Christopher H. Jansmann's Blog, page 12

Duality Tidbits: Four

Back for more, I see. Getting anxious for the release, too? I know I am. Let’s dive in to some intriguing backstage tidbits to pass the time.

Rosie has a surprise for Sean.

Meeting the millionaire author for the first time, Sean is floored by how down-to-earth she is — and by her unexpected generosity. Let’s just say it will take attending the comic book convention to a whole new level…

Suzanne will regret letting Sean go to California without her.

Getting away from her practice wouldn’t have been easy, of course, especially given the last-minute nature of Sean’s departure to help Vasily. Suzanne feels a bit left out of the action and is therefore really looking forward to heading out to join her main squeeze at the comic book convention.

The solarium at the mansion is a bit of a surprise for Sean.

Sure, Vasily had told him about the gargantuan indoor rain forest attached to the back of Rosie’s home, but Sean thought some of his friend’s descriptions had been, well, hyperbolic. That is, until he actually gets to experience it for the first time…

There are excellent plastic surgeons in Los Angeles.

Why do I mention this? No reason in particular. (Insert evil cackling here.)

Tourists can get under the skin of our Police Chief.

Just ask the woman who tries to wriggle out from under a parking ticket she receives. I don’t entirely blame Sean — trying to keep up with the waves of tourists that now regularly flood Windeport comes with headaches he’d not even dreamed of a year earlier. Now if only the Village Council would increase his budget…

Okay! We’re almost there! Duality is out soon – place your preorder now. And don’t forget to RSVP for my Facebook Live book release event!

Duality Tidbits: Three

December seems to be zipping by pretty quickly! That means we’re another few days closer to Duality appearing. How about a few more tidbits to help pass the remaining time…?

Sean knows how to surf.

Granted, the Maine coast isn’t nearly as conducive to the sport as, say, Southern California, but Vasily still managed to get the basics across to his best friend during their time together in Windeport. Sean gets a chance to show off what he remembers while trying not to freeze to death in the icy cold Pacific.

Suzanne is a bit stressed.

Sean is acutely aware of the pressure his girlfriend is under — it’s not easy being the only physician for miles around. He’s therefore made it a priority to ensure he finds new and creative ways to help her relax and unwind at the end of her very long days. (Did I mention the Chat Noir costume was making an appearance…?)

Windeport seems to be a rather popular destination.

For a town that was in its death throes a year earlier, the tourism business seems to have given it a new lease on life; I suppose that has more to do with the author loving the location and not wanting it to slowly fade out of existence. Of course, the rather poorly timed increase in murders may put a slight damper on that enthusiasm…

Alejandro continues to learn what it means to love a detective.

The hours are long and the cases often grueling; what little free time he does get with Vasily is often interrupted. Still, Alex can’t see a life without Vasily in it, so he continues to act as a moderating force to ensure Vasily’s career doesn’t wind up eating both of them alive.

Charlie’s headed to Paris.

Full disclosure: this started out as a hypothetical suggestion from one of my beta readers, one that lead to our intrepid Director of the Windeport Public Library making a cameo appearance in a piece of FanFiction I’d been working on at the time. While that particular work has, shall we say, been lost to the sands of time, I liked the idea of Charlie getting picked to be a keynote speaker so much I turned it into an actual plot point. (I am sad that she won’t meet the Heroes of Paris, though…)

Okay! That’s it for this post. Don’t forget to RSVP for the Book Release Party and stay tuned for more tidbits in the next post.

Duality Tidbits: Two

All right, buckle up for another set of tidbits from Duality, out on December 20.

It never stops snowing in Windeport.

Not ever. There are times when I wonder why Sean didn’t follow through on quitting his gig there and going private in something more temperate. Like, say, Boston. Or Idaho.

It does rain in Southern California.

Unlike me, Sean has only travelled to California a few times — and weather wise, his experience has generally been anything but what he’d expected. I worked overtime to sneak this particular line into the book as his dry observation at the rain that greets him on this trip; it also serves as a subtle reference to a popular song from the 197os that Julio Iglesias quoted in his later 1984 hit, Moonlight Lady. (You’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of any of that.)

Sean meets Rosie. Finally.

After hearing so much about the millionaire author from Vasily, Sean thinks he knows what he’s getting into when he sees Rosie for the first time. I can’t say that Vasily didn’t warn him…

Suzanne is getting annoyed with the amount of coffee Sean is drinking.

And with good reason! I went back and counted the number of cups that Sean drinks and quickly decided any normal human being would be suffering cardiac palpitations at regular intervals. (This is where I hastily point out that Sean is a work of fiction — so please don’t follow his example. Or if you do, keep it from your significant other.)

Bungalow? Or apartment?

It’s becoming clearer to me that Sean and Suzanne haven’t quite decided which location is going to be their home — and that, in fact, both spots are still very much in the running. I honestly thought I knew how this was going to work out when the two of them started to date, but now I’m not so sure. I’m open to ideas on this one, people!

All right, that’s it for now! If you haven’t already, please RSVP for the Virtual Book Release on December 20.

Duality Tidbits: One

I can neither confirm nor deny that Sean Colbeth demanded equal time after the countdown posts I did for Vasily’s last novel were so popular. Since I had such a great time doing them, though, it was easy to agree to revisiting the concept once again. So, in no particular order (and with respect to not spoiling the plot), let us begin:

Talk radio figures prominently.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a play on words — honestly, I couldn’t help it. But the plot does revolve around the disappearance of a nationally renown on-air talent based out of a radio station that looks suspiciously like one that used to exist in Portland, Maine. (Sadly, these days, it’s just a parking lot…)

USM has a cameo.

As an undergraduate student, I had the chance to use what was the then-new Glickman Library — but that was before the upper floors were finished. It seemed only right to have Sean check it out for me three decades later, though I may have taken some liberties with the interior layout (including giving the café on the top floor quite the view).

Sean still hasn’t found a replacement for Vasily.

As Duality opens, Sean finally accepts the fact that Vasily isn’t going to return to Windeport and reluctantly decides to put more effort into finding someone to fill the position he’s held open. While he’s initially resigned that no one will likely measure up to his friend, a chance encounter during the investigation will lead him to reconsider…

The Chat Noir costume makes an appearance. Again.

At this point, it wouldn’t be a Sean Colbeth novel if he didn’t spend a little time wearing the outfit his cousin made for him. This time around, though, it plays a supporting role in resolving something from Sean’s past.

Duality has more than one meaning.

I suppose that’s true of all of my titles; there’s always the obvious tie to the story that is ultimately revealed, and then my more subtle shadings that may or may not be apparent after the first reading. This time out, it’s also a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that the investigation will take Sean from Windeport to Rancho Linda… and, maybe, to the reason why he has to go.

Okay! That’s it for now. More tidbits in my next post — and don’t forget to RSVP for my Facebook Live book release!

You’re Invited: Virtual Release Party for Duality

I’m throwing a (virtual) party for the release of my latest Sean Colbeth Investigates book, Duality. It will be a first for me on a number of fronts, and to say I am bit nervous about how it will go would be an understatement. But I nonetheless want to invite all of you to pop in if you happen to be around on Tuesday, December 20 at 7:00PM Mountain Standard Time (UTC -7). I’ll be hosting my first-ever Facebook Live stream at this URL:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1464364850756151/

If you head over there now, you can RSVP for the stream and get a reminder to come on back when I fire up the web camera. I plan on reading some excerpts from Duality, answer questions about the Sean Colbeth Universe and maybe tease a bit about what is in store for both Sean and his best friend, Vasily Korsokovach. On top of all that, one lucky stream attendee will receive an autographed copy of the hardcover edition — assuming, of course, they can navigate my tricky Windeport trivia.

As I prep for the release event, I’ll be doing my traditional countdown here on the blog; much like with Vasily’s last book, I plan on teasing out tidbits from Duality in a countdown format. That will begin on Saturday, December 3.

See you then!

Something New…?

November has long been my favorite writing month on the calendar; for years, I’ve been an active participant in National November Write a Novel Month (often abbreviated NaNoWriMo), though it wasn’t until 2019 — and with a ton of support from my family and writing friends — that I managed to actually finish my first novel. That manuscript eventually became Blindsided, and introduced my two main characters, Sean Colbeth and Vasily Korsokovach, to the world. Blindsided is by far the shortest book I’ve written; part of that has to do with having crafted it during NaNoWriMo, where the goal is around 50,000 words. The other, though, was my fear that I might put too much background into the book and drag down the plot; it was something of a balancing act to sneak in just enough about Sean to make him interesting enough that readers would want to see more of him. To my great delight, it seems to have worked out for the first three books in the Sean Colbeth Investigates have done remarkably well; presales for his latest adventure, Duality, have me seriously thinking about the changing publishing order I had planned for next year.

Having said all of that — and as much as I love writing both Sean and Vasily — I thought I would do something completely different for NaNoWriMo 2022. I’ve been living and breathing these intermingled universes for a number of years now; like many authors, I worry about keeping the stories fresh and the characters real. The effort to do that, though, always keeps fears of burning myself out front and center. As I have so many more adventures planned for these two, it would seriously not do to have the stories abruptly end.

So I decided to write during NaNoWriMo, but make good on an earlier promise I made to myself to dip a toe into a slightly different genre. I’ve long wanted to try my hand at writing Urban Fantasy, and with my predilection toward mysteries, wondered what sort of trouble I could get into when magic is mixed in with a standard police procedural. And not any sort of magic, but something with roots in the ancient myths of the Mesoamerican cultures I’d studied in college (and a gleeful chance to make use of those research papers I’d had to write).

But maybe the magic has specific rules as to its use — and maybe those powers belong to someone who’s not quite mastered their abilities. Add to that a jaded young detective who finds herself thrown into a situation that at first seems incomprehensible, only to find that it’s actually deadly real. Mix in a human trafficking ring that seems to be operating within a multinational corporation and the outlines of an interesting adventure begin to appear.

I’ve written about half of the story so far and as much fun as it has been to discover these new characters, it’s truly an abrupt turn for me, and to be quite frank, I’m not entirely sure I’m happy with it. While the story feels solid to me, having written so much grounded in the awful reality that is modern police investigative work, having that fantasy aspect woven throughout is giving me some pause. I did work out in advance just what I would allow to happen in my universe, for I didn’t want the story to be full of moments where a character snapped their fingers and received a vital clue; but then again, I can see how the reader would expect that very thing, given how I’ve framed everything. It feels a bit like I’m working at cross purposes, trying to write a realistic mystery that has magic at it’s core.

I’ll finish out this draft and then give it a thorough read, but I’m not certain it will ever see the light of day. Maybe — never say never, I suppose. I do wonder, though, if I should have simply gone for a traditional fantasy story and left out the mystery part — or simply created a new set of detectives working in a new city completely different than Sean or Vasily. I guess I never truly realized how built for my chose genre my brain actually was — maybe I just had to wander away slightly to get the hint that I needed to stay in my lane.

Or not. We’ll see…

Rubber Ducks

I’m not entirely sure I know how it all started.

My best recollection is that — as a joke — my youngest brother presented me with a themed rubber duck as a Christmas present many, many years ago. That first one wound up following me to the office and became the cornerstone of a shelf I have full of small knick knacks and other toys, totally in keeping with how I lean on my inner child while working my day job. Besides, who wants to visit with someone who has a bookcase full of tomes on database structures or procedural languages, anyway? My space is far more interesting, I assure you. (And yes, I do actually have those books, but they are hidden behind the flipper door of my cabinet to help keep up appearances.)

One duck led to another the following Christmas, then more appeared on birthdays or other occasions; soon, the two of us began hunting for cooler and stranger variations. Reindeer ducks. Firefighter ducks. Minion ducks. Chef, Santa and pumpkin ducks. Pirates, bunnies and vampire ducks. I thought perhaps we might have hit the outer limit when a giant ceramic bank version took up residence on my desk, but that was before I stumbled onto the Star Trek themed ducks; now Mister Squawk is happily ensconced beside a scowling Klingon and a doctor-not-a-brick layer.

Now, as I sit at my writing desk and look at the army of critters surrounding my monitor, laptop and keyboard, I am forced to wonder if I might have gone a tad overboard. Much like tribbles, they seem to multiply faster than I can find space to house them, and yet I can’t imagine not having them around. Each one has a story or a memory; all are dear to me in ways that are hard to explain. There was a time when I’d not been able to fathom folks who collected spoons or shot glasses from places they had travelled; these days, I think I can understand slightly what the attraction had been all along.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to see if I can score that limited edition Captain Kirk duck…

Hello, Fall

I often talk about seasonality on this blog, usually in the context of comparisons between what we experience here in Tucson and the more robust changes I lived through on the East Coast. I know myself well enough to understand that deep down there is still a bit of a yearning to see the world around me transition from the solemn grays of winter to the vibrant greens of spring; to watch the leaves slowly shift into their magnificent hues of fall, visibly sloughing off summer with each successive day they shed their canopy. The crispness of the weather in late October hints at the winter to come, but also keeps those pumpkins we worked so hard at selecting in pristine shape to greet the ghosts and goblins who descend upon us each Halloween.

A beautiful tree showing off back home in Maine. (Photo: C. Jansmann)

Fall is when fragrant scents of baking fill the air; cookies and cakes and all sorts of goodies begin to appear at the office, evidence — as if we needed any — that we are entering the part of the calendar where diets become difficult to maintain. Fall is also when my favorite flavor of coffee is once more available: pumpkin spice. I don’t exactly recall when I had my first cup of this wonderfully spicy taste of the season; I suspect it was probably featured on the menu at my local Starbucks one October, and feeling daring, I gave it a try. Now I find myself eagerly awaiting the yearly pronouncement that it’s back on the menu. I think it was last year — or maybe the one before — when I discovered I could order a version for my Keurig; now my office fills with the warmth of the scent of the season each time I pop a K-cup into the machine.

Photo by Marta Dzedyshko on Pexels.com

Fall is such a season of change; I’m sure that’s why major character moments in my novels have all taken place in that season. It feels appropriate, somehow, given the physical evidence that surrounds us — even here in Tucson. Everything shifts, life changes, and something new inevitably comes out on the other side of the New Year. But for now, I’m going to raise a cup of pumpkin spice to what lies ahead…

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

On The Horizon

I’ve been busy since early August working on the manuscript for Focus, the next book in the Vasily Korsokovach series. It’s an interesting story that has taken some unexpected twists and turns, some of which required me to rethink slightly how the final act would conclude. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that though I generally understand the major waypoints for my novels, until I wade in and start writing, I don’t always know how my characters are going to react. This seems to have been especially true in Focus, for Vasily wound up being more full of angst than I had anticipated — and the villain seems to be far more wily than either of us would have expected.

In short, so far it’s been 70,000+ words of surprise as I sail into the final section of the book; and, all things being equal, I should have it completed by the end of the month — perfectly on schedule (though it feels like anything but).

That gas tank seems to be taking forever to fill…

That’s not to say it hasn’t been fun — in fact, I’ve enjoyed the experience immensely — it’s just that I feel as though it’s going far slower than normal. Partly that’s due to how crazy busy my life is at this time of year; I typically don’t try to squeeze in writing an entire novel in the months leading up to NaNoWriMo, but the idea for Focus was compelling enough for me to throw caution to the wind and dive in. I may well pay for that decision, though, since I’m significantly behind in planning out the work that will be done as part of that annual event. (Honestly, though, isn’t it a writer’s dream to have a backlog of things to write? Talk about being in a happy place.)

By the way, you might have noticed that the date at the end of the title in my screenshot shows 2022; not to dash any hopes out there, but I usually tag each of my manuscripts with the year that I wrote them, not when I am planning on publishing them. As much as I would love to sneak out another Vas book this year, Sean already has the lock on the December release date, so you’ll have to wait until next summer for our Deputy Chief’s latest adventures.

Bygones Q&A

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I thought on the occasion of Bygones being published this week, I’d take a few moments to write up the answers to common questions I get about my characters and the world in which they exist. This time out, I’ll focus on Vasily; hopefully, I’ll remember to do the same thing when Duality appears later this fall.

Where is Rancho Linda?

Nowhere! Rancho Linda, much like Windeport, is a fictional city that you won’t find on any map. However, if it did exist, it might (hypothetically) be sitting in that sweet spot about halfway between Los Angeles and Anaheim along the California 57.

Where is Saint Lucie?

The very fictional small coastal town is located along the Pacific Coast Highway just northwest of Santa Maria. Rosie picked that spot for her “cabin” because it was a nice, quiet place to edit her books. Vas and Alejandro appreciate it for other reasons.

Is Alejandro from Mexico City or Tucson?

Yes! (I see you rolling your eyes at me.) Alex has dual citizenship since his father is from Mexico and his mother is American. He spent time as a child in Mexico City while his father was doing archeological research, then moved back to Tucson.

I’ve looked at a map. It’s not possible for Vasily to have such a great view of Disneyland from his condo.

That might be partially true, given that there are physically no apartment or condo buildings close to the actual theme park. Let’s just say I took it upon myself to make some changes to the City of Anaheim to ensure Vasily’s dream came true. (Please don’t tell them.)

When will Vasily get his annual pass for Disneyland?

I’m not sure. He’s been waiting for the prices to go down. (Vas is likely going to be waiting a long, long time.)

Is it actually possible for him to jog around the perimeter of Disneyland Resort?

Quite possible. The five kilometer route from his condo encircles both parks, mirroring portions of the half-marathon route Disney once used back when there were official race weekends in Anaheim.

Does the National Park Service really have an investigative arm?

That they do. Formed in 1791, actually. The only liberty I might have taken here is stationing someone in San Luis Obispo.

Vas can’t possibly work out enough to keep in such good shape.

You don’t know what he does between books, now do you?

Cal State Irvine seems like a big school.

It is. As part of the California State University system, enrollment has been driven by the various incentives to keep California kids local. Alejandro has a bit of a commute, though, for it lies beyond Rancho Linda — if, of course, the school actually existed in the real world.

A MacBook doesn’t seem like the right technology for a detective.

Probably true. But since the author is in love with all things Apple, it tends to bleed into his writing — much to the everlasting chagrin of one of my beta readers. (I do feel obligated to point out that the most recent season of Midsomer Murders features detectives using iMacs rather prominently, but they probably have, shall we say, some incentives for doing so on the show…)

How can Rosie exist without the internet?

Rather successfully, it seems. Our favorite millionaire author is loosely based on a relative who had little use for tech and yet, somehow, still managed to live a nice, fulfilling life. Go figure.

Considering how large the solarium is alone, just how big is Rosie’s mansion?

Big. Really, really big. It would have to be since the solarium alone houses a 50-meter long pool surrounded by a veritable rainforest full of flora. (This also means there are rooms we’ve not yet seen.)

Will Vas ever pop the question?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? I mean, we’ve only known Alejandro for two books (three if we count Downhill). Were I to give a hint — and I’m not saying I am, mind you — check out the blurb for Requiem.

Wait, I though Sean was the Chat Noir fan?

When we see poor Sean donning his Chat Noir costume in Blindsided for the very first time, it was actually Vasily who filled him in on the entire Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir universe. Vas has been a fan of all things anime for as long as he can remember, and may or may not have his own Chat costume hanging in the closet. (And yes, I tend to use the French version of Chat’s name when I refer to him. I have no idea why.)

Okay – that’s it for now! That was kind of fun to write; I’ll do more when the next book comes out.