Elena Hartwell's Blog, page 38

Citizen Orlov: Spy Thriller

Citizen Orlov, a different kind of Spy Thriller by Jonathan Payne

Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!Don’t miss any debut author interviews. Click the link here.

Not every fishmonger can be a secret agent.

Journey to an unnamed mountainous country in central Europe at the end of the Great War. Enter Citizen Orlov, a simple fishmonger and an honest, upright citizen, who stumbles into the Ministry of Security, and consequently a hidden world of espionage and secrecy. His first assignment? To safeguard the King when he visits the scenic town of Kufzig.

But Orlov soon discovers that his ministry handler, the alluring but-couldn’t-possibly-be-a-femme-fatale Agent Zelle, is planning not to protect the King but to assassinate him.

Caught in a web of plot and counterplot, confusing loyalties, and explosive betrayals, Orlov finds himself on trial for murder. He has an opportunity to clear his name—but with his friends, mother, and fellow citizens’ lives in the balance, freedom comes at a high cost.

To purchase Citizen Orlov , click on any of the following links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, & Waterstones (UK)Interview with Jonathan Payne, author of Citizen Orlov Citizen Orlov is “an absurdist take on the spy thriller,” how did you come to write this novel as your debut?

I’m a huge fan of the spy thriller. I inhale the classics like Fleming, le Carre, Forsyth, and so on. Of the contemporary espionage writers, my favorite is probably Daniel Silva. So, that’s the context in which I approach my work. The other piece of context is that I used to work for the British government in a national security role. I was never a spy, to be clear, but I worked on crime, immigration and terrorism, and spent some time in Afghanistan, so inevitably I bring all that to my writing in one way or another.

This particular novel began life as a dream. Early in the pandemic, I caught COVID-19 and had some very odd, vivid fever dreams. In one of these dreams, I was back in my government days and sent on assignment to a foreign country. Somehow, I arrived there without knowing where I was. (Anything is possible in dreams, of course.) Immediately on arrival, someone started shooting at me, which seemed rather unfair. I remember the sense of indignation I had – still in the dream – that I was only following orders. Who was shooting at me and why? The next morning, I wrote down the dream, and it formed the kernel of the novel.

Tell us about Citizen Orlov, protagonist of your debut novel:

Orlov is a fishmonger. A down-to-earth, honest, working-class guy who sells fish in the market square in the unnamed capital city of the unnamed country in which the novel is set. He hears a telephone ringing through the open window of a government office and – being an upright sort of fellow – decides to answer it. That begins a whirlwind sequence of events in which he becomes involved in a covert plot to assassinate the king. Being a regular guy, Orlov has no clue what’s going on and somehow finds himself on trial for murder. 

So, the novel is a spy thriller with a non-spy protagonist. The fun for the reader (I hope) is following Orlov as he tries to work out what’s going on and why.

Describe your road to publication for Citizen Orlov?

Initially, I wrote CITIZEN ORLOV as a novella, but extended it to novel length after being encouraged to do so by my writers’ group. I then ran it past several beta readers before beginning to pitch agents. But I got no feedback at all from agents, either good or bad. In fact, I don’t know for sure whether any of the agents I pitched actually read a word of my writing. I gave it a few months and then moved on to plan B, small presses. I got an offer almost immediately, from CamCat, a small press in Nashville, TN. They have a terrific submission process which is much more onerous and time-consuming than the norm. I loved it, because I felt like at least here’s a chance of someone reading my work (not just my cover letter). From the point of accepting their offer, it’s been just over a year for editing, printing and marketing before arriving at publication day. 

How did working on national security issues for the British government inform Citizen Orlov?

That’s a great question. I think my years as a civil servant have given me a love for fiction focused on faceless bureaucracies. I’m fascinated by stories about man versus machine.

Obvious examples are THE DOUBLE by Dostoyevsky and THE TRIAL by Kafka. Approaching this novel, I wanted to bring a sense of those stories to my attempt to write a spy thriller. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to ask how the likes of Dostoyevsky or Kafka would have written espionage, if they had been introduced to spy tropes as we understand them today.

What can we find you doing when you aren’t writing absurdist thrillers?

Until recently, the answer was: playing guitar and spending time in the boxing gym.

Unfortunately, both are on hiatus because I had an accident and tore some tendons in my left hand, which required surgery. I’m still doing physio at the moment and hoping to get back to normal soon.

What are you working on now?

Currently, I’m writing the sequel to CITIZEN ORLOV. I’m also working on a novella which is a retelling of the classic Russian story THE OVERCOAT by Nikolai Gogol. The original is about a civil servant in St Petersburg in the 19th century. I move the action to London in the interwar period. 

Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:

A few years ago at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, I listened to Justin Cronin, author of THE PASSAGE. He gave the best advice I’ve heard for new writers: make your work different. Find ways to make your writing stand out from the crowd. That will mean different things to different people. For me, it meant finding a unique voice. I wanted to find a voice that distilled my influences but which was uniquely mine. Readers can judge whether I’ve achieved that.

Great advice! Wishing you success with your writing and recovery from surgery.Author Pet Corner!

 

 

Here’s a photo of my writing companion, Maeby.

She’s named after the daughter in Arrested Development.

Maeby gets upset very quickly if I spend too long at my desk, and she demonstrates this by getting involved, which usually means standing on the keyboard.

 

Jonathan Payne, author of Citizen Orlov

Jonathan Payne is a British-American writer based outside Washington, D.C. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Novel Writing from Middlesex University, London.

His short fiction has been featured at the North London Story Festival and in magazines including Turnpike, Twist in Time and Fiction Kitchen Berlin.

Before moving to the United States, he worked for the British government on matters of national security. When not writing or reading, he can be found in the boxing gym.

To learn more about Jonathan Payne, click on any of the following links: Website, Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram, Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook. Amazon #1 bestseller

Header image by Geralt on Pixabay

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Enemies of All: New Mystery

Enemies of All (The Dan Brady Mysteries Book 1)  by Edward J. Leahy

Guest Post + Book & Author InfoDon’t miss any posts on publishing. Click the link here.Enemies of All

“Tightly plotted with break-neck pacing, Leahy’s immersive historical crime drama, Enemies of All, is a winner!” –James L’Etoile, award-winning author of Black Label, Dead Drop, and the Detective Penley series

In the early 1940s, NYPD Dan Brady, an Irish immigrant who, as a boy in Dublin ran messages for the Sinn Fein, is working on a string of anti-Semitic assaults when he catches a murder case of a Bronx Sunday School teacher by a serial rapist. He soon discovers the rapist’s pattern of hitchhiking into and out of the city and pioneers a process of cooperation with the FBI and other police departments to conduct a dragnet from Louisiana to New England.

Danny expands his cooperation with the FBI to include the anti-Semitic crimes, particularly burglaries, which he suspects are part of a larger effort to disrupt the war effort. The police commissioner authorizes him to coordinate the investigations of all such suspicious crimes in the city, and when a high school chemistry lab is burglarized of ingredients for high explosives, he realizes he is looking for a ring of potential saboteurs. When the FBI reports Nazi agents having landed on Eastern Long Island, Danny finds himself in a race against time to prevent a major bomb attack.

Based on true events.

To purchase Enemies of All, click on the following link: Amazon, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, & Black Rose WritingGuest Post with Edward J. Leahy, author of Enemies of AllThe Challenges of Historical Police Research

There is a scene in the film “French Kiss” in which Luc (Kevin Kline) is showing Kate (Meg Ryan) an old school project at his childhood home, the family vineyard in what is presumably the Rhone Valley in south-central France. He offers Kate a glass of wine and asks her to describe it, which she can only do superficially. The school project is a collection of small bottles, each containing samples of local plant life—currant, lavender, rosemary—which he has her smell and identify.

She takes another sip of the wine and tastes a hint of currant, then of lavender. Luc explains that the plants represented in the bottles are all around the vineyard, and that they all influence the taste of the wine. A little wine shop in my neighborhood includes on each display bottle a hand-written note describing the hints of flavors within, so this is not a notion created for the film.

I’m not much for romantic comedies, but I love that scene. It resonates with me because my writing is the same way, and probably is for most writers. Everything I see, hear, and experience influences it, and various aspects of my life pop up in the most unexpected places in my Kim Brady Mystery Series, much as the currant and lavender pop up in Luc’s family’s wine. My accounting past raises its head in Past Grief, as Leanne and a coworker are tasked with a difficult project similar to one I worked early in my career, and a comment my stepdad, who was a police sergeant, once made about a high-speed car chase appears in the chase scene near the end. The entire series is littered with places I’ve been in the city, things I’ve experienced, people I’ve known, facts I’ve absorbed.

When I decided to launch my new series based on Kim’s grandfather, Dan, with Enemies of All, set in the early 1940s, I had a major problem. Most of my knowledge base no longer applied. Writing a police procedural from the past required a different kind of research.  

Most of the current restraints on police procedures didn’t exist. But many of the current techniques of investigation also weren’t available, and not just the obvious ones like DNA analysis. Police departments didn’t share information with each other or with the FBI (in fact, Enemies of All examines the first attempts to remedy that). Fingerprints were kept in hard-copy files. Ballistics analysis and wiretaps were evolving. 

There is also no direct way to determine what the command structure was in the NYPD in the 1940s, and even the locations of specific precincts can be hard to pin down. True crime stories from the past and local historical pieces are helpful in piecing things together. It was just by luck that I discovered the building that is now home to the NYPD’s Bronx SRG unit originally housed the 44th Precinct in the Bronx, Dan Brady’s precinct. I knew I was on safe ground with the location of the 108th Precinct building in Hunters Point, since I’ve walked past it several times and it’s obviously very old, but it was nice to find a historical article about Long Island City that confirmed it.

The New York Times has an archive that is enormously helpful with some historical background, and I was able to use it for local news that helped set the tone of the city during the war, but it rarely had anything on local crime stories. Long-established newspapers may have similar resources in other cities. There are also some books out there on life on the “home front” during the war, and these, too, were helpful. 

Much of what I needed, outside of specifics about policing, was in the realm of scene-setting, a sense of the time. I did web searches on everything from popular modes of dress, food and gasoline rationing, and the release dates of films to the best restaurants and dance clubs and the ongoing debate over blackout regulations. 

I also discovered that, from 1939 to 1941, New York City and the Works Progress Administration partnered on a project to photograph for property tax purposes every private building in the five boroughs of New York City. This collection has since been digitized and is searchable online, using either street addresses or block and lot numbers. Not every address is searchable, but I was able to get plenty of ideas for settings.

So, it can be done. Good luck and good hunting.

 

Edward J. Leahy is a retired tax accountant living in Jackson Heights, New York.

A life-long New Yorker, he enjoys taking advantage of all the city has to offer with his wife, Cindy, spinning stories of crimes past and present, with the city-that-never-sleeps serving as a character and their favorite restaurants as scenes.

 

Ed can be found on Facebook and Twitter

 

Elena Taylor/Elena HartwellAmazon #1 bestseller

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.

 

Header image by Bones 64 on Pixabay

The post Enemies of All: New Mystery appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

The Torching: New Suspense

The Torching: Olivia Callahan Suspense by Kerry Peresta

Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!
Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.

The Torching

Mysterious fires. A haunting past. A secret file. Three years ago, Olivia Callahan endured an assault that resulted in a devastating brain injury. She survived, but she couldn’t remember anything about her life or who she was. Now, she’s determined to build a bridge between the past she lost and the life she must reclaim. When Olivia crosses paths with Private Investigator Tom Stark, she is drawn to the investigative field, and becomes his intern.

She finds a heavily redacted, forty-five-year-old file locked in his desk drawer that mentions her mother as a young woman. Why had her mentor hidden the file from her, and why had he never mentioned a case involving her mother? As Olivia moves forward with her fledgling career, a string of mysterious fires moves through the community, puzzling the Baltimore Arson Investigative Unit. One of the fires strikes Olivia’s beloved farmhouse in rural Maryland.

Now, in addition to uncovering the secrets bound within the redacted file, she becomes convinced that the fires happening around the area are disturbing calling cards…and they’re meant for her.

Book Details:

Genre: Traditional mystery or Suspense Published by: Level Best Books Publication Date: March 2023 Number of Pages: 323 ISBN: 978-1-68512-323-9 Series: The Olivia Callahan Suspense series, 3 | Each is a Stand Alone Novel

Add it to your Goodreads TBR

To purchase The Torching click on the following link: Amazon

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Guest Post by Kerry Peresta
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WRITER

When I’m in writing mode, I usually get to my desk by 9:30 A.M. and write straight through until early afternoon. My goal is 1000-1500 words per day, and I do pretty well hitting that. At the onset, when I’m starting a new book, I spitball ideas on a notepad, write character sketches, think about the actors and actresses I’d have play those parts, and generally get an overall feel for plot. I should take longer with this stage, but I’ve tried outlining. I really have. A couple of times. I know, I know…authors LOVE outlining. I’m hopeless. I never stick to an outline, the ideas come thick and fast underneath my fingers after I have a generic idea and characters in my head. So why even go there? I do write a long synopsis…but even then, I depart from the script at the actual writing!

I’ve been asked to identify the biggest risk to my writing schedule. I’d have to say…many risks! A bad mood. Lack of reviews. Discouragement. My grandkids visiting…which ALWAYS come before writing. (Can I get an amen from all the Grammys out there?) Also, if a trip or holiday comes along, I take a deep breath and try to work triple time until the holiday comes, then I determinedly ignore writing until things settle down. I can’t write when my mind wraps around Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving festivities. I won’t even try, ha! I think the biggest risk to my writing schedule is when one of my four adult kids has some kind of crisis. If they need support, either physical presence or handholding via cell, I’ll drop everything. Writing. Housework. Husband. They all have to wait until I have my chicks settled back into their nest in some semblance of peace and resolution. The other thing that (playfully) interrupts my schedule is my cat, Felix. Or Agnes, his comrade-in-arms. They both love to walk across my keyboard or lap at the most inopportune times. Often they are so adorable I have to stop and partake of kitty-hugs for a minute. Marketing is a risk to my writing schedule. I love marketing, I come from a marketing background…but it takes time and thought and it becomes challenging to work it into my writing schedule.

Another common question is what I do when nothing is working…in other words, do I ever get ‘writer’s block’. The short answer is that I rarely experience ‘writer’s block’ but I do stumble across plot point issues, or a chapter in the wrong place, or something that begs further research. This happens around the mid-point of the book. My brain is fried by that point, and I have to take a break. Let my mind rest. Put on my Thoreau hat and marinate in nature. For instance, when one of my critique partners told me correctional officers in Maryland have to be 21, I was frustrated that I’d very carefully calculated my character’s age to be 18 and concocted the plot timeline around this number. Now, I had to carefully pick through and change all of the timeline! I did a lot of research about prisons, but the age requirement escaped my attention. It’s so cool when a writer is both creative and methodical…but I’m on the creative spectrum so details are sometimes hard for me to lasso. So I throw up my hands when that happens, step away, and bury myself in a mindless TV episode, like a re-run of Law & Order. (I’ve seen every episode three times, probably.) When I run into roadblocks that involve research or plot point correction, it’s time to take a breather. I’ll come back fresher and less frazzled.

Quite often, I’ll have someone on social media or locally ask for the best advice I would give a prospective or beginning writer. My first reaction to this question is a big, drawn-out exhale. Then my mind flashes back to all the years spent researching the publishing industry—the blood, sweat, and tears of learning to write a query and sending them out as I hold my breath in anticipation—the crushing reality of a ninety percent rejection ratio. The tiny royalty checks that beginning authors experience. All this bounces through my head. I blink. Clear my throat. Then I say, “You don’t want to do this. Trust me.”

“Oh, but I do! I really do!” one of these hapless, starry-eyed, writers-in-the-making responds.

And so it begins.

Read an excerpt from The Torching.

Chapter 1

Smoke assailed us halfway up my long, winding, driveway. A dingy, gray film coated my windshield. I jabbed the brake to slow down, but my trembling foot slipped off the brake. Lilly gave me a look that broke my heart. 

The surging, ballooning smoke hurled itself at us like angry fog. Visibility fell to near-zero the longer I drove. I slowed to a crawl. We inched along the lane until the strobing white-and-red lights cut through the smoke. I counted two fire engines and one black SUV on the lane as I approached. A couple of firefighters raced into my house. My door lay on the porch in three pieces, and an  axe was propped against the wall. Each firefighter wore oxygen tanks attached to large, anteater-shaped masks. With their cumbersome, reflective-striped protective gear and masks, they looked more suited to step on the moon than inside my beloved Maryland farmhouse. 

I brought my car to a shuddering halt. 

We stepped out. I put my arm around Lilly.

Vaporous clouds of smoke cloaked my house. A couple of firefighters worked with giant, yellow firehoses. The men had divided themselves into teams, and the muted shouts told me some of them were behind the house. Flames leapt toward the sky from the backside of the roof. I counted six firefighters working on the house that I could see—plus the ones in the back. Tears trickled down my cheeks, and a terrifying thought struck—what about my cat? 

“Lilly,” I said, my voice shaky, “Where was Riot when you last saw him?”

Lily’s face went white. “Mom…”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “No, no…Riot’s smart. He will have found safety. I’ll find him. Stay here.”

I ran across the yard to a woman dressed in navy slacks and a white shirt with metal glinting on the front and official-looking patches on the arms. “I’m the owner,” I yelled over the whump of igniting flames, batting my way through smoke.

She shook my hand and identified herself as the public information officer. “Sorry to meet under these circumstances, but glad you were out of the home. We have it controlled. The team inside is checking to make sure it was contained. As far as we can tell, the seat of the fire is in the attic. Give us thirty minutes, okay? But ma’am, I’ll need you to stay back. Our investigator will be here soon. She’ll let you know when it’s safe to go inside.”

“My cat’s in there,” I yelled. “Can you have someone look for him?” 

She spoke into a radio. 

The smoke started to let up. Three hoses trained on the roof gushed out torrents of water. The huge flames stretching into the sky began to shrink. Radio chatter stuttered around the space. The firefighters stayed in constant contact, radios slung across their chests with a strap that held a mic. 

These guys would not know where to look for Riot. 

With an apologetic glance at Lilly, I skirted around the trucks, avoided the PIO, and dashed across the yard, up the front porch stairs, and into the house.

 “MOM,” Lilly wailed through the billowy smoke.

 Coughing, I ran inside. “Riot,” I screamed. “Riot, I’m here, buddy.”

 I looked behind the couch. Underneath the dining room table. On top of his cat tree. Underneath the wingback chair. He wasn’t in any of his favorite spots. I plowed through the murkiness and melting sheetrock.

 A bullhorn blared, “Ma’am. We need you to exit the building.” “Now!”

 My throat was closing. My eyes stung like crazy. I needed to find him and get the heck out. 

 I scrambled into the kitchen and opened the lower cupboards, then the uppers. Searched the seats of the barstools, underneath the kitchen table. My heart thrashed like a wrecking ball in my chest. “Riot? I’m here, boy. Come on out,” I begged. A timid sound reached my ears. I waited. I heard it again, louder. 

 A shaggy, orange head appeared on top of the cabinets. I climbed up, grabbed him, and raced out the back door. The backyard firefighter team made group gestures that  I interpreted as  ‘get the hell out of here and let us do our job, ma’am’. 

 I zigzagged through the first responder obstacle course to my car, blinded by the strobing lights. Lilly spurted fresh tears and held out her arms for Riot. We watched in silence as the flames soared into the sky. After a while, we heard less commotion from the firefighters and the smoke around us grew white and wispy. 

 A very red-faced PIO barreled toward me. “I need you to stay out of the house until our investigator has completed the investigation.”

 I wiped my sooty hands on my pants. “Your guys wouldn’t have found my cat. Riot would have been scared to death by the way they look. I didn’t have a choice.”

 She told me the fire investigator had arrived, and under no circumstances was I to enter the home without her permission.

 Lilly held Riot tight against her chest. 

 “Thought you hated this cat,” I joked.

 “Whatever, Mom,” she said. 

 A small, thickset, woman with short hair approached. 

 “Mrs. Callahan?” 

 “It’s Ms. I’m the owner.”

 “Good news, Ms. Callahan. The rear quadrant of the roof and attic sustained most of the damage. The firefighters are checking the ceiling of the second floor now, for hot spots. I think you got lucky.”

 “It didn’t spread?”

 She smiled her assurances. “They’re going to clean up here and have a final look around. They’ll let me know when it’s safe to go in.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Tasha Jackson, fire investigator. I work with these goofballs.” She grinned.

 I shook her hand. 

 In the background, firefighters wrapped hoses. A couple of them worked the hydrant. Another walked the perimeter of my home. Instead of the burble of radios, most of them had ditched the headgear. A man got out of the black SUV and strode toward the PIO. After a few minutes of speaking with her, he approached me. He introduced himself as the Battalion Chief, told me he was sorry the fire had interrupted such an important occasion, and if there was anything they could do…to call the PIO. She wiggled her fingers at me, then went to talk to the camera crews and TV reporters that had crashed the scene. His expression somber, the Battalion Chief handed me his business card.

 “If you need them, Red Cross services are available for three nights at a local motel and $600 gift cards for each displaced person. Please contact your insurance company immediately, they’ll do their own investigation.”

 I gave him a blank look and took his card. 

 “Our investigator will talk about next steps, and ask you some questions to complete her report. Please remember not to go inside the area of damage alone, Ms. Callahan. Do you have somewhere to stay?” 

With a sigh, I glanced over my shoulder toward my compact, office on the corner of Worthington Avenue and my property. I could stay in the office guest bedroom, and Lilly could stay at my neighbor’s house. “Yeah. We do. Is the…do you think the bedrooms in my house are okay? Can we get some clothes?” 

He yelled a couple of names and asked them to check. They walked toward my house. The porch that stretched across the front of my house looked as if someone couldn’t decide whether to drown it or blow it up.  

The public information officer waved off the reporters as she walked in my direction. One of the firefighters stared at me so long it became uncomfortable.  I groaned. Was he one of them? A cult fan of the ‘Mercy’s Miracle’ persona? Why had I thought it was a good idea to write a book? After the publisher’s marketing department flew me all over the country for publicity events, the book hit the bestseller list and stayed there. The story of my survival and struggle to re-create my life had developed a rabid following.

I gave the firefighter a hard stare. He dropped his gaze. Reporters screamed questions at me from a distance. The PIO did her best to keep them under control.

I longed for a normal life. 

My mind flew back. I closed my eyes, remembering.

The first few days, waking up in the hospital panicked and breathless and unable to move; the second week, when I’d begun to see flickers of light, the third week, when my fingers twitched and hope sprang to life. Neurology interns stealing in and out of my room at odd hours to see the ‘miracle’ restoration. I remembered my daughters’ first visits and the terrified looks on their faces when they realized I didn’t remember them. The fourth and fifth weeks, when physical therapists did everything they could to help restore my mobility and speech.

I could still visualize the reporters closing in on me. Waving their microphones in my face before I could even form a coherent sentence. I remembered watching my mom herding my daughters to my room on the fifth floor of the hospital, and the television crews that formed a tight knot around them as they made their way to the entrance of the hospital.  

My youngest daughter had burst into my hospital room with an excited smile. “Reporters are dying to talk to you, Mom! Get ready.”

I rubbed my eyes and sighed. 

Reporters were a plague to be avoided, now.

“Olivia? Are you okay?” The PIO looked at me in concern.
I blinked. “Sorry. Yeah. I’m okay.”

She held out her cell. “Create contact info for me?”

I entered my number, and my neighbor Callie’s, for good measure. The two firefighters that had inspected the bedrooms returned with a thumbs-up. “Bedrooms look good. Stairs are intact.”

The PIO smiled at me, tilted her head toward the reporters. “I didn’t realize you were that Olivia Callahan.”

I attempted a smile. She was trying to be nice. She had no idea that I hated the notoriety.

She handed me her card. “If you need anything. I mean it.” She left.

Lilly put her hand on my shoulder. “Mom? Everybody’s leaving. Now what?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. How do I accept this new reality?

Kerry Peresta, author of The Torching

Kerry Peresta is the author of the Olivia Callahan Suspense series. “The Torching,” book three, releases March, 2023, and books four and five in 2024 and 2025. Her standalone suspense thriller, “Back Before Dawn,” releases May, 2023. Additional writing credits include a popular newspaper and e-zine humor column, “The Lighter Side,” (2009—2011); the short story “The Day the Migraine Died,” published in Rock, Roll, and Ruin: A Triangle Sisters in Crime Anthology, articles published in Local Life Magazine, The Bluffton Breeze, Lady Lowcountry, and Island Events Magazine.

She is past chapter president of the Maryland Writers’ Association and a current member and presenter of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, Hilton Head Island Writers’ Network, South Carolina Writers Association, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Kerry is the mother of four adult children, and spent thirty years in advertising as an account manager, creative director, copywriter, and editor.

When she’s not writing, you’ll find her working out, riding her bike or kayaking, enjoying the beaches of Hilton Head Island, or cuddling her two cats, Agnes and Felix. She and her husband moved to Hilton Head Island in 2015.

To learn about Kerry, click on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, Bookbub, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

 

Visit all the Stops on The Torching Tour

05/09 Guest post @ The Book Divas Reads
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06/01 Interview @ Hott Books
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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
Amazon #1 bestseller

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.

The post The Torching: New Suspense appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

Premonition: Now Out in Paperback!

Premonition, a thriller by Wendy Whitman,

 

 Author Info + Book Info + ExcerptDon’t miss her author interview, click here. Premonition by Wendy Whitman

Cary Mackin is a TV journalist who has covered crime for nearly twenty years. After losing her job she moves to a small town in Connecticut—only to get caught up in the web of a deranged serial killer.

Cary has a dark secret that drives everything she does: a deep-seated, lifelong fear that one day she will be murdered.

As the madman Cary stumbled upon continues to terrorize the beautiful countryside where she now resides, will her premonition come true?

“Premonition…a psycho-thriller roller coaster ride that probes the dark corners of one woman’s seemingly overwhelming paranoia…or is it? From a crime and justice expert, Premonition nails every detail of the criminal mind, the hunter and the hunted. Premonition is full of twists and surprises…I love it! Bravo!”

—Nancy Grace, Founder, CrimeOnline.com, Host of CrimeStories on Fox Nation, Sirius XM, and NYT Bestselling Author

To purchase Premonition, now available in paperback, click the following links: Amazon, IndieBound, B & N, Books-A-Million & Bookshop.orgWendy Whitman

Wendy Whitman has a unique background through her decades-long work as an executive and producer for Court TV and HLN, covering almost every major high-profile murder case in America.

Through her knowledge of the most detailed aspects of the crimes, Ms. Whitman has become an expert on the subject of murder in America.

Before attending Boston University School of Law, Whitman worked for comedians Lily Tomlin and George Carlin. After graduating from law school, the author embarked on what turned out to be a twenty-year career in television covering crime. She spent fifteen years at Court TV and another several at HLN for the Nancy Grace show, where she appeared on air as a producer/reporter covering high-profile cases.

Whitman received three Telly Awards and a GLAAD nomination during her tenure at Court TV.

To learn more about Wendy, click on her name, photo, or any of the following links: Amazon Author Page, LinkedIn, Goodreads & InstagramRead an excerpt from Premonition

When Cary had trouble falling asleep, which was most nights these days, she thought about crime-related things. She pondered that she associated almost everything with murder.

If someone mentioned a place, say Chicago, it was the student nurse victims; Wichita conjured up the Carr Brothers’ killing spree and Dennis Rader; Indianapolis, the murders of seven members of the same family spanning three generations; and Knoxville, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. If she met someone from Seattle, the Space Needle didn’t come to mind, only Gary Ridgway.

What a warped view of the world she had. 

Praise for Premonition by Wendy Whitman

“…a psycho-thriller roller coaster ride that probes the dark corners of one woman’s seemingly overwhelming paranoia…or is it?  From a crime and justice expert, Premonition nails every detail of the criminal mind, the hunter and the hunted.  Premonition is full of twists and surprises…I love it! Bravo!” —Nancy Grace, Founder, CrimeOnline.com, Host of CrimeStories on Fox Nation, Sirius XM, and NYT Bestselling Author

“Chilling and original, Premonition is a brilliant debut thriller from Wendy Whitman, an insider whose deep knowledge of crime and the law has created a platform for suspenseful storytelling. Taut and fast-paced, Whitman’s tale, and her unique central character, combine to create a riveting plot that drives the story to its stunning conclusion.” —Jack Ford, Emmy and Peabody Award–Winning Journalist and Bestselling Author of Chariot on the Mountain“A unique psychological thriller that weaves true crime into a plot that keeps the reader captivated from the very first page. A bold, heartfelt debut novel from an author who has created one of the most complex and provocative heroines in recent memory. A perfect read sure to keep you up at night.” —Rita Cosby, Emmy-Winning TV Host and Bestselling Author of Quiet Hero 

“My friend and colleague at Court TV, Wendy Whitman, has created a compelling psychological thriller filled with shocking twists that captivate the reader to the very end… Whitman weaves plot, personality, and prose in a high-octane suspense that will give you paper cuts as you quickly turn the pages. Premonition offers a gripping storyline…and a chilling chase to an ending that you never expected.” —Gregg Jarrett, Network Legal Analyst and Bestselling Author“If there is anyone best suited to write a book about the reality of evil in this crazy world we live in, it’s Whitman. Her book is unique because although fiction, it so mirrors reality that each page hits home more and more. Having been in the criminal law arena for fifty-five years and having dealt with two notorious serial killer cases, Whitman’s novel captures all aspects of the utter insanity of the criminal mind.” —Gerald P. Boyle, Attorney, Represented Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer

“The decades of Wendy Whitman’s focus and dedication to the crime and justice genre shine through each page, as she spins the yarn in this gripping crime tale. Speaking from experience that has imbued her with personal knowledge of the inner workings of hundreds of criminal minds, she is an authoritative voice in telling crime stories…because she has lived through reporting some of the most disturbing ones in American history. Brava, Wendy!” —Ashleigh Banfield, Court TV Special Contributor and Host of Judgment with Ashleigh Banfield

“All of those cases on Court TV certainly permeated the mind of producer Wendy Whitman. Her book is a truly breathless thriller through every twist and turn. A stellar debut novel with a terrific female heroine!” —Rikki Klieman, Attorney and CBS News Legal Analyst

“Gripping, suspenseful, and thoughtful, Premonition gives a behind the scenes look at the dangers that surround us as we go about our daily lives. If you’re looking for a crime thriller to get lost in, this is it.” —Dr. Robi Ludwig, Psychotherapist, TV Personality, and Author

“If you’ve ever wondered what covering gruesome murders does to the mind of a true crime journalist – read this book. If you want a totally engrossing novel, written by a true insider of crime TV – read this book. You’ll come away hoping Wendy is writing a sequel.” —Diane Dimond, Journalist, Author, Syndicated ColumnistElena Taylor/Elena HartwellAmazon #1 bestseller

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.

 

Header image by Jarmoluk on Pixabay.

The post Premonition: Now Out in Paperback! appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

Gillespie Field Groove: New Mystery

Gillespie Field Groove, a Private Detective Mystery by Corey Lynn Fayman

Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Excerpt!Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here. Gillespie Field Groove

An obscure rock’n’roll roadie dies under mysterious circumstances. A prized Jimi Hendrix guitar has gone missing. Can Rolly Waters save his new client from the ruthless collectors looking for it?

When nurse and fledgling pilot Lucinda Rhodes hires guitar-playing private detective Rolly Waters to track down a Stratocaster guitar owned by her deceased father, Rolly is thrilled to take on her case, especially when he learns the guitar’s original owner may have been Jimi Hendrix. But Gerry Rhodes’s reckless personal history leads to more questions than Rolly and Lucinda have bargained for, as an aging rock’n’roll impresario, his trophy wife, a Russian gangster and the FBI get involved. When a forty-year-old shooting accident reveals a surprising connection to a pop star’s hit record, Rolly sees darker forces at work. And his and Lucinda’s lives hang in the balance.

Praise for Gillespie Field Groove:

“Gillespie Field Groove hits all the right notes. Music fans and general mystery readers alike will enjoy this story’s irresistible beat.” ~ blueinkreview.com “Exciting, compelling, suspenseful, and reflective of the realities of the music industry and San Diego culture, Gillespie Field Groove is a thrilling mystery novel in which a man seeks to right the wrongs committed by greedy executives.” ~ forewordreviews.com

Book Details:

Genre: Private Detective Mystery, Cozy Mystery Published by: Konstellation Press Publication Date: March 2023 Number of Pages: 276 ISBN: 0998748285 (ISBN-13: 978-0998748283) Series: A Rolly Waters Mystery, 5th

To purchase Gillespie Field Groove , click the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | GoodreadsGuest Post — Gillespie Field Groove — Dialogue Magicby Corey Lynn Fayman

Some writers enjoy plotting, creating intricate schemes. Others love to describe the fictional world they’ve invented. And some like to get into the mind of their characters, chronicling their inner psychologies. I enjoy writing all of those, but what I really relish is composing dialogue, imagining the exchange of words between two or more characters. Dialogue has magical powers. Here’s a few things I think it can do for a writer, as well as three things to look out for.

Show don’t tell. This often-repeated bit of writing advice can sometimes be addressed with a well written bit of dialogue. Since the words come straight from the characters’ mouths rather than the authors (at least they appear to), the reader can make their own judgements about character motivation, intent, morals and manners.

Reveal character. Is your character smart or dim-witted? College-smart or street smart? Idealistic, down-to-earth, funny or mean? Dialogue can illustrate that. Instead of telling us a character is arrogant, have them say arrogant things. The reader will respond more directly, as if they were there, listening.

Create tension. Every character in your story has their own agenda and goals. Anytime they meet they’re negotiating. What are they willing to reveal? What are they trying to hide? Are they direct, dismissive, or deflecting? How does the environment the characters meet in affect what they say? The situational differences between each character’s goals and their conversational style should create dramatic tension. Dialogue is a negotiation, not just a back-and-forth recitation of information.

Those are three things I think dialogue can do well, and why I like to dig in deep with my fictional characters’ conversations. If your written dialogue does all the above at the same time, you’re really onto something. But beware. There are some things you need to avoid:

Data dumping. Characters spewing long explanations or “talking” the narrative are problematic. Readers get bored very quickly with this kind of thing. And don’t try to work your way around it by having another character interject with, “I see. What else?” That’s not real dialogue.

Don’t overdo it. When it comes to character, a little goes a long way. Got a Russian mobster with a lisp in your story? Pick a few words they say differently and only use them occasionally. Accents and verbal tics are fun, but they can wear out the reader. Use this spice lightly.

Don’t forget context. This is my own biggest bugaboo, the mistake I make most frequently. I get so involved in writing the dialogue that I go on for pages without reminding the reader where the characters are, what else is going on in the scene or how they react physically. You don’t always need much, but you need to provide context to break up the dialogue. Otherwise, you’re writing a play.

Corey Lynn Fayman, author of Gillespie Field Groove

Corey Lynn Fayman has worked as a musician, sound technician, and interactive designer. He holds a B.A. in English, with a specialization in creative writing and poetry from UCLA, and an M.A. in Educational Technology from San Diego State University. Fayman spent five years as a sound technician and designer at the nationally lauded Old Globe Theatre, where he received several nominations and a Drama-Logue Award for his theatrical sound design.

He’s worked as an interactive designer for organizations both corporate and sundry and has taught technology and design courses at various colleges and universities. He lives in San Diego, California, and is the author of four Rolly Waters mystery series, including Blacks Beach Shuffle, Border Field Blues, and Desert City Diva (2015 Indiefab Book of the Year bronze award).

The fourth in the series, Ballast Point Breakdown, was honored with the best-in-show Geisel Award at the 2021 San Diego Book Awards.

 

To learn more about Corey Lynn Fayman, click on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, BookBub, Twitter, Facebook. Read an Excerpt from Gillespie Field Groove

The Nurse

Just after two in the afternoon, Rolly Waters sat at a round concrete table in the courtyard of Alvarado Hospital, nursing a cappuccino to which he’d added five drops of artificial sweetener. He was trying to cut sugar out of his diet. The woman across the table from him smiled. Her name was Lucinda Rhodes. She was a nurse at the hospital. Two years ago, Lucinda had seen Rolly at his worst, in the emergency room of a hospital in Brawley where the doctors had treated him for a black widow spider bite. Nurse Lucinda had kept tabs on him through the night, checking his blood pressure, giving him pills, and had fitted him with crutches before he checked out. Rolly didn’t remember much else about that night, except that it had been hot in the desert, and everything smelled like fertilizer. He didn’t remember giving his business card to the nurse. But Nurse Lucinda had one of his cards in her hand today. She placed it on the table like a bridge player dropping a trump card.  

“I don’t know why I kept this,” she said. “I guess I thought it might come in handy someday. I’d never met a private investigator before. You were funny, not like I thought a detective would be. You flirted with me.”  

“I did?” Rolly said, hoping he sounded more amnesic than incredulous. “I hope I wasn’t out of line.”  

“I’ve dealt with a lot worse,” said Lucinda. “Besides, I thought you were kind of cute.”   

“What do you think now?” Rolly said, unable to resist. Lucinda smiled and redirected the conversation.  

“You’re a musician, right?” she said. “You play the guitar?”

Rolly nodded. He didn’t usually drive out to meet potential clients as soon as they called, but his detective work had dried up. The hospital was only a fifteen-minute drive from his house, east on Highway 8 near San Diego State University. He’d gotten to know any number of the local hospitals over the years, interviewing accident victims for their lawyers. Sometimes he’d been in the accident.  

“Tell me what you’re looking for again,” he said. “You said something about your father?”  

Lucinda nodded, glanced over at the coffee stand, then back at Rolly. She appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties, a little wide around the middle, with an honest, gentle face. She seemed more down to earth than most of the women Rolly had dated. He wasn’t dating Lucinda, though. She was a potential client. He’d gotten too close to a client once, gotten involved with her while working on her case. That was how he’d ended up in the emergency room in Brawley.  

“My dad died,” Lucinda said. “Last week.”  

“I’m sorry.”  

Lucinda stared into her coffee cup, contemplating the black liquid inside.  

“He’s why I moved here,” she said. “From Brawley. It was three months ago. I knew he needed some help. I didn’t see my dad much when I was growing up. I lived with my mother after they got divorced. She died ten years ago. Cancer. I don’t have any siblings, so my dad was all the family I had left.”  

“What did your father do for a living?”  

“He was in the music business, like you. One of those guys that travels around with bands.”  

“A roadie?”  

 Lucinda nodded.  

“That’s how they met, my mom and my dad. She used to tell me the story all the time. It was at a Jimi Hendrix concert. Here in San Diego. Dad was in charge of those speakers they put in front so the singers can hear themselves?”  

“The monitors,” said Rolly.  

“Yeah. My mom was sixteen. She’d won some contest on at a radio station. That’s how she got backstage for the concert. She was supposed to meet Jimi Hendrix, but the radio people messed something up, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he wouldn’t talk to any of them. Jimi Hendrix, I mean. She met him later, thanks to my dad.”  

“She met your dad backstage?”  

“It was outside, after the show. There was a riot. The police were there. Dad helped Mom get away. That’s how she ended up on the band’s tour bus. And the rest, as my mom liked to say, was history.”  

“How old was your dad?” asked Rolly.  

“Twenty, I think. Maybe twenty-one. Not that big a difference but . . .” Lucinda shrugged. “Times were different then, I guess.”  

“Yeah,” Rolly concurred. He was not about to throw stones at glass houses. There’d been girls at the clubs where his bands played, girls with fake IDs who were younger than he’d been. He hoped none of the ones he’d taken home had been legally underage, but thinking about it now in his forties made him a little queasy. As Lucinda had noted, times had changed. Some.  

“Mom was gone for five days,” Lucinda continued. “Her parents didn’t know where she was. It made all the papers. This guy at the radio station got fired. Two years later, out of the blue, my dad comes back to town and looks up my mom. She was of age then and they got married. I came along later. I think they were trying to save their marriage by having a baby.”  

“They wouldn’t be the first,” Rolly said. Lucinda’s story about her parents was interesting and her way of telling it made him like her even more, but he needed to get down to business, keep it professional. “How can I be of help?”  

Lucinda reached in the front left pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a photograph. She placed it on the table.  

“It’s this photograph,” she said. “My dad left it for me. I don’t know why. I don’t even know who the guy is.”  

Rolly picked up the photograph. It was a black man, no older than thirty. He was dressed in a seafoam-green suit, something a Motown act might have worn in the early seventies. The comparison wasn’t far off. The man was a musician, with a white Stratocaster guitar strapped over his shoulder, as if he’d just stepped off, or was preparing to step onto, the stage.  

“He’s not Jimi Hendrix.” Rolly said. “I can tell you that much.”  

Lucinda frowned.  

“I may be from Brawley, Mr. Waters, but I’m not a total hick. I know he’s not Jimi Hendrix. The thing is . . . it looks like my dad’s guitar. The one Jimi Hendrix gave him.”  

Rolly leaned back in his chair and reassessed the guitar in the photograph. It looked like thousands of others, but if Jimi Hendrix had touched that Stratocaster even once, it was more valuable than the rest.  

“You understand why I thought you could help me?” Lucinda said.  

Rolly nodded. He stared at the photo again.  

“You think this guy in the photo still has the guitar?”  

Lucinda shrugged.  

“I don’t know. I remember seeing one like it in my dad’s apartment when I was a kid. I remember him saying he didn’t have much to give me, except that guitar, the one Jimi Hendrix gave him. He said it would be my inheritance.”  

“Could be a pretty nice inheritance,” Rolly said.   

“That’s what I thought,” said Lucinda. She leaned back in her seat and tapped both hands on the table. “I looked up some things on the internet. One of Jimi Hendrix’s guitars sold for almost two million dollars.”  

“Well,” said Rolly. “That was the guitar from Woodstock, the one Hendrix used to play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ I don’t think this one would be worth that much . . .”  

“It’d be worth something, though, wouldn’t it? If it came from Jimi Hendrix.”  

“Yeah.” Rolly nodded. Any guitar Hendrix had touched would be worth a considerable amount to collectors, if it had provenance. That wasn’t Rolly’s area of expertise, but he knew people who could help him out with the valuation. He’d need to have the actual guitar in his hands, though. This one was only a photograph. And Jimi Hendrix wasn’t in the photo.   

“Do you have any other documentation or photos?” he asked.  

Lucinda shook her head.  

“When was the last time you saw the guitar in your dad’s possession?”  

“Maybe ten years ago.” Lucinda shrugged. “I haven’t really been through his stuff yet. The church said they could let me into his apartment tomorrow.”  

 “He lived at a church?”  

Lucinda sighed. She surveyed the courtyard, then sipped her coffee a couple of times.  

“My dad worked at this Russian Orthodox church,” she said. “Over in Allied Gardens. He did some maintenance, ran the PA system, stuff like that. They let him live in this little apartment at the edge of the property, rent free, in exchange for his work. My dad was seventy- three, but he couldn’t retire. He didn’t have any Social Security. Not much, anyway. He was starting to lose it, mentally.”  

Rolly nodded again, trying not to think about where he’d be at seventy-three. According to the latest mailing from the IRS, he’d only be pulling in three hundred and twenty-five dollars a month from Social Security when he turned sixty-five. He’d never be able to retire.  

“The first thing you should look for is a sales receipt,” he said.  

“Hmm?” Lucinda said, sounding distracted, as if she’d been thinking about something entirely different.  

“When you go through his apartment,” Rolly said. “Look for a sales slip. In case he sold the guitar to someone.”   

“He might have, I guess,” Lucinda said. “Dad was always having money troubles. He wasn’t the kind of guy who kept accurate paperwork. He always said if you couldn’t do business on a handshake with someone then you shouldn’t do business with them at all. I think it cost him over the years. Well, that and the drugs. He had substance abuse problems.”  

“Occupational hazard,” Rolly said. “If he worked in the music business. I had to get sober myself.”  

“How long has it been for you?”   

“Twenty years now, I guess, something like that.”  

“Sober people usually know to the day,” said Lucinda. She didn’t sound like she was challenging him, just stating a fact. Rolly shrugged.  

“My father still drinks too much,” he said. “That helps me avoid it.”  

Lucinda leaned forward again and rubbed her hands together, as if she were washing them.   

“Maybe you could come with me tomorrow?” she said. “To my dad’s place.”  

“I’d have to charge you for it,” Rolly said.  

“How much?”   

“Fifty dollars an hour. Three hundred a day. Plus expenses,” said Rolly. He liked Lucinda. Her case was already more interesting than most, but he still needed to get paid.  

“I can do that,” said Lucinda. “Maybe around ten o’clock tomorrow morning? Just a couple of hours. The church is just down the street from this nightclub you might know. Bump’s?”   

“Yeah, I know Bump’s,” Rolly said. “I used to play there sometimes.”  

“Great,” said Lucinda. “I appreciate this. I didn’t want to go there alone. I don’t have any family or friends here in town I can ask.”  

Rolly placed the photograph on the table, pulled out his phone and took several pictures of it, checked them, decided they’d do, then passed the original photo back to Lucinda.  

“I’ll show your photo to some people I know,” he said. “Maybe someone’s seen this guitar before. They might know who the guy in the photo is, too.”  

“Are you going to charge me for that?”   

“No,” Rolly said. He shrugged. “It’s on me. I was going to see a guy today anyway.”  

“Thanks,” Lucinda said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, at the church. Bring a contract if you need me to sign one.”  

They exchanged contact information and stood up. Lucinda turned to walk away.  

“Wait,” said Rolly. Lucinda paused. “Where did you find this photograph?”  

“What’s that?” she said.  

“You said you hadn’t been able to get into your father’s apartment. Where did this photo come from?”   

Lucinda took a deep breath, not quite a sigh.  

“We’ll have to talk about that, I guess. My dad called me the night that he died. I was working. When I stopped by after work, he was dead. He had an envelope with my name on it in his lap. The photo was in the envelope.”  

“Was there anything else?”   

“No. Just the photo. I put it in my car and called nine-one-one. The paramedics came first, and then the police. They sealed off the apartment. I wasn’t allowed to go back in.”  

“Did you show them the photograph?”  

“No. I didn’t think it was important.”  

“What do you mean?” Rolly asked.   

Lucinda stared into her coffee cup again. She looked up at Rolly again. Her voice broke.  

“The police think someone murdered him.”

 

Giveaway: This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Corey Fayman. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited. The giveaway is for: 1 $20 Amazon.com Gift Card & 1 Physical copy of Gillespie Field Groove for US residents

 

Visit all the Stops on the Tour!

05/08 Guest post @ The Book Divas Reads
05/10 Interview @ The Reading Frenzy
05/10 Showcase @ Books, Ramblings, and Tea
05/11 Guest post @ The Mystery of Writing
05/12 Showcase @ The Pen & Muse
05/13 Review @ Reading is my Superpower
05/16 Review @ Its All About the Book
05/19 Review @ Book Reviews From an Avid Reader
05/27 Showcase @ Silvers Reviews
05/28 Review @ Paws. Read. Repeat
05/30 Interview @ Hott Books
05/31 Review @ 5 Minutes for Books
06/01 Review @ Celticladys Reviews
06/01 Review @ elaine_sapp65
06/02 Review @ Melissa As Blog

Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

    The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.

The post Gillespie Field Groove: New Mystery appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

A Novel Disguise: Historical Cozy

A Novel Disguise, a Lady Librarian Mystery by Samantha Larsen

Character Guest Post + Book & Author Info + GiveawayDon’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.

 

 

 

A Novel Disguise, a Lady Librarian Mystery

When Miss Tiffany Woodall assumes the identity of her half-brother after his death, she realizes she isn’t the only one with a secret to hide in this historical series debut, perfect for fans of Deanna Raybourn and Sherry Thomas.

1784 London.Miss Tiffany Woodall didn’t murder her half-brother, but she did bury him in the back garden so that she could keep her cottage. Now, the confirmed spinster has to pretend to be Uriah and fulfill his duties as the Duke of Beaufort’s librarian while searching Astwell Palace for Uriah’s missing diamond pin, the only thing of value they own. Her ruse is almost up when she is discovered by Mr. Samir Lathrop, the local bookseller, who tries to save her from drowning while she’s actually just washing up in a lake after burying her brother.

Her plan is going by the book, until the rector proposes marriage and she starts to develop feelings for Mr. Lathrop. But when her childhood friend, Tess, comes to visit, Tiffany quickly realizes her secret isn’t the only one hidden within these walls. The body of a servant is found, along with a collection of stolen items, and someone else grows mysteriously ill. Can Tiffany solve these mysteries without her own disguise being discovered? If not, she’ll lose her cottage and possibly her life.

A Novel Disguise (A Lady Librarian Mystery)  [image error]
Historical Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Imaginary English village, 1784
Crooked Lane Books (May 16, 2023)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1639103465
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1639103461
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B9WJ8FFT

To purchase A Novel Disguise (A Lady Librarian Mystery) click on any of the following links: Amazon – B&N – Books A Million – Powells Books – IndieBound – Bookshop.orgCharacter Guest Post by Samantha Hastings — Being Black in 1784 England

October 30, 1784.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: Mr. Thomas Montague, you are the first person of African descent I have ever met. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to live in England in 1784?

Mr. Thomas Montague: I was born in Jamaica. The Duchess of Beaufort purchased me from a slave captain as a small child and I don’t remember much before then. I grew up at Astwell Palace. In the eighteenth century, English aristocratic ladies liked to have Black pageboys so that their own skin appeared whiter. They would dress us up in colorful costumes and show us off to their friends. When the boys grew up, they were often sold back into slavery.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: How terrible it must be for a young boy to be taken away from his family and put on display. That is both awful and unconscionable. I am so sorry. But now that you are grown, what is your position of employment at Astwell Palace?

Mr. Thomas Montague: I am the first footman. I run errands for the duchess and I often accompany her to make calls. I assist the butler in serving dinner and I wind up the clocks every day. Because I am a footman, I am called by my given name: Thomas.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: Which I must mention that you are a wonderful footman. You are both tall and handsome. The best footman are at least six feet tall and you fit the bill, perfectly.

My next question is a bit delicate, so please know that I am only wishing to help my readers better understand what England was like in 1784: Are most Black people servants in England at this time?

Mr. Thomas Montague: You would be right in your assumption that most Black people are servants at this time in Georgian England; many were once slaves until slavery was outlawed in Britain in 1772. I was a child at the time. After that, Black servants in England began to receive a wage. However, you would be wrong to assume that ALL Black people were servants in the 18th century. Other occupations Black people held included: parish constable, parish priest, churchwarden, barrister, victualler, coal trader, cabinet maker, actress, drummer, gardener, groom, market gardener, member of the militia, sailor, seaman, soldier, teacher of sword-fighting, sheriff, and justice of the peace.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: I am glad to hear so many people of color thrived during this time. I would love to meet a teacher of sword-fighting.

England is predominately white in 1784; do you ever experience prejudice? Or racism?

Mr. Thomas Montague: Most English people have never seen a Black person before and are usually more curious than unkind. However, people in general tend to be suspicious of others whom are different than them. In A NOVEL DISGUISE, my word as a Black man does not mean as much as a white servant. The Black composer Sancho Ignatius took his daughters to Vauxhall Gardens one night. He wrote, “We went by water—had a coach home—were gazed at—followed, &c &c—but not much abused.”

Miss Tiffany Woodall: How awful for them. It breaks my heart that so many people are ignorant and narrow-minded.

Another sensitive question that I am sure my readers wish to know: Can Black and other people of color own property in Georgian England?

Mr. Thomas Montague: Yes, ma’am. Perhaps the most prominent would be Nathaniel Wells (1779-1852) who was the son of a white man and a Black slave. He was freed when his father died and he inherited his father’s plantations. He went to Britain for an education. There he bought Piercefield House near Chepstow. In 1803, he was appointed justice of the peace and in 1818, Wells became the deputy lieutenant of Monmouthshire.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: How wonderful for Mr. Wells. He sounds like a most estimable gentleman. You mentioned that he went to Britain for an education. Could men of color attend university in England? I know that ladies at this time in history could not.

Mr. Thomas Montague: Black and biracial men could receive a university degree. Reverend Brian Mackey (half white and half Black) received an Oxford education and was the parish priest of Coates in Gloucestershire.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: I am sure Reverend Mackey is an excellent addition to his parish.

On a more personal note, I hear that you are engaged to Miss Doddridge. My heartiest congratulations!

Mr. Thomas Montague: Thank you, Miss Woodall. I love her very much. My fiancé Sarah is white and a lady’s maid. Interracial marriages are acceptable in England in the eighteen century as long as both parties are of an equal rank.

Miss Tiffany Woodall: It is I, whom am most grateful for you time and your honest answers. I am lucky to call you my friend, Thomas.

And as a librarian, I can’t help but suggest to my readers a book about the true story of an incredible Black woman: Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice by Paula Byrne. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.

Samantha Larsen

Samantha Hastings met her husband in a turkey sandwich line. They live in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she spends most of her time reading, eating popcorn, having tea parties, and chasing her four kids. She has degrees from Brigham Young University, the University of North Texas, and the University of Reading (UK).

She’s the author of: The Last Word, The Invention of Sophie Carter, A Royal Christmas Quandary, The Girl with the Golden Eyes, Jane Austen Trivia, The Duchess Contract, Secret of the Sonnets, The Marquess and the Runaway Lady, and A Novel Disguise. She also writes cozy murder mysteries under Samantha Larsen.

To learn more about Samantha click on any of the following links: Website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Library Thing & BookBuba Rafflecopter giveaway

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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.

Amazon #1 bestseller

The post A Novel Disguise: Historical Cozy appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

If I Had a Hammer: Historical Mystery

If I Had a Hammer by Theresa Trent

Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Rafflecopter Giveaway
Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.

If I had a Hammer

A new job, a brutal murder, and Camelot has ended.

In 1963, Dot Morgan’s life was changed forever. She witnessed the assassination of John F Kennedy through the lens of her boxy Kodak Instamatic camera, bringing traumatic aftereffects of the brutality that happened as they stood on the parade route in Dallas. She starts her first real secretarial job with a boss who has no sympathy for her trauma.

When Dot’s only work friend has a mysterious accident at a demolition site, she digs around on her own only to find very little love between two brothers and no one hammering out justice to find a murderer. The suspects are all around Dot and as she tries to sift through their motives, her cousin Ellie is going through PTSD on her own, losing interest in work, and her fiancé all the while quoting some of JFK’s finest speeches. With so much change in her world, can Dot still tell the difference between good and evil?

Genre: Historical Mystery
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: March 2023
Number of Pages: 230
ISBN: 978-1685123017

Series: The Swinging Sixties Mystery Series, Book 2 | Each is a stand alone

 

To Purchase If I Had a Hammer, click on the following link: Amazon & Goodreads

Guest Post from Teresa Trent
Balancing History with Fiction

By Teresa Trent

If I Had a Hammer is my second work of historical fiction. When I started the Swinging Sixties Mystery
Series, I featured a book in 1962 (The Twist and Shout Murder), 1963 (If I Had a Hammer) and 1964
(Listen, Do You Want to Know a Secret) coming in March 2024.

Dot Morgan, my main character, lives in a fictional small town north of Dallas. When you put together
Dallas and 1963, one significant event stands out. The assassination of John F. Kennedy. I had to put my
characters right there on the grassy knoll. There are several pictures of the people who stood on the
parade route that day, and because I wasn’t there, the impact they felt would never be the same for me.
The characters of Dot and Ellie created in the first book needed to feel what the people in the crowd
felt.

They go to the parade, two young women, to see what Jackie is wearing and to moon over handsome
John. To them, the president and first lady are like American royalty, just like seeing Will and Kate in
England right now. Dot is a secretary. Ellie owns a dress shop. They see the world like a Doris Day movie
and John and Jackie are Camelot to them. Pass the popcorn.

When Lee Harvey Oswald shoots Kennedy, I had to create a balance of reality and fiction for the reader.
If I Had a Hammer is what I would call a cozy historical mystery, which means I need to stay within the
cozy guidelines. When Dot and Ellie are five feet from the carnage, I put my focus on Dot, who is trying
to wind the film lever on her Instamatic camera. No spraying blood or graphic accounts of JFK’s injuries.
By going in this direction, I can depict the awfulness of the event, and then move my characters back to
Camden, Texas.

Seeing something like this doesn’t go away just because the character has changed locations. It is Ellie
who truly experiences the assassination, and it prompts her to reevaluate her profession and her
upcoming wedding to Al the electrician. Ellie suffers, but so does Dot who, prior to the assassination,
thought her life would be ideal working in an office. This disillusionment reflects the country’s mood at
the time, and my characters were no different.

Mixing history with fiction can be tricky, but it can also bring a historical event alive for the reader. So
much better than those dry history texts!

Excerpt from If I Had a Hammer

Read an excerpt:

Ellie screamed, making the driver jump. “Right here! Stop here,” Ellie said as she passed bills from the back seat to the front. 

I looked up over a light brown building with straight white letters reading Texas School Book Depository. Above it was an ad for Hertz Rent-a-Car with a clock attached to it. It was straight up noon. The crowd was thickening as people found places to stand in a grassy area next to the street. It was almost as if the original landscaper had known this historic day would take place and designed the gradual slope along the road. According to the newspaper, Kennedy’s motorcade would arrive soon, and I felt the excitement building as we prepared to join the crowd. I pulled my arms through my sweater. 

Ellie extended a hand to help me out of the yellow Checker cab. “Are you ready?”

 “Oh yes. Let’s go over there.” I pointed to one of the few open spots next to the curb. “Hurry, before someone else gets it. I just hope we can hold the spot. There are some pretty big guys who might want to stand in front of us.” 

Ellie smirked. “You know what I always say. ‘Knee them in the crotch and they sing a new song.’” 

“Seriously, Ellie. I’m not attacking some poor man just so I can stand in front.” 

“You’re right. I was trying to sound sophisticated. Maybe not here but remember that. It may come in handy someday.” 

I had decided to wear a new pair of black heels and felt them wobbling. We crossed the street and grabbed our spot just in time, causing another viewer to crowd in next to us. The smell of cigarette smoke circled us as people fiddled with cameras and readjusted black-rimmed glasses.

 “Jack Kennedy is so handsome.” Ellie placed her hand over her heart, popping it on her chest like a heartbeat. “Too bad he’s already taken.”

 “Stop.” I laughed. “I believe you’re already taken as well. Didn’t I hear something about you and Al getting married next June?”

 Ellie gave a sweet smile as her eyes drifted upward. “I can’t believe that either. June. That’s just a little more than six months away.” 

“Well, you deserve the happiness coming your way.” I patted my cousin’s shoulder. Ellie was in her thirties, practically spinsterhood in 1963. Finding Al, the electrician, had been the best thing for her. Love and marriage. It filled me with warmth. We were all living the American dream just like the characters in our favorite movies at the Rialto theater. The lyrics of “Young at Heart” drifted through my mind. 

I sang a few lines from the song. 

Ellie linked her arm with mine as she watched the street. A few cars drove by, but none that looked like a presidential motorcade. The breeze drifted across my exposed knees. A longer skirt would have shielded my knees, but I would endure the shivers for the sake of fashion. 

“Ellie, did you see that picture of Jackie in the paper? She’s gorgeous. I saw her tour of the White House on TV. She’s so classy and looks beautiful in everything she wears.” 

“Except she talks funny,” Ellie said, her Texas drawl turning “talks” into “tawks.” 

“That’s because she’s from the East. She can’t help it. I’ll bet she thinks Texans talk funny. I’m sure they hear a lot of Texas twang coming from LBJ and Ladybird.” 

“But that’s just music to anyone’s ears,” Ellie said. “Be serious.”

I glanced up and down the parade route. “Ben said he was going to be here. Maybe he’s farther down the street.” I pulled out my new Kodak Instamatic and hooked the leather strap around my neck. I raised the camera up to my eyes. “I hope I can get a clear picture of Jackie and John.”

 “Listen to you. You talk like you know them,” Ellie laughed. “Jackie and John.” 

“Well, in a way, I feel like I do. They’re America’s perfect family. I love them all. Jackie, John, Caroline, John-John.” 

Ellie sighed and then drew in an excited breath with her hands clenched in front of her. “This is so exciting.” People continued to crowd up to the curb. A tall man in a brown plaid sport coat, holding binoculars up to his black boxy glasses, elbowed me to move over. I could feel tension in the air that comes when people anticipate witnessing something spectacular. 

Just then, a line of shiny black cars came into view, ambling down the street in our direction. The breeze turned into a slight wind. I leaned forward and squinted, trying to identify who was in each vehicle. I felt my heart race as I recognized John and Jackie Kennedy sitting in the back seat as the car was surrounded by men on motorcycles. She was stunning in a pink wool suit and matching hat. I felt special knowing Jackie and I had worn the same color on this memorable day. She, of course, looked so much better. John had a healthy tan and a wide smile on his face. 

I raised my camera and willed the man in the brown plaid coat not to step in front of me. This was a moment I was sure we would always remember. I hoped I could wind the film cartridge fast enough to take several pictures. Maybe they would want to use them in the Camden Courier? I wanted a good one of John, and another of Jackie. Just like real people, I thought but really, they looked like royalty, sitting in the open top limousine with policemen on motorcycles riding silently alongside—sort of a mobile palace guard. When the hood of the limousine was directly in front of me, I brought the Instamatic up and clicked to take a picture. I rolled the film to the next frame, took another, and repeated the process. Suddenly, I heard a popping sound somewhere behind me. I rolled the film lever with my thumb, now an automatic action, then turned toward the sound, only to see people scrambling and running to higher ground. The sound I heard wasn’t a pop. It was a gunshot. I looked back toward the motorcade and stood in horror as a man crawled over the back of the open convertible and the thing that caught my attention was the splotches of red invading Jackie’s beautiful pink suit. John Kennedy no longer sat smiling in front of me but was down in the seat on Jackie’s lap.

All rights reserved.

 
Teresa Trent, author of If I Had a Hammer

Teresa Trent is the author of over 15 books. She started writing cozy mysteries with the Pecan Bayou and Piney Woods Mystery Series. She sets her stories in different geographical areas of Texas and The Swinging Sixties historical series is set just north of Dallas, starting in 1962. You might think with so many books set in the Lone Star state, she was born there, but no. She has lived all over the world, thanks to her father’s career in the army. After living in Texas for twenty-five years, she’s finally put down roots.

Teresa is a hybrid author, self-publishing early in her career, which led her to traditional publishing with Level Best Books and Camel Press. She is the author of several short stories that have appeared in a host of anthologies.

Teresa publishes the blog and podcast, Books to the Ceiling at https://teresatrent.blog where she loves to read the book excerpts of other writers and share in the writing community. Teresa is a member of Sisters in Crime and lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son.

To learn more about Teresa, click on the following links: Website, Books to the Ceiling Podcast, Goodreads, Bookbub, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

Visit all the Stops on the Tour!

05/01 Review @ Im Into Books
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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook. Amazon #1 bestseller

 

The post If I Had a Hammer: Historical Mystery appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

The Ghost Goes to the Dogs

The Ghost Goes to the Dogs, (Haunted Bookshop Mystery) by Cleo Coyle

Spotlight + Book & Author InfoDon’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.

 

 

 

The Ghost Goes to the Dogs

A stray dog leads bookseller Penelope McClure and her gumshoe ghost on a chase for a cunning criminal in this brand-new entry in the “UTTERLY CHARMING” (Mystery Scene) Haunted Bookshop Mysteries from New York Times bestselling author Cleo Coyle.

Pet Mystery Week brings brisk business to Penelope’s Rhode Island bookshop, but a real mystery comes barking at her door when a lost dog turns up in a panic. Pen and her son Spencer follow the furry fugitive to a wooded area where the dog’s owner lies unconscious. Mrs. Cunningham is a warm-hearted widow who volunteers at the animal shelter and runs Buy the Book’s pet lovers book club. Why would anyone shoot such a sweet soul?

The police believe it’s an accident, a shot by a careless deer hunter, but Pen remains skeptical. To straighten out this doggone mess, she whistles for the ghost of PI Jack Shepard, an expert in hounding as well as haunting. Jack has a dog story of his own, a case from the 1940s that may help Pen sniff out clues to her present predicament. Yet even with Jack’s hard-boiled help, Pen may not be able to stop the killer from striking again or letting this whole case go to the dogs…

 

The Ghost Goes to the Dogs (Haunted Bookshop Mystery)
Paranormal Cozy Mystery
9th in Series
Setting -‎ Rhode Island
Berkley (May 2, 2023)
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0425255492
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0425255490
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B8GC8YHT

Add to Goodreads

To Purchase The Ghost Goes to the Dogs click on any of the following links: Amazon       Barnes & Noble      Kobo      Google Play    Bookshop.org      Indiebound Cleo CoyleCleo Coyle – Alice Alfonsi – Marc Cerasini

CLEO COYLE is a pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini.

Both are New York Times-bestselling authors of the long-running Coffeehouse Mysteries and Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, now celebrating nearly 20 years in print. With more than one million books sold, their work has been honored with starred reviews and multiple best-of-year list selections by reviewers.

Alice and Marc are also bestselling media tie-in writers who have penned properties for Lucasfilm, NBC, Fox, Disney, Imagine, Toho, and MGM. They live and work in New York City, where they write independently and together.

 

To learn more about Cleo Coyle, click on any of the following links: Webpage, Newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, BookBub, Goodreads & InstagramVisit all the Stops on the Tour!

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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

 

The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook. Amazon #1 bestseller

The post The Ghost Goes to the Dogs appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.

The Vanishing at Castle Moreau

The Vanishing at Castle Moreau by Jaime Jo Wright

Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.The Vanishing at Castle Moreau

A haunting legend. An ominous curse. A search for a secret buried deep within the castle walls.

In 1870, orphaned Daisy François takes a position as housemaid at a Wisconsin castle to escape the horrors of her past life. There she finds a reclusive and eccentric Gothic authoress, who hides tales more harrowing than the ones in her novels. With women disappearing from the area and a legend that seems to parallel these eerie circumstances, Daisy is thrust into a web that threatens to steal her sanity, if not her life. In the present day, Cleo Clemmons is hired by the grandson of an American aristocratic family to help his grandmother face her hoarding in the dilapidated Castle Moreau.

But when Cleo uncovers more than just the woman’s stash of collectibles, a century-old mystery of disappearance, insanity, and the dust of the old castle’s curse threaten to rise again. This time to leave no one alive to tell the sordid tale. Award-winning author Jaime Jo Wright seamlessly weaves a dual-time tale of two women who must do all they can to seek the light amidst the darkness shrouding Castle Moreau.

Praise for The Vanishing at Castle Moreau:

“An imaginative and mysterious tale.” New York Times bestselling author RACHEL HAUCK

“With real, flawed characters, who grapple with real-life struggles, readers will be drawn into this gripping suspense from the very first page. Good luck putting it down. I couldn’t.” LYNETTE EASON, bestselling, award-winning author of the Extreme Measures series

“Wright pens another delightfully creepy tale where nothing is quite as it seems and characters seek freedom from nightmares both real and imagined.” Library Journal

“Wright captivates. A thrilling tale. . . . Readers won’t want to put this down.” Publishers Weekly

Book Details:

Genre: Dual time Suspense/Thriller

Published by: Bethany House Publishers

Publication Date: April 2023

Number of Pages: 384

ISBN: 9780764238345

To purchase The Vanishing at Castle Moreau click any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | Baker Book House

Guest Post by Jaime Jo WrightThe Secret Women of History

Writing stories where history intersects with the present is always a familiar scouring of the past for interesting tidbits. What I find there is often surprising, and this time was no exception. The conversation between my friend and I went something like this:

Friend – “Did you know that in the 1500s there was a female serial killer?”

Me – “Do go on!”

Friend – “She was a countess—Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary—who was fascinated with the abduction, torture, and murder of hundreds of girls and women during a twenty-year time span.”

Me – “Maybe that’s too gruesome for readers?”

Friend – “But a castle with secret women . . . think about it!”

And think I did. Because so very often this is how history is. It’s a treasure trove of what my friend and I call the “secret women of history.” These are the women who, for good or for bad, impacted our pasts with significant influence.

Take Mary Shelley, for example. Not many in her time would have dubbed her Queen of Horror, and some preferred to credit her husband for penning the famous novel. And she’s synonymous with the elements of the dark and the Gothic, not unlike her male counterpart, Edgar A. Poe.

So when I wrote The Vanishing at Castle Moreau, inspiration struck in the form of women whose stories have either been told less or not told at all, and perhaps not even remembered. It was a natural transition then to a castle with a famous authoress of Gothic horror, who had women notoriously vanishing on the castle’s property. I wasn’t expecting a fictional marriage of sorts between Elizabeth the serial killer and Mary the horror writer, but so goes the way of fiction, right?

Exploring vanishing women in a novel such as The Vanishing at Castle Moreau became important to me on multiple levels. For centuries, women have been victimized. How many cold cases of young women still exist across the world today? How many times in history were women disposable enough to be warranted with little investigation into their disappearances?

Take the women of Elizabeth Bathory’s bloody rampage. It wasn’t until Elizabeth grew discontent and branched into the higher echelons of society to find her victims that the disappearance of so many women became a more pressing matter of concern. The caste system of lower class and those in servitude warranted a passing concern but could easily be explained by other measures than a rampaging killer wearing a dress and boasting a title.

Mary Shelley herself bore the skepticism of those around her and even the rumor (or truth?) mills that she saved her husband’s dehydrated heart for sentimental purposes. Surely this couldn’t be a woman of great wisdom and respectability! Yet she did devote most of her widowed life to raising her child and to education.

What would happen if there were a castle, a writer with dubious intent, women who vanish over the decades until we arrive to present day only to meet with the emotional conundrum of questioning whether the castle itself is the demon, or perhaps the demon is us?

To be sure, all castles hold secrets. Many of them never speak and never will speak of what they witnessed. Their histories have been lost to the annals of time. Any ghosts that brushed against their stone walls were unable to grip the stories played out within. Hundreds of these stories—no, thousands—are the stories of women and girls who forged life from the hardness of the world in which they lived. The unsung ones who disappeared either in life or into the past never to be heard from again.

These women are the blossoms that spread throughout generations. The impressions made on our futures. The ancestors who deserve to be heard. Even if their stories include evil. Even if their tales are tragic. Most especially if their spirits were warriors.

Read an excerpt from The Vanishing at Castle MoreauMay 8, 1801

When I was a little girl, my father would often come to my bedside after my screams wakened him in the night. He would smooth back my damp ringlets, the mere feel of his callused and strong hand inspiring an instantaneous calm.

“What is it, little one?” he would ask me.

Every night, the same question. Every night, I would give the same answer.

“It is her again, Papa.”

“Her?” He would tilt his head, giving credence to my words and refraining from scolding or mockery.

“Yes.” I would nod, my head brushing the clean cotton of my pillowcase. “The woman with the crooked hand.”

“Crooked hand, hmm?” His query only increased my adamant insistence.

“Yes. She has a nub with two fingers.” A tear would often trail down my six-­year-­old cheek.

My father would smile with a soothing calm. “You are dreaming again, mon chéri.”

“No. She was here.” He must believe me!

“Shhh.” Another gentle stroke of his hand across my forehead. “She is the voice of the mistress of your dreams. We all have one, you know. Only yours needs extra-special care because she isn’t beautiful like the rest. She is the one who brings the nightmares, but she doesn’t mean to harm you. She is only doing her best with what she has been given, and what she has been given are her own horrors.”

“Her hand?” I would reply, even though we repeated this explanation many nights in a row.

“Yes,” my father would nod. “Her hand is a reflection of the ugliness in her stories. Stories she tells to you at night when all is quiet and your eyes are closed.”

“But they were open,” I would insist.

“No. You only think they were open.”

“I am afraid of the ghost, Papa,” I urge.

His eyes smile. “Oui. And yet there are no spirits to haunt you. Only the dream mistress. Shoo her away and she will flee. She is a mist. She is not real. See?” And he would wave his hand in the air. “Shoo, mistress. Away and be gone!”

We would survey the dark bedroom then, and, seeing nothing, my father would lean over and press his lips to my cheek. “Now sleep. I will send your mother’s dream mistress to you. Her imaginings are pleasant ones.”

“Thank you,” I would whisper.

Another kiss. The bed would rise a bit as he lifted his weight from the mattress. His nightshirt would hang around his shins, and he would pause at the doorway of my room where I slept. An only child, in a home filled with the fineries of a Frenchman’s success of trade. “Sleep, mon chéri.”

“Yes, Papa.”

The door would close.

My eyes would stay open.

I would stare at the woman with the crooked hand, who hovered in the shadows where the door had just closed. I would stare at her and know what my father never would.

She existed.

She was not a dream.

***

Excerpt from The Vanishing at Castle Moreau by Jamie Jo Wright.  Copyright 2023 by Jamie Jo Wright. Reproduced with permission from Jamie Jo Wright. All rights reservedJaime Jo Wright — Author of The Vanishing at Castle Moreau

Jaime Jo Wright is the author of six novels, including Christy Award winner The House on Foster Hill and Carol Award winner The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond.

She’s also the Publishers Weekly and ECPA bestselling author of two novellas.

Jaime lives in Wisconsin with her cat named Foo; her husband, Cap’n Hook; and their littles, Peter Pan and CoCo.

To learn about Jamie click on any of the following links:
www.jaimewrightbooks.com (& check out her Podcast – MadLit Musings!)
Goodreads
BookBub – @JaimeJoWright
Instagram – @JaimeJoWright
Twitter – @JaimeJoWright
Facebook – @JaimeJoWright

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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

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The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook. Amazon #1 bestseller

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Murder on Oak Street

Murder on Oak Street, a South Shore Mystery by I.M. Foster

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Murder on Oak Street

New York, 1904. After two years as a coroner’s physician for the city of New York, Daniel O’Halleran is more frustrated than ever. What’s the point when the authorities consistently brush aside his findings for the sake of expediency? So when his fiancée leaves him standing at the altar on their wedding day, he takes it as a sign that it’s time to move on and eagerly accepts an offer to assist the local coroner in the small Long Island village of Patchogue.

Though the coroner advises him that life on Long Island is far more subdued than that of the city, Daniel hasn’t been there a month when the pretty librarian, Kathleen Brissedon, asks him to look into a two-year-old murder case that took place in the city. Oddly enough, the case she’s referring to was the first one he ever worked on, and the verdict never sat right with him.

Eager for the chance to investigate it anew, Daniel agrees to look into it in his spare time, but when a fresh murder occurs in his own backyard, he can’t shake his gut feeling that the two cases are connected. Can he discover the link before another life is taken, or will murder shake the peaceful South Shore village once again?

Book Details:

Genre: Historical Mystery
Published by: Indie
Publication Date: October 2022
Number of Pages: 503
ISBN: 9781733337571
Series: A South Shore Mystery, Book 1

To purchase A Murder on Oak Street , click any of the following links: Amazon | Goodreads

Excerpt from A Murder on Oak Street

Read an excerpt:

Daniel O’Halleran stared down at the crumpled body, blood spreading out in a deep crimson pool beneath the man’s head. He reached over to close the victim’s turquoise eyes. Something wasn’t right here, aside from the fact that a body was lying battered and broken on the rough wooden floor. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but then that wasn’t his job, now was it?

“Well?” Sergeant Timothy O’Halleran asked, a frown creasing his aging brow. “What killed him, then?”

Trying to suppress a smile, Daniel stood up, brushing the dust from his pants. His uncle knew very well what had killed the man, but clearly wanted to make Daniel feel important in his new position as a coroner’s physician for the city of New York. “You’re well aware what killed him, Uncle Timothy.”

His uncle gave a quick glance around before slapping him on the back of the head. “Ye’re a professional now, lad. Act like one, eh? Yer da didn’t spend all that money for a medical degree for ye to be acting the fool.”

This time Daniel did laugh, but he removed the smile from his face quickly as his uncle’s frown deepened. He was right. Richard and Sarah Adams had raised him as their own in every respect after his mother had died. For all intents and purposes, they were his parents, even though he’d insisted on retaining his mother’s surname. He did want to make them proud of him.

Wiping a hand across his face to remove any remnant of tomfoolery, as his adoptive mother called it, he took a deep breath. “He’s cracked his skull and bled out.” Daniel bent down again, sniffing the man’s clothing. “Probably drunk, but I can’t be certain.”

“Sure, I can smell it from up here,” Timothy said. “Whiskey, I’d say. I’m thinking ye need to be getting out a bit more if ye’ve any doubt.”

“It’s not what he’s been drinking I question, but the amount that made it into his stomach. Most of the smell is coming from his clothing, not his mouth. What selfrespecting drunk would let that much liquor go to waste?”

Timothy nodded. “Ye may be right, me boy. I know the man, and he’s not one to be found tipping more than a glass or two, especially in a place such as this.”

Daniel rubbed a thumb beneath his bottom lip, hesitant to say what was on his mind, but the thought was apt to come out anyway. He nodded up the stairs. “Maybe he was here for other reasons. I’ve no doubt that girl was pregnant. If he wanted her to have it aborted . . .”

This time Timothy shook his head. “I’ll not be believing that. More likely he was here to talk her out o’ such a drastic act, and someone caught him at it. The father, perhaps.” He scrubbed the day-old stubble on his chin. “What about the wretched sod in the corner room?”

“I suspect that was natural causes, but I’ll be able to tell you more—”

“I know, when ye get a better look.” His uncle rested a hand on his shoulder. “Ye’d best be quick about it, though. The chief will be wanting this one wrapped up before the widow gets any ideas. She’s way out on Long Island, so ’tis not likely he’ll be spending a great deal o’ time or resources on it.”

“But if the man’s been murdered . . .” Daniel stood, indignant to think the chief might put other considerations before the truth.

Timothy pointed a finger at him. “Now ye listen here, boyo. ’Tis the way things are. If the widow wants to hire someone to investigate, she’s free to do so. The city’s not likely to be spending good money on a drunkard found dead in a tenement, especially with a pregnant lass stabbed to death two floors above. Saints preserve us, lad, the knife’s lying at his fingertips.”

“There’s no proof it’s his knife, or that it was even used in her murder. Perhaps I could try and use that new fingerprint system I’ve heard mentioned to see if—”

“It doesn’t matter,” his uncle said, cutting him off. “’Tis lying beside him, and that’s how the bigwigs will see it, whether ye like it or not.”

“Then why ask me at all?”

“This is a good job, and ye won it fair and square, but ye can lose it just as easily. Give the boss yer opinion and leave it at that. And for the love o’ God, don’t be going making any waves, or ye might find yerself unemployed with a reputation as a troublemaker. Fingerprints, indeed!”

Daniel sighed, his shoulders slumping as if a weight had been laid across them. “It may not matter one way or the other.”

“And why’s that?” Timothy narrowed his eyes. “Out with it.”

“Prudence wants me to resign and go into practice with her father.” He shrugged, trying to shift the heaviness from his shoulders, and rubbed the scar on his forehead. “It certainly pays more, and she’s used to the finer things in life. Besides, I’d actually be helping living people, and if the department’s not going to follow up on anything anyway . . .”

“Humph!” His uncle grumbled in Gaelic, words Daniel didn’t understand, and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. “That’s all a bunch o’ malarkey, and ye know it. Ever since ye’ve been a wee lad ye’ve spoken o’ naught but joining the police force. Yer da saw how important that was to ye. Sure, he wanted ye to have a grand education and all, and yet he found a way for ye to have both, didn’t he? Now here comes this society lass, asking ye to give it all up. Yer da put yer dreams above his own. He always has. I can’t be saying the same for this lass.” 

“Let’s not get into that again.” The longer they dwelled on the topic, the more his forehead ached. “You don’t like Pru. I understand that, but she does love me, and I her.

Shouldn’t that count for something?”

“Then she should be wanting what’s best for ye.”

“And what about me wanting what’s best for her? I have to think of her needs as well.”

His uncle gave a half shrug. “’Tis why I never wed meself.”

Daniel chuckled, the ache along his scar easing a little. “You never wed because you eat and drink your job, and you couldn’t find a woman who would put up with it . . . or you.”

“True enough, though when I see yerself all grown like ye are, I do regret it from time to time—not having a lad o’ me own.” He sniffed before continuing and gripped Daniel’s arm. “That aside, I just want ye to be happy, lad. Ye know that.”

“I do, Uncle, though if you don’t let me get going, I’ll be sacked regardless.” He picked up his medical bag, the one his uncle had spent a fortune on for his graduation. “I’ll see you for dinner Wednesday night, seven o’clock sharp. You know how Hattie gets if you’re late.”

“Now there’s a woman that might have turned me head once upon a time.”

“She’d have knocked that thick Irish head of yours off its block.” Daniel walked outside with his uncle and looked up at the dilapidated building. “I know Dr. Scholer will do his best, but if we rule it a murder, will the department at least see if any of the other tenants saw anything?”

Timothy scratched the back of his head. “Ah, Danny! I’ll do me best, but the truth o’ it is there’s likely not a soul in there that heard a thing. Aside from the drink, I’m thinking there might be a good deal o’ opium use going on.”

Daniel nodded. “But you will try?” 

“O’ course I will.”

Daniel squeezed his uncle’s shoulder and headed back toward his buggy, his uncle’s voice calling after him. 

“Ye’ll be letting me know what ye find?”

Daniel waved his hand, a smile crossing his face once more.

Excerpt from Murder on Oak Street by I.M Foster.  Copyright 2023 by I.M. Foster. Reproduced with permission from I.M. Foster. All rights reserved
 

I.M Foster — Author of Murder on Oak Street

I. M. Foster is the pen name author Inez Foster uses to write her South Shore Mystery series, set on Edwardian Long Island.

Inez also writes historical romances under the pseudonym Andrea Matthews, and has so far published two series in that genre: the Thunder on the Moor series, a time-travel romance set on the 16th century Anglo-Scottish Borders, and the Cross of Ciaran series, which follows the adventures of a fifth century Celt who finds himself in love with a twentieth century archaeologist.

Inez is a historian and librarian, who love to read and write and search around for her roots, genealogically speaking.

She has a BA in History and an MLS in Library Science and enjoys the research almost as much as she does writing the story. In fact, many of her ideas come to her while doing casual research or digging into her family history. Inez is a member of the Long Island Romance Writers, and the Historical Novel Society.

To learn more about IM, click on any of the following links: IMFosterMysteries.com – for her mysteries, www.andrea-matthews.com – for her romances, Goodreads, BookBub – @imfostermysteries, Instagram – @imfosterauthor, Twitter – @IMFosterMystery & Facebook – @IMFosterMysteries

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Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell

All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator

Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery

  The Foundation of Plot , a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook. Amazon #1 bestseller

 

The post Murder on Oak Street appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.