Debra H. Goldstein's Blog, page 12

The Importance of Showing Up

By Grace Topping

As a child, I enjoyed the stories my mother told my sisters and me at bedtime about her childhood. Sometimes her stories were happy and sometimes sad, but we were fascinated by them. Little did I realize that one of her experiences would profoundly affect me and cause me to do things throughout my life that I didn’t always want to do.

During the Depression, my mother lived at a girls’ boarding school. One of her teachers, Miss Jones, had been a missionary in China and regaled the class with stories of her experiences there. Later, she invited the students to her home to view the items she had collected during her travels. When the day arrived, the warm and sunny weather tempted my mother to skip the event to enjoy the day outdoors. But thinking better of it, she went to Miss Jones’s house.

When she arrived, she discovered Miss Jones had lovingly displayed the items that meant so much to her. She had also set the table with a beautifully decorated cake and other refreshments. My mother was so glad she went—because no one else showed up. My sisters and I gasped. What if our mother hadn’t gone? No one would have been there. How disappointing that would have been for Miss Jones, who had gone to so much trouble.

After that, whenever I was invited somewhere and tempted not to go, the thought always haunted me: what if no one shows up? So I went out on bright sunny days and trudged out on cold winter nights to a variety of events when many times I wanted to be elsewhere. And, yes, there were times when lots of people were at the event, but also times when my presence helped.

As the years went by, I found this commitment spilling into other areas of my life, especially when I decided to write a mystery. What if I hadn’t joined professional writing groups and showed up at their meetings? What if I hadn’t attended the book signing of debut authors when they sat there looking lonely?

Recently, I saw an announcement that an author I know was to speak at a local book festival. I knew she was coming from out of town for the event. What if nobody showed up? Other than the author’s family members who were there, I was one of five other people in the audience. Sometimes it’s good to show up.

How about you? Have there been times you were glad you showed up?

Grace Topping is a USA Today bestselling author and Agatha Award Finalist. A recovering technical writer and IT project manager, she was accustomed to writing lean, boring documents. Let loose to write fiction, she is now creating murder mysteries and killing off characters who remind her of some of the people she dealt with during her career. Fictional revenge is sweet. She is the author of the Laura Bishop Mystery series. Grace is the former vice president of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime (SINC), a steering committee member of the SINC Guppies, and a member of Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her husband in Northern Virginia.

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My Love of Bad Guys

By Annette Dashofy

I grew up at a time when Westerns were all the rage on TV. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley to name a few. My dad and I watched them all. One of my favorites was a series titled Alias Smith and Jones. In it, two of the most successful outlaws in the history of the West decide to go straight. Or try to. As a teen, I wrote several “novels” about these characters—novels written longhand, in pencil, in lined spiral-bound notebooks—what we now call fan fiction.

At the very beginning of the pilot episode of Alias Smith and Jones, a narrator said:

Into the West came many men. Some were good men and some were bad men. Some were good men with some bad in them. And some were bad men with some good in them…

Now, almost a half-decade later, I hold those words close to my heart. I no longer write fan fiction or westerns. I write traditional mysteries. And as I create my cast of characters for each book, I fall back on the opening narration from that old show.

As writers, we’re frequently told to create flawed heroes. Nobody’s perfect, after all. Too often, however, we forget the flip side of the coin. Our villains shouldn’t be perfectly horrible either.

Yes, evil does exist in the world. But I much prefer to write about a bad guy who has some good in him. My favorite villain of all I’ve written (and I can’t tell you which one without spoiling that book) did some truly awful things, but his reasons were understandable. Like another character from my youth, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, his heart grew as the story progressed. By the time I reached the climatic final scenes, I was heartbroken. I needed to kill this character, to have justice served. Could I possibly find a way to keep him around? He’d begun to seek redemption. Plus, I genuinely liked him! But no. He’d done too much, gone too far, and had to pay for his misdeeds.

Darn it.

Our villains need to have a good reason, at least in their minds, for doing what they do. They need motivation. Maybe they’re righting their own perceived wrongs.

Here’s another bit of wisdom I carry as I create villains:

Everyone is the hero of their own story.

In the villain’s mind, he is absolutely right and justified in doing what he does. He has his own internal dialogue about the victim, that rat bastard who doesn’t deserve to live. And about your hero, that SOB who’s trying to keep him from completing his mission.

Too often, we don’t spend enough time getting to know our villain. We take days, weeks, months developing our heroes and their sidekicks. A little less time, perhaps, fleshing out our victim. But too often, the killer is just a cardboard Bad Guy. Think Snidely Whiplash.

I believe it was Erle Stanley Gardner who advised that we should write from the viewpoint of the hero but PLOT from the viewpoint of the villain. (If this should be attributed to someone other than Mr. Gardner, I apologize.) For me, this is sage advice. I can’t know what the hero is up against, what he finds at a crime scene, what obstacles he faces, without knowing what the villain is doing off stage. Any time I run into “writer’s block,” I know it’s because I need to spend some time inside the head of the bad guy.

And if I’ve developed him with a little bit of good in him and understand his side of the story—his motivation—I rather enjoy that time. Bad guys can and should be fascinating.

About Where The Guilty Hide (Detective Honeywell Mystery #1) coming January 20, 2023

On the shore of Lake Erie, Pennsylvania, a body lays half hidden, the waves slowly moving it with the rising tide…

In the early morning mist, freelance photographer Emma Anderson takes pictures of the rocky coastline. She moved to Erie to escape a past that haunts her but the last thing she expects to capture is a dead body.

Erie City Police Detective Matthias Honeywell has been investigating a spate of home invasions but when one of the robbery victims turns up dead, his case evolves into homicide. Emma’s first encounter with Detective Honeywell leaves her shaken when he reminds her of her ex-fiancé-turned-stalker. Matthias misinterprets Emma’s anxiety and suspects she knows more than she’s letting on.

With the threat of another murder and no obvious leads, will Emma and Matthias overcome their mutual distrust and work together to capture a killer?

About the Author

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of twelve novels including the Agatha nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic/deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. Her standalone, Death By Equine, set in the world of Thoroughbred horseracing, is a finalist for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. Her first in a new series, Where the Guilty Hide, comes out in January 2023 and is available for pre-order now.

Pre-order links for Where the Guilty Hide:

http://bit.ly/3gLudE5

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Halloween vs. Valentine’s Day

By Judy Penz Sheluk

This post is scheduled for Halloween, which amuses me, because I’ve never been much of a Halloween person. Even as a kid, I dreaded the thought of dressing up and knocking on neighbor’s doors asking for candy, then coming home and watching while my dad inspected every piece for signs of tampering before a single morsel could cross my lips.

As a teenager, I transitioned from door-to-door canvassing to at-home Halloween parties. I recall one party where I went with my boyfriend of the day, he the farmer, me the wife. My costume consisted of painting some freckles on my face and putting my hair in braids. There may have been a plaid shirt and blue jeans involved. Possibly a tuft or two of hay. Imagination, not so much.

Later, as a homeowner, I found myself on the giving end of the tradition. This caused me no end of stress. If I bought things I liked (chocolate), I lacked the willpower not to eat it before the big night arrived. If I bought things I didn’t care for (licorice or potato chips), I would be stuck with them if I couldn’t give it all away.

First world problems, I know, but my dislike of Halloween in general is the main reason that none of my books are centered around it. Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, has played a significant role in two of my books: Skeletons in the Attic, book 1 in my Marketville Mystery series, and the just released Before There Were Skeletons.

In Skeletons in the Attic, Calamity (Callie) Barnstable, my protagonist, 36 at the time, inherits a house in Marketville from her father, who has died in an “unfortunate” occupational accident. The catch? She must move into the house, a house she didn’t know existed, and find out the truth about her mother, Abigail Osgoode Barnstable, who disappeared on Valentine’s Day 1980, when Callie was six.

In Before There Were Skeletons, Callie, now on the cusp of turning 43, has been hired to find out the whereabouts of an eighteen-year-old single mother who disappeared on Valentine’s Day 1995. Her client? The infant left behind, now twenty-eight.

So why Valentine’s Day, you might be asking. After all, isn’t that a day for love and romance? Maybe for some. For me, not so much. My first boyfriend (not the farmer) dumped me by phone (by phone!) on Valentine’s Day, and this after I’d been expecting a ring, having spent hours looking for the perfect card for him (two porcupines kissing with the message, “I love you so much it hurts.” – who says fate isn’t ironic?). Decades later, I was able to use that memory for a scene in Skeletons in the Attic, and it was wonderfully cathartic.

But back to Before There Were Skeletons, which is a story not only of the missing mother, but of Callie’s attempts to come to terms with her unresolved issues surrounding her own mother. And so, Valentine’s Day just seemed like the right place to start. Here’s a brief excerpt from Chapter 2, told from Callie’s point of view:

Rule number one. Don’t ask a question if you don’t want an honest answer.
I asked Ben anyway. “I take it we’re still fighting?”
“We’d have to be in a relationship to be fighting.”
And there you had it. Ben Benedetti was the man I thought I might have a future with, at least until now. It would appear the Barnstable Valentine’s Day curse was alive and well.
At least he didn’t kiss me on the forehead on his way out.
I hated when men did that.

About the book: The last time anyone saw Veronica Goodman was the night of February 14, 1995, the only clue to her disappearance a silver heart-shaped pendant, found in the parking lot behind the bar where she worked. Twenty-seven years later, Veronica’s daughter, Kate, just a year old when her mother vanished, hires Past & Present Investigations to find out what happened that fateful night.

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable is drawn to the case, the similarities to her own mother’s disappearance on Valentine’s Day 1986 hauntingly familiar. A disappearance she thought she’d come to terms with. Until Veronica’s case, and five high school yearbooks, take her back in time…a time before there were skeletons. Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqXVze.

About the Author
A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and the Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served as Chair on the Board of Directors. She lives in Northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior. Find her at judypenzsheluk.com.

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Grammar Crimes

By Lois Winston

Do you have a grammar pet peeve? I do, thanks to Peggy Riley Hughes, my seventh and eighth-grade English teacher. Because of Mrs. Hughes, I cringe whenever I hear or read poor grammar. If the world had more Peggys, I’d cringe a lot less.

To boldly go where no man has gone before. Remember that opening from Star Trek? Cringe-worthy! Gene Rodenberry obviously didn’t have Peggy Riley Hughes as an English teacher. If he had, he never would have split his infinitive.

Sadly, because there are so few English teachers like Peggy Riley Hughes, the Oxford English Dictionary did the unthinkable years ago—they declared it okay to split infinitives. Horrors! What would Peggy say?

Writers have license to take liberties with their writing. When I write dialogue, I don’t necessarily write in perfectly formed sentences because people don’t always speak in perfectly formed sentences. We often use sentence fragments. Our characters rarely speak using perfect grammar. That’s okay. We want them to sound realistic, not stilted. Style will also often dictate that sentence fragments be used in narrative.

There are, however, grammar rules that should never be broken.

Anyone who wants to be a writer, needs a firm grasp of the English language. Why is this important? Won’t the editor correct whatever needs correcting? Once upon a time that may have been true. However, these days editors don’t have the luxury of time to mollycoddle an author with a great story idea but a poor command of the English language. There are plenty of other well-written manuscripts at the editor’s fingertips.

The grammar error that makes me cringe the most, is the misuse of pronouns. For some reason, many people think substituting the nominative for the objective sounds more intelligent, no matter that it’s wrong. I see very well-educated people making this mistake all the time in their speaking and their writing. It makes me wonder if grammar is even being taught in schools these days.

If English class is a distant memory, here’s a nominative/objective refresher:
Nominative Pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, and who.
Objective Pronouns: me, you, him, her, it, us, them, and whom.

The nominative is always used as the subject of the sentence. The objective is always used in the predicate of a sentence and pairing with a direct object.

Think about it: You wouldn’t say, “John helped I” or “She gave the papers to I,” so why would you say, “John helped Suzie and I” or “She gave the papers to John and I”? It makes no sense, right?

Please consider your pronouns in your speaking and writing. I fear that whenever someone misuses them, Peggy Riley Hughes turns over in her grave. Help give the poor woman a much-deserved rest!

Guilty as Framed
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 11

When an elderly man shows up at the home of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack, she’s drawn into the unsolved mystery of the greatest art heist in history.

Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy has recently been released from prison. He doesn’t believe Anastasia’s assertion that the man he’s looking for doesn’t live at her address and attempts to muscle his way into her home. His efforts are thwarted by Anastasia’s fiancé Zack Barnes.

A week later, a stolen SUV containing a dead body appears in Anastasia’s driveway. Anastasia believes Murphy is sending her a message. It’s only the first in a series of alarming incidents, including a mugging, a break-in, another murder, and the discovery of a cache of jewelry and an etching from the largest museum burglary in history.

But will Anastasia solve the mystery behind these shocking events before she falls victim to a couple of desperate thugs who will stop at nothing to get what they want?

Buy Links for paperback, hardcover, and various e-tailers can be found here.

Bio: USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

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Surprise! It’s a Sequel!

By Bethany Maines

In this day of Marvel Universes and streaming limited– run shows, no, it’s not a surprise that it’s a sequel. It seems like everyone is embracing the sequel world-building ethos. But how is it that Marvel is thriving while DC can’t seem to figure out how to connect… anything? Or, for that matter, how does a novelist keep their world churning along? Well, if you’re this novelist, the answer is… (drumroll) spreadsheets. That’s right, this world and the fictional world all run on Excel. And a lot of imagination. I have written four series and assisted in building one shared universe, so I’ve figured out a few systems to make a series cohesive.

For the universe I share with two other authors, we have to agree on everything from technology to swear words, spelling, and historical facts. There’s an ever-expanding word doc and a spreadsheet that tracks names, unique vocabulary, and the books in which the words appear. But if you’ve ever met an author, you’ll know that updating “whenever we like” turns out to be the seventh of Nevermber.  So there has been some scrambling to ensure we don’t let the others down, but in general, we have benefitted from sharing brain space to create a vibrant, textured universe. (Check out the Galactic Dreams books if you enjoy science-fiction, fairy tale retellings, and want to see our results.)

For each of my series novels which include The Carrie Mae Mysteries, the San Juan Island Mysteries, the Shark Santoyo Crime Series, and The Deveraux Legacy Series, I’ve come to recognize a few keys to success. Rule #1 – Know where you’re going. It really helps to know how you want the series to end when you start writing, and can write through the stories with that in mind.

Now, do I always follow this rule? Absolutely not. The San Juan Islands Mysteries feature Tish Yearly and her grandfather, Tobias, solving mysteries. Each novel is a singular adventure, and while character arcs continue from book to book, there is no overarching story. Tish and Tobias find a dead body, help their island friends, and solve the mystery (usually while arguing). The End. But in general, that is what the readers want from an almost cozy mystery full of quirky Pacific Northwest island residents.

But with the Shark and Deveraux Legacy series, it’s the characters that readers love, and they want MORE of those characters. For Shark and the Deverauxes, the books leading up to the final story have an adventure per book but also share an overarching plot line that links the entire series. But by the time we get to the last book, the readers know the players and the bad guys, so the challenge becomes wrapping up the series in a satisfying conclusion. This is a bit easier with the Deveraux Legacy (final book releases October 18!), which features the four cousins of the Deveraux Family, and now that I’m out of cousins, it gets a little hard to come up with a new story.   But the real problem with writing a series where I know the end is that I know that sooner or later, I have to say goodbye to my fictional friends. And I haven’t figured out any good tips for saying goodbye just yet.

About The Fallen Man (Deveraux Legacy #4):

https://books2read.com/fallenman/

When orphan and convicted felon Jackson Zane (now Deveraux) realized that he was part of the wealthy Deveraux family, he thought he’d found his proverbial happily ever after. But he quickly realized that each of his three new cousins had problems. For the last seven years, Jackson has dedicated himself to fixing and protecting his new family, all while ruling out love for himself. Katie St. Cloud, the in debt up to her eyeballs bartender-slash-model, has been on the run from love too. But when she meets Jackson, Katie thinks she’s met the perfect definitely-not-a-boyfriend of her dreams. It’s only when the Deveraux family’s enemies come crashing into her life that Jackson and Katie have to face the truth—they may be in love, and that may not be enough. And as the family faces one last threat, Jackson finds that saving the Deverauxes might just mean giving up on love for good. But the Deveraux cousins aren’t going down without a fight, and Evan, Aiden, and Dominique set out to fix their mistakes, save Jackson, and cement the Deveraux Legacy once and for all.

Meet the Author:

Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, San Juan Islands Mysteries, Shark Santoyo Crime Series, and numerous short stories. When she’s not traveling to exotic lands, or kicking some serious butt with her black belt in karate, she can be found chasing her daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.

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Do You See What I See? by James M. Jackson

By James M. Jackson

Answer me this: It’s summer. I point to any sugar maple in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan forest my protagonist Seamus McCree calls home and ask, what color are its leaves?

We all know the answer: green.

Yet, what I cannot know is if the “green” you see is the same “green” I see. We were both taught by parents, teachers, books that sugar maple leaves in the summer are green. The grass on our lawns is also green (if we watered and fertilized, otherwise it might be brown). We can agree on the physics: light reflecting from a particular leaf has the same wavelength regardless of the viewer. Differences arise when those light waves reach our eyes, and our brains interpret them.

My son’s eyes have a higher proportion of green cones than normal, which, doctors tell me, means he sees green more brightly than I. That may explain why his favorite clothing as a toddler were his green Oshkosh B’gosh overalls. (Or maybe they fit better than anything else.) But it doesn’t tell me what he sees, nor can he know what I see. And while we have a physical explanation of why my son and I should see differently, the fact is, I don’t know what you see when you look at a leaf either.

It’s not simply our physical differences that cause us to experience the world differently. We process and evaluate information based on our previous experiences. Writing from a character’s point of view requires me to put on their blinders, employ their filters, experience and describe the world as the character would. Seamus is a numbers guy, and he asks questions like: “On a scale of one to ten . . .” He thinks more often than he feels. He enjoys being outdoors, and he particularly enjoys birdwatching. Even if he’s not actively birdwatching, he notices their colors, their mannerisms, their songs, and when they are quiet. His brain’s overload filter lets in all things bird.

Others might block out the birds and notice instead faint tracks in the dirt, a broken twig, crushed grass from the passing of an animal. Still others might ignore nature altogether, worried only about mosquitoes and ticks and making it back home in time for their daily glass of wine without wolves, bears or cougars attacking them.

Different perspectives can lead to conflict, even death. Sometimes they provide a humorous character insight. That happens in the “eagle subplot” in Granite Oath, the seventh Seamus McCree novel. The subplot kicks off with Megan, Seamus’s eight-year-old granddaughter announcing, “Grampa Seamus. We’re training an eagle.”

Later, after Seamus witnesses Megan and her friend Valeria calling in a family of eagles to grab fish they have left, Megan explains how it started:

“We accidentally left a fish on the dock and saw the eagle grab it.” She slid me a look. “Pier. You told me. Piers stay in the water, docks come out for winter. We did a science experiment and left one on purpose. The fish have to be keepers. They won’t come for the little ones.”

Seamus thinks to himself that the kids aren’t training an eagle, the eagle is training the kids.
Same event, different perspectives. I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar, and I’d loved to hear about it in the comments.
* * *
Mini-bio:
James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these domestic thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. August 2022 saw publication of the 7th novel in the series, Granite Oath. (Click here for information and purchase links.)

Jim splits his time between the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the city life in Madison, WI. You can find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com or contact him via email.

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The Deep Thrill by Barbara Kyle

By Barbara Kyle

Mystery. Thriller. Romance. Science Fiction. Horror. The publishing industry uses these labels for what they call “genre” novels. Literary critics often dismiss genre novels as lightweight, even trivial.

But are they?

After all, it can be argued that even classic literary novels fall within the bounds of some genre. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a romance. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a psychological thriller. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is horror. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is science fiction. The Name of the Rose, the intellectual debut novel of Umberto Eco, is a murder mystery.

And, my goodness, what writer wouldn’t want to be classed with Dostoevsky?

As the author of several thrillers, let me share with you what I believe is special – in fact, important – about this particular genre.
It’s often said that a good thriller is like a roller-coaster ride. That’s true enough, because the genre is about high stakes, countdowns, and suspense, and every compelling thriller delivers this kind of excitement.
But the most satisfying thrillers deliver more: an exciting story that also explores complex issues. This kind of story has something meaningful to say about our world. It takes the reader away from the amusement park and sends them on a voyage – an exhilarating journey into a different way of thinking.

I call it Deep Genre.

The job of Deep Genre is to take readers beyond their expectations. To give them an insight they never saw coming. “Insight” literally means seeing the truth through and under the surface of things. It’s the serious novelist’s job to challenge not only readers’ expectations, but also their received wisdom, their acceptance of society’s status quo.

At its heart, Deep Genre is always about confronting power.

Charles Dickens knew this when he used his immensely popular novels to hold a mirror up to the horrors that working-class people suffered under unfettered capitalism in nineteenth-century England.

John Grisham’s popular thrillers often feature a “little guy” up against some form of corporate bully.

John le Carré’s literary thrillers train his unflinching focus on the corrosive corporate and political powers who manipulate our lives.

Denise Mina, a master of “noir” crime fiction, reveals the raw wounds that Glasgow’s poor and powerless suffer, and she creates female characters who are resilient and resourceful.

The most compelling thrillers lead to a climax in which the main character learns something profound about themself and the world they live in. If they don’t, they remain unenlightened, adolescent. They haven’t grown. So neither can the reader. In other words, the roller-coaster ride is all you get.

A fine thriller – or a deft murder mystery – may end in tragedy or, more commonly, with justice prevailing, or sometimes a bittersweet blend of both. Whatever the outcome, readers embrace the richness of Deep Genre and welcome the experience. We need it.

Because it’s not the roller-coaster ride that satisfies the soul. It’s the voyage.

#   #   #

Barbara Kyle is the author of the bestselling Thornleigh Saga historical novels and acclaimed thrillers. Over half a million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her most recent novel is The Man from Spirit Creek. Her upcoming novel The Deadly Trade, a murder mystery, will be published in fall 2023. Visit Barbara at https://www.barbarakyle.com/ and on Twitter: @BKyleAuthor

About The Man from Spirit Creek: Oil executive Liv Gardner sets out to entrap farmer Tom Wainwright who is sabotaging her company’s rigs. But when Tom is accused of a murder he didn’t commit, Liv must face the fact of her own corrupting power. Only by giving up everything to save him can she find her own redemption.

“A stunning thriller…Lost sleep as I couldn’t put this one down.” – Amazon review

“Full of twists that kept me wanting more…a mix of thriller, mystery, romance, and redemption.” – Goodreads review

Buy The Man from Spirit Creek.

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Art as Therapy – Filling the Well by Cheryl Hollon

As some of you know, writers today are responsible for a significant portion of their books’ virtual and in-person promotion work. Marketing is fun but, at the same time, can be draining. I tend to push very hard for the month before and after a book’s release date. That means up to twelve hours a day living, breathing Zoom panels, bookstore events, blog posts, blog tours, and Facebook parties. As a result, I’m a mass of nervous energy and empty of new ideas. At this point, I have trouble writing a simple email. Perversely, the complicated schedules of writing deadlines demand continued progress in the latest manuscript.

At last, I’ve found a solution – an easy solution. I walk into a museum. I wander around with no set plan or no set time limit. I let the exhibits wash over me, and this begins to recharge my creative energy. For the artist, this is cross-training at its most pleasant.

I’m lucky enough to live in downtown St. Petersburg, FL. There are four museums within the space of a half-dozen blocks. Just around the corner from me on Central Avenue is the Chihuly Collection, with a stunning, permanent collection of world-renowned artist Dale Chihuly’s unique artwork in a magnificent setting.

When I’m in the mood for the Chihuly, I usually linger longest the gallery with the stunning installation titled “Ruby Red Icicle Chandelier,” whose flame red swirls dangle from the ceiling. I also adore the multicolored chandelier known as “Milli Fiore.” After I walk through the museum, I spend some time in the gift shop, where items for sale are not the typical selection of cups and postcards.

The Museum of Fine Arts is on Beach Drive, with an extensive permanent collection of French Impressionist paintings. Drawn from public and private collections in North America and Europe, this museum contains my favorite artists in both Impressionist and Modernist paintings. I disappear into these paintings with joy.

At the south end of the downtown area is the world-famous Dali Museum, with touring exhibits and the most extensive collection of Dali art outside of Spain. Salvador Dalí’s art is often as shocking as it is brilliant. There are changing and special exhibits throughout the year, including children’s activities, films, music series, lectures, and more. I enjoy the Spanish-themed Cafe and meander inside the meditative Avant Garden.

We now have two more museums to add to the list. The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art is a 30,000-square-foot haven of contemporary artwork depicting cowboys, Native Americans, settlers, and wildlife. It’s a fantastic respite on a hot August afternoon. Most of the exhibits are from living artists – I love that.

Further West on Central Avenue is the Imagine Museum, with more than 1,500 top-quality glass objects made by contemporary artists worldwide.

The Museum of the American Arts & Crafts Movement is the newest downtown entry. This is my décor of choice, and I love the inspiration the pieces offer. The exhibits are both beautiful as well as functional for both everyday life and extraordinary works. Inside are examples of Frank Lloyd Wright, Roycrofter, Gustav Stickley, Charles Rennie MacIntosh of Glasgow, and many more. I adore the pottery and the children’s gallery.

This technique for “filling the well” refreshes my creativity, and in little more than an hour, I’m ready for the next promotional challenge.

What’s your favorite method to refresh your creativity?

About Death A Sketch:

In eastern Kentucky, Miranda Trent runs a unique tour company called Paint & Shine, but sometimes the peaceful mountains play host to murder . . .

Miranda’s business—combining Appalachian adventure tours with art and a bit of moonshine—is the perfect place for an outdoor sporting goods company to hold an employee retreat. It’ll be a challenge, but the money they’re paying will help with building her new distillery.

Miranda has many teamwork-fostering activities planned, from sketching classes to Southern cooking, but the executive running things prefers a more competitive spirit. After the workers are split into teams, they’re told that only the winners will keep their jobs, and tensions begin to spike. Even after a participant is found dead, the contest continues—while Miranda starts drawing her own conclusions about the ambitious attendees. Now she just has to find the proof . . .

Meet the author:

Cheryl Hollon writes full time after she left an engineering career designing and building military flight simulators in amazing countries such as England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Fulfilling the dream of a lifetime, she combines her love of writing with a passion for art. Cheryl and her husband George live among the museums in downtown St. Petersburg, FL.

You can visit Cheryl and sign up for her newsletter at http://www.cherylhollon.com

The post Art as Therapy – Filling the Well by Cheryl Hollon appeared first on Debra H. Goldstein.

The Writer as Vagabond by Molly MacRae

The word vagabond strolled into my head the other day. I’ve always liked the word so I was happy to see it and to have it stick around for a while. I like the sound of it—full and round but with concrete edges in the G and the D, and with that tiniest buzz you get from the initial V. Say it out loud; it’s completely satisfying. I also like the definition—vagabond: one who moves from place to place without a fixed home. But why did vagabond choose now to come calling? Because it’s summer and the word wanted to lure me to the open road and away from a writing deadline? That’s a distinct possibility, but here’s another. Vagabond arrived so that I’d have a word to describe what kind of writer I am. It turns out that, besides being a mystery writer, I’m a vagabond writer, setting my stories in place after place, staying for a while, and then giving in to wanderlust and moving on.

It all started with short stories set in an unnamed bookstore in an unnamed town. The stories are a series that appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. They’re about Margaret, who’s a bookseller, and her sister Bitsy, who’s annoying. I knew the town was in northeast Tennessee, but that didn’t particularly matter to the stories. When Margaret and Bitsy appeared in the novel Lawn Order their (fictional) town gained the name Stonewall (not named for the general, but for the walls a man named Grundy built around his cow pastures).

From Stonewall, my stories travelled to Nolichucky, another fictional town in northeast Tennessee. Wilder Rumors, about a museum curator who might also be a burglar, didn’t pull up roots entirely, though. The curator made a quick trip to visit his aunt in Stonewall—a trip with near-disastrous results.
Then comes Blue Plum, Tennessee, and the Haunted Yarn Shop mysteries. Blue Plum is dear to my heart and based on my favorite parts of the small towns I’ve lived in. It’s also suspiciously like Jonesborough, Tennessee, where my family and I lived for close to twenty years. There are six books in the yarn shop series, starting with Last Wool and Testament, and any one of them will give a flavor of that beautiful area snugged up near the border between Tennessee and North Carolina.

After travelling around northeast Tennessee, getting my writing feet wet as it were, my stories flew off to Scotland for the Highland Bookshop Mystery series. Scotland! The Highlands! A bookshop! What could possibly go wrong with a set up like that for my new set of characters? Well . . . dead bodies. Sorry, but that’s an occupational hazard in mystery novels. Starting with Plaid and Plagiarism, there are five books in this series, and the characters acquit themselves well, if I do say so.

As Margaret Welch (that’s Margaret from my Hitchcock short stories—she runs a bookshop and loves books as much as I do, so when I needed a penname, I figured why not let her take credit?) I’ve written about Cape Cod and Monterey County, California.

The post The Writer as Vagabond by Molly MacRae appeared first on Debra H. Goldstein.

Punderful Titles

[image error]By Meri Allen (aka Shari Randall)

I’ll never forget the moment I opened the email from my editor announcing the title of my cozy mystery debut in the Lobster Shack Mystery series. I was sitting across the breakfast table from my daughter who was enjoying a bowl of cereal when I read the title.

“Curses, Boiled Again!”

We both fell into gales of giggles, and yes, she laughed so hard milk did squirt out of her nose. The title was hilarious – and perfect. What else would you call a book about an injured ballerina who works in her kooky aunt’s lobster shack and solves murders? 

This was my first cozy title, and at first, I wasn’t sure what to make of the it. Those who don’t read the cozier end of the mystery spectrum also find the titles baffling, but cozy readers are in the know.

Cozy titles – with their humor and puns – are a little wink, and cozy readers are in on the joke. The titles are fun but they serve a purpose beyond humor, too.  They’re clues that a reader will have a particular experience reading a cozy. They’re promise of danger and mystery, with a nod to the hook, and a signal that the book is fine for the whole family to read. The whimsical wordplay lets the reader know what to expect: a book that’s more Gilmore Girls than Gone Girl, more Murder, She Wrote than Goodfellas.

How did we get from The Mystery of the Blue Train or Murder at the Vicarage to 

Ho Ho Homicide? Hard to know exactly when the cozy titles got so punny. Some say the magnificent MC Beaton’s Quiche of Death kicked off the trend in 1992. Debra’s cozy series about hapless cook Sarah Blair has fun with her titles starting with One Taste Too Many. All I know is, I get a kick out of these punny titles. Here are a few particularly clever and groan-worthy titles:

Wonton Terror (Vivien Chien)

Owls Well that Ends Well (Donna Andrews)

Last Wool and Testament (Molly MacRae)

Cheddar Off Dead (Korina Moss)

Dewey Decimated (Allison Brook)

So when I needed titles for my upcoming Ice Cream Shop mystery, I started brainstorming with friends, family, readers, and my editor. Before my publisher decided each title would have a flavor in it, I’d come up with THE COLD ART OF DEATH for book two (fantasy ice cream social plus death of a much-reviled avant garde artist at a castle owned by a reclusive super model) You see the problem. The title’s not cozy or ice creamy enough. So after several tries, we hit on MINT CHOCOLATE MURDER.

Book Three in the series is done, but has no title (the set up: murder of the wealthy, cold-hearted bride at her Halloween themed wedding). Here’s the scoop on the contenders so far. What do you think?

MOCHA AND MURDER

PUMPKIN SPICE AND NOTHING NICE

PUMPKIN SPICE ICED

PUMPKIN SPICE VICE

PISTACHIO PLOT

FATAL FUDGE SWIRL

Do you have a favorite cozy title? Share in the comments.

Shari Randall is the author of Lobster Shack Mystery series with the punny titles CURSES, BOILED AGAIN!, AGAINST THE CLAW, AND DRAWN AND BUTTERED. As Meri Allen, she writes the Ice Cream Shop Mysteries. The debut title is THE ROCKY ROAD TO RUIN (because what else do you call a murder mystery about a former CIA librarian who runs an ice cream shop?) Book Two, MINT CHOCOLATE MURDER , drops on July 26, 2022 and you can preorder now.

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