Beth Groundwater's Blog, page 25

Visits to Inkspot and Dru's Book Musings

Today I am appearing elsewhere on the web in two places at once. I hope you'll visit both and leave a comment for me at them!

At Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, I have posted an article about Internal and External Conflict, using examples from my Claire Hanover gift basket designer novels, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Do you have any favorite examples of external or internal conflicts in books you’ve read? Please share them with me there!

At Dru's Book Musings, my gift basket designer sleuth, Claire Hanover, visits to talk about a day in her life. This day is an especially bad one, from the beginning of To Hell in a Handbasket. I'm holding a contest at Dru's blog, in conjunction with Claire's visit, for a free autographed copy of the trade paperback version of To Hell in a Handbasket. Just leave a comment for Claire or me there to enter the contest!

Release News for TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET

Yesterday was the official release date for the trade paperback and ebook editions of To Hell in a Handbasket , the second book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer series. The active link takes you to my website, where you can read the book's blurb, reviews, and excerpts and get a list of discussion questions you can use if your book club decides to read and discuss the book.

In honor of the release, the New York Journal of Books posted a positive review yesterday that includes the statement, "This book will keep the reader turning pages until the very satisfying end." Follow the link to read the whole review. I'm very excited about it!

Also in honor of the release, an interview with me appeared yesterday on the Shimmerfall blog. Go read it and enter the contest! My interview there is one of many mystery author interviews that are being done to celebrate the Mystery Most Cozy group’s 10th anniversary.

Lastly, I am a guest today at Cozy Mystery Book Reviews with an article about "Mothers and the Daughters Who Leave Them," an important subplot in To Hell in a Handbasket. The review site is also posted their review of the book today. I hope you'll stop by and read both my article and the review!

To Hell in a Handbasket is widely available in bookstores (If it's not on the shelf, order it!), libraries, and from on-line retailers, including: Indie Bound, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and direct from the publisher, Midnight Ink. Do you have any mystery readers on your holiday gift list? This book, and the first in the series, A Real Basket Case , might be perfect for them. If you'd like signed bookplates or bookmarks to go with your gifts, contact me at my website, and I'll arrange to send them to you.

Today's Mystery Author Guest: Robert Kresge

As promised yesterday, fellow mystery author Robert Kresge is visiting my blog today. To read his bio and see his photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

The photo above is the cover for his upcoming release, Death's Icy Hand, the third novel in his Warbonnet historical western mystery series, which will be published by ABQ Press in November or December. It features the further sleuthing adventures of small town schoolmarm Kate Shaw and lawman Monday Malone in the year 1872. Mysterious deaths follow Russian Grand Duke Alexis on his goodwill visit to America, via train from New York harbor to Chicago, and on to the rolling plains of Wyoming. Monday Malone and special deputy Kate Shaw board the royal train and attempt to identify a murder victim in Laramie. Which passengers will help them, hinder them, perhaps even harm them? When a killer strikes again, in a locked compartment aboard the grand duke’s snowbound train, hunting guides provided by the Army—Buffalo Bill Cody and George Armstrong Custer—offer their help.  But are they allies or suspects?

Below are Robert's answers to my interview questions. Please leave a comment for him, and if you have a question of your own for him, ask it!

1. Who or what inspired you start writing and when did you start?

I was inspired by authors whose books I listened to on CDs when I was still commuting.  My buddies for a half-hour in each direction Monday through Friday became Brother Cadfael (Ellis Peters), Amelia Peabody (Elizabeth Peters), Captain Jack Aubrey (Patrick O’Brian), and rifleman Richard Sharpe (Bernard Cornwell).  Of course I also loved the modern mysteries of authors like Tony Hillerman, Margaret Coel, and Michael McGarrity, never dreaming that they would one day meet and help an aspiring author.

I began writing in the spring of 2000 when I took a course at Northern Virginia Community College called “The American West in Fiction and Film,” taught by Judy Riggin.  One of five optional requirements was to write a chapter from a hypothetical novel, so I began writing Murder for Greenhorns and turned in Chapter 3, the murder.  In the fall, Ms. Riggin taught “The Worlds of Mystery.”  Again the course completion requirements (50% of the grade) included another chapter.  By that time, I had finished the first draft and so I turned in the solution chapter.  I aced both courses, began revising, and in June 2002 began to query agents and publishers.

2.  What tools and process do you use to “get to know” your characters before and while you’re writing your books?

I developed my two polar opposite main characters, Eastern-educated newly-minted schoolteacher Kate Shaw and former Texas cowboy Monday Malone to let them both be “fish out of water,” at least in their first adventure.  I went on to fill out detailed character sheets on them, from their birthdays, families, and physical characteristics to their favorite colors and food preferences.  For minor characters, I do somewhat less, but fill out 3x5 cards on each of them.  I do extensive research on real historical characters I use, like Buffalo Bill, George Custer, the painter Thomas Moran, and Crazy Horse.

3.  How do you construct your plots?  Do you outline or do you write “by the seat of your pants”?

The standard recommendation I’ve heard for mystery writers is to start either with main characters that you find interesting or unique and then give them something to do or to conceptualize a crime and then populate your story, starting with main characters(s).  I think historical mystery authors get to start at a third point—what  true historical event will take center stage or form a backdrop for my mystery.  Like John Grisham and C.J. Box, I outline.  I think with the mystery, even though it ought to be character-driven, readers demand a crime, the process of solution, and then a logical fair-play denouement.  In order to lay in clues, red herrings, and suspects, I follow Margaret Coel’s advice and outline scene by scene before I begin to write.

4.  In the age-old question of character versus plot, which do you think is the most important in a mystery and which one do you emphasize in your writing?  Why?

Well, in mysteries (please note that I don’t refer to them as “murder mysteries” since, like the term “crime fiction” implies, mysteries can be about more than murder), a crime and its solution always play a big part in plotting that readers expect, but I emulate Margaret Coel in emphasizing characters over plot in advancing the continuing relationship between my two main characters.  In my first published short story, given the confines of 2,800 words, I emphasized plot over character, but still received compliments on my female protagonist.

5. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a writer and what inspires you and keeps you motivated?

Easily the biggest challenge was overcoming rejection during the long road to publication.  Now it’s hoping I can continue to meet readers’ expectations about Monday and Kate.  Advancing that relationship in fits and starts, with romantic rivals, misunderstandings, and dangers they face keeps me going now.  That will continue to motivate me for the next five books in the series that I’m planning.

6.  What is a typical workday for you and how many hours a day (or week) do you devote to writing?

Since I had a few manuscripts nearly ready to go when my first Warbonnet mystery was published, writing for me has been revision and polishing the last few years.  In June I finished a few weeks crashing on the final revision of my third mystery, Death’s Icy Hand, then proofreading the PDF that was prepared for the publisher.  Those were 40-hour weeks.  I’m now working on expanding my fourth novel, the draft of which only came to 61,000 words.  I normally work at writing 10-20 hours a week, spending the rest having fun with my wife Julie—kayaking, biking, hiking, camping, and in season, snowshoeing.  Next year, when I begin drafting Book 5, I’ll probably go to 30-40 hours a week.  One thing I’ve never had trouble with is writer’s block.  As an outliner, I seldom get stuck.

7. What advice do you have to offer an aspiring writer?

The same three pieces of advice I gave to the members of the writers group I established at CIA in 2000, a group which had 180 members upon my retirement in 2002 and is still active:

a.  Start writing early.  If you find you’re good at it, you’ll be glad you didn’t wait until your 50s like I did.  If it proves difficult, you’ll have plenty of time to take courses, attend conferences, and join a critique group.  I can’t emphasize the value of critique groups enough, as long as you are a small group (4-6 is ideal), meet regularly (every two weeks is ideal), and follow the pattern of exchanging written comments on chapters at each meeting (do not fall into the common trap of soliciting comments by reading out loud; accept the cost of making copies).

b. Develop good writing habits consistent with your career and family situation.  Near the end of my CIA career, I wrote at home, downstairs away from a TV about two hours a night four nights a week.  My family and yours want to see you on weekends.

c. Introduce yourself to people as a writer.  As soon as you start, you are a writer.  You never know who you may be introduced to or sit next to—an author, an agent, an editor, the relative of a screenwriter or producer, the spouse or aunt of a famous performer.  So polish and memorize your 30-second, three-sentence précis.  You'll also use that précis in your query letters.

8. Now here’s a zinger.  Tell us something about yourself that you have not revealed in another interview yet.  Something as simple as your favorite TV show or food will do.

Well, living in New Mexico makes food (green chile on everything, please) an easy choice.  But I’ll take another tack.  Besides blending history and mystery, I write about the on again-off again romance between my two protagonists.  One of my two favorite Westerns, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, one of my two favorite historicals, Shakespeare in Love, and one of my favorite comedies, A Shot in the Dark, all have strong romantic underpinnings.  I guess “romantic underpinnings” sounds like Victorian underwear, one of my continuing favorite research subjects.

9. What are you working on now and what are your future writing plans?

I will shortly begin to revise and expand my fourth Warbonnet mystery, set in 1873 and featuring Crazy Horse.  Then I’ll begin to research and write number five, set in 1874.  I have copies of my manuscript for Fire From the Ashes, a Civil War spy thriller that resembles Cold Mountain meets Day of the Jackal, out with two publishers.  It is based on true incidents, uses real historical characters, and, yes, has strong female and male protagonists.

10. Is there anything else you would like to tell my blog readers?

Readers can visit my website to read the prologue and first three chapters of each of my three Warbonnet mysteries.  I’m proud of the work my son Matt does on my covers (he’s a lead video games artist for Warner Bros.) and my website (created and maintained by a man who was Matt’s mentor in the 1990s when he was a volunteer at the Animation Lab in the DC Children’s Museum). 
I’ve spoken to everything from school students to MENSA chapters, book clubs, writers groups, historical associations, and the media about my novels and my CIA career.  Anyone interested in hearing from me can contact me at rkresge777@comcast.net or through my website. 

Thanks, Robert! I know that I, for one, want to hear more about your interest in researching Victorian underwear. Now, who else has a comment or question for him?

Tomorrow's Guest: Robert Kresge

Tomorrow, historical western mystery author Robert Kresge will be a guest on my blog. Rob is a former senior intelligence analyst and founding member of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Since 2002, he and his wife Julie have lived in Albuquerque, NM. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a Masters in International Affairs from George Washington University.  He founded a writers group at CIA that had, upon his retirement 180 members and is still active today.  Rob was a founding member and past president of “Croak & Dagger,” the Albuquerque chapter of Sisters in Crime. He is also a member of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America, the Historical Novels Society, and Western Writers of America.

Rob’s first mystery was a finalist for the 2011 Bruce Alexander Award and a New Mexico Book Award. His second novel is now a finalist for best mystery in this year’s New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. His first short story, “Ground Truth,” a first person mystery set on the present-day Jicarilla Apache Reservation in New Mexico and featuring police sergeant Jo Ann Barefoot, was published by La Frontera Press in the anthology Outlaws and Lawmen in October.

In his guest post tomorrow, Robert answers my interview questions, and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what he has to say. Then, feel free to ask him some questions of your own in the comments.

Please Vote!

I hope everyone who reads this and is a United States citizen will vote in the election today. Your vote is important, and it is your duty. It is a privilege to vote in our democratically governed country, and I hope you take it seriously.

My husband and I have already filled out our mail-in ballots and sent them in. We did that so we could volunteer to work as election judges all day (6 AM - 8 PM!!) today at our local polling place. I'm looking forward to getting the chance to slap "I Voted!" stickers on many, many chests!


Also today, the third installment in my description of my three days of jury service for a trial appears on Leslie Budewitz's blog, Law and Fiction. Serving on a jury when called is another important civic duty, but in my case, it was also great research for my mystery fiction writing!

Wicked Eddies Picked for Best Of 2012 List

Colorado Country Life magazine has honored me again by selecting one of my books, Wicked Eddies this time, for their annual Best Books list. Read about their selection in the list of best murder mysteries. Calling Wicked Eddies "yet another captivating Colorado mystery by author Beth Groundwater," the reviewer says the book "provides a compelling read for murder mystery lovers." I'm so pleased and proud!

Kicking Off the Ski Season With a Bang!

A couple of days before Halloween, I received an email saying that I had won a contest I had entered for two VIP passes to ski with US Ski Team members on their downhill training course at the US Speed Center at Copper Mountain. The US Speed Center is a very early season training center for the US Ski Team that includes downhill, giant slalom, and slalom courses. 100 of the 500+ Copper Mountain pass holders who entered the contest won the passes. In the photo below, I'm holding mine on the Super Bee lift at Copper.


My husband and I arrived around 9:15 AM to register, eat a donut (Neil, not me), chat with others there, and suit up for skiing. Cramming those feet into ski boots for the first time of the season is always a treat! At 10 AM, after some speeches by Copper Mountain and US Ski Team honchos, the alpine skiers from the US Ski Team who would be spending the day with us were introduced. Then we were let loose on the mountain. In the photo below from the Summit Daily News the next morning, I'm in the red unisuit with black shoulders on the far right--very small.


For our first run down the course, groups of 10-20 "Speed Center VIPs" were paired up with one or two ski team members to explore the course as a group. At various points along the way, we stopped where ski team coaches waited to give us a briefing on the next section of the course. We were told how downhill racers were coached to tackle the course, but this gal did NOT make any jumps or tuck and ski flat out. It was still fun to pretend, though. :)

After the first run, we were free to continue to ski the course from the top of the mountain to the bottom off the Super Bee chair on our own, and I made a total of 5 runs. Along the way, I was able to get some photos of me with ski team coaches (first photo below) and women racers (second photo below). Then we gathered in JJ's Tavern in Copper Station for a yummy free lunch.



What a great early introduction to the ski season, which officially starts today at Copper Mountain. Thanks, Copper!!

Interview in Female First Magazine and more

Today, Female First, Celebrity Gossip and Lifestyle Magazine, which is published in the United Kingdom, will publish an interview with me as part of their on-line magazine. I hope you'll read the interview HERE and let me know what you think!

Tomorrow, Terry Ambrose interviews me on HIS BLOG. I hope you'll read that interview, too, then tell me here which interview you liked the best. ;-)

Today's Mystery Author Guest: Sheila Wester Boneham

As promised yesterday, fellow Midnight Ink mystery author Sheila Webster Boneham is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

The photo above is the cover for her October 8th release, Drop Dead on Recall , the first book in her Animals in Focus series. When a top-ranked competitor keels over at a dog obedience trial, photographer Janet MacPhail is swept up in a maelstrom of suspicion, jealousy, cut-throat competition, death threats, pet-napping, and murder. She becomes a “person of interest” to the police, and apparently to major hunk Tom Saunders as well. As if murder and the threat of impending romance aren’t enough to drive her bonkers, Janet has to move her mother into a nursing home, and the old lady isn’t going quietly. Janet finds solace in her Australian Shepherd, Jay, her tabby cat, Leo, and her eccentric neighbor, Goldie Sunshine. Then two other “persons of interest” die, Jay’s life is threatened, Leo disappears, and Janet’s search for the truth threatens to leave her own life underdeveloped – for good.

Sounds like a great read to me! Below is Sheila's guest article about The Mysterious Sport of Dog Obedience. Please feel free to respond to Sheila's article or to ask her a question in the comments. 

The Mysterious Sport of Dog Obedience 
by Sheila Webster Boneham
“How did you teach her to do that?” I hear that a lot. My dogs and I train and compete in several canine sports, and like all sports, they require time, training, and practice for both of us. Training a dog is no more mysterious than training, well, you or me. In fact, I taught basic obedience classes for pet owners for many years, and I’m here to tell you that people are much harder to train than dogs!

I teach writing, too, and the two fields of learning and teaching aren’t all that different. The “trick” of all teaching or training is two-fold. First, we need to communicate what we want the learner to grasp. Then we have to show them what’s in it for them. Fun? Safety? Tangible rewards like food or money? A pat on the head, or on the back? Still, a well-trained animal, especially one that seems to enjoy following direction, is a bit mysterious for a lot of people.

Drop Dead on Recall is set in the world of well-trained competition dogs. Most of the dogs in the book, like their counterparts in real life, are accomplished in more than one area, but this book focuses on obedience training and competition. It’s a world I know well, having competed for the past twenty years with my Australian Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers. The sport of agility is perhaps more popular among dog people, and better known to the public because it’s a bit more “audience friendly” in that you don’t need to know much to understand that a dog ran fast and clean, or not. But obedience is still my favorite sport, maybe because it provides training challenges that I find intellectually interesting. Sometimes we have trouble getting an idea across to the dog and have to figure out how to say it more clearly. Come to think of it, that’s what we do when we write!

Take the exercise that inspired the book’s title, and that sets the opening scene. The “drop on recall” is a required exercise at the “open” (intermediate) level of competition. “Recall” is obedience speak for calling your dog. A reliable recall is required at all levels of competition (and should be required for all levels of pet-hood, but that’s another story). In the drop on recall, here’s what happens if all goes well. You have your dog sit at your side. You tell your dog to stay, and you walk about forty feet across the ring. At the judge’s signal, you call your dog. While your dog is coming toward you, the judge gives another signal and you tell or signal your dog to lie down. She should immediately stop forward motion and lie down. Then the judge signals again and you call your dog to you. It’s a challenging sequence to teach, as you might imagine.


In Drop Dead on Recall, things do not go well. In fact, it’s the human who hits the dirt at the judge’s signal, and she never gets up. When it becomes clear that this is no accident, and certainly no sport-related injury, obedience competitor and animal photographer Janet MacPhail is sucked into the investigation. Like the other witnesses, Janet is flummoxed. So was I when the image of a competitor keeling over popped into my head and turned into a book. I’ve seen people fall when running in obedience, agility, and other sport. I’ve even been knocked on my butt in obedience practice by one of my own dogs who had a very enthusiastic recall. But the drop on recall is usually one of the less hazardous, if more difficult, exercises.

That’s what I love about dog sports, and what I love about writing mysteries, and reading them. You just never know what might happen!


Thanks, Sheila! Readers, please leave some comments and/or questions for Sheila.

Tomorrow's Guest: Sheila Webster Boneham

Tomorrow, fellow Midnight Ink mystery author Sheila Webster Boneham will be a guest on my blog. Sheilais the award-winning author of Drop Dead on Recall , the first book in the Animals in Focus mystery series, and seventeen nonfiction books about animals, including the highly regarded Rescue Matters! How to Find, Foster, and Rehome Companion Animals. Six of Sheila's books have been named best in their categories by the Dog Writers Association of America and the Cat Writers Association, and several others have been finalists in the groups' annual competitions. Sheila lives, writes, teaches, and plays with dogs on the coast of North Carolina.

In her guest post tomorrow, Sheila Webster Boneham talks about The Mysterious Sport of Dog Obedience, and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, please feel free to respond or to ask her some questions in the comments.