don’t worry! Two actors performed the majority of the script, so any audience member’s part was minimal. The show was divided among food courses, and as we enjoyed our meal, the actors revealed clues to the murder of the mayor of Mayberry. Before the actors disclosed the murderer, audience members made educated guesses whodunit for a chance to win a prize. On the night we went, the prize was a bottle of Calico Skies wine. After dessert, the actors revealed the murderer and a winner.

Another mystery dinner theater show will take place on July 22 called You’ve Been Murdered Charlie Brown. You can purchase tickets at the Calico Skies website.

 

Happy mystery solving!