Debra H. Goldstein's Blog, page 14
March 14, 2022
What draws you to a book
By Vicki Batman
OOH, OOH, Look at This Pretty Thing
What draws you to a book–the author, the cover, the back cover copy? Do you read the first page? For me, all of the above, especially for a new-to-me author.
Something about the cover is attractive–the colorful picture, the hunky hunk, the author’s name, perhaps, a quote from a super famous author. On the cover of my mystery, Temporarily Employed, the gorgeous red background is appealing, the title’s font is hip, and below the cartoon are the words New job. New romance. And murder.
Hmm, that word murder is verrryy intriguing. You like the cover and want to delve into the back cover. Is there a tagline to draw you in? A small paragraph about the heroine and the hero? Is there a foreshadowing of something to come? Do quotes from reviewers and famous authors seal the deal?
Satisfied, you turn to the first page to sense the writing style. The experts say the first bit of the first page is called the “Hook.” You read the line/s and are instantly drawn into the story, very excited to go home and plop on the couch with a favorite beverage and snack.
Check. Check. Check. You carry the book(s) and hand over money.
I wrote my first book based on a car game. To break the lull during a trip, a girlfriend tossed out fun questions. Then she said, “Write the opening of a book using the word window.” I wanted to write a book so badly, and my friend knew it; however, I had nothing. Not-a-thing. She gave me an out–go home, write something, and email them. Several days later, I had a version of this in my first mystery, Temporarily Employed:
“Yuck.”
Pretty much covered the whole freakin’ day.
A blinding red-white, red-white strobe, reflected in my brand-new Wrangler’s rearview mirror, seized my attention. The police. I tossed my hands skyward, ready to surrender. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. Like I’d commented this a.m. to my roommate, Jenny, “Today, anything’s possible.”
My Bad Day checklist included:
Are you hooked? Do you want to know more about this character and her wacky thoughts?
While writing Book 1, ideas for Temporarily Insane begged to be put on paper. I came up with this:
“Stop it, Hattie!”
Trixie had some nerve. Her reprimand, the one which skewered a stabbing pain to my right eye, sounded terribly out of character, like she had little patience for me.
Maybe she felt rushed.
Ordinarily, she was the nicest person I knew who didn’t have a mean bone in her body. The kind who rescued animals, picked up trash at Sommerville Park,
and delivered Meals on Wheels to the elderly during her lunch hour.
Not today. I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest in a school-girl flaunt.
Why would a friend reprimand a friend? For my third book, Temporarily Out of Luck, I wrote these opening lines:
Sometimes, I felt like a small white mouse housed in a cage with lots of small white mice, whose sole playground activity involved eating, sleeping, and constantly revolving on the exercise wheel. And just like one rodent friend, who I named Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, having a field day back-flipping from the top of the spinning wheel, something happened. And unexpectedly, I found myself air born.
Not hurt, a sense of disappointment overcame me, plus a bit of confusion, and a whole lot of colorful descriptives too numerous to list. I, mostly known as Hattie Cooks, shook off the pine shavings and joined the rat race. Sometimes, life sucked.
But wallowing? Not a good solution.
Being positive? A better one.
What you discover is these books aren’t starting with a bang and running here and there. They are not a thriller, rather an amateur sleuth mystery. The words delve into the thoughts of Hattie Cooks, our intrepid main character, and hint at trouble. We empathize with her and hope she’ll get what she wants, including a hottie. Wink-wink.
What draws you into buying a new book?
Vicki Batman’s stories are full of fun, romance, and possibilities that will delight all readers. She has sold many award-winning and bestselling romantic comedy works to magazines and most recently, three humorous romantic mysteries. An avid Jazzerciser. Handbag lover. Mahjong player. Yoga practitioner. Movie fan. Book devourer. Cat fancier. Best Mom ever. And adores Handsome Hubby.
Find Vicki at: https://vickibatman.blogspot.com/p/more-about-me.html/
Find the Hattie Cooks mysteries at: https://www.amazon.com/author/vickibatman/
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March 11, 2022
Five Belles Too Many
Is anticipated to be the last book in the Sarah Blair series. Because I’ve been grateful to have so many fans follow the series, I’d like to do an interactive Zoom Read-A-Long of the series for each month through July, beginning with the first book, One Taste Too Many on March 15, 2022 at 7 pm CST/ 8 pm EST/ 6 pm MST/ 5 pm. PST.
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March 9, 2022
Capitol Crimes
Capitol Crimes – Mystery Writers Virtual Panel with Wanda Morris and Roger Johns – May 14.
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March 8, 2022
Mystery Author Roadshow – Scrawl Books
Featuring Ellery Adams, Libby Klein and Debra H Goldstein – Share in the fun of Libby launching her new Poppy McAllister book, Antique Auctions are Murder. Debra and Ellery will give sneak previews of their upcoming books, Five Belles Too Many and Mint Condition Murder. Join in the fun – Giveaways!
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February 27, 2022
What Happens When a Writer Gets Bored
By Kassandra Lamb
I bore easily, which isn’t always a good thing.
About a third of my closet is full of impulse buys that I liked because they were “something different,” but then only wore a few times. They varied a little too much from my normal style.
This tendency to bore easily is part of why I love mysteries, both reading and writing them. So many different ways a story can twist and turn…Bwahahaha.
But in my writing, even more than in my wardrobe, this trait has led me away from my comfort zone.
My first series, the Kate Huntington Mysteries were traditional mysteries, with a psychotherapist amateur sleuth, which is what I did for a living for 20 years (psychotherapy, not sleuthing). This was comfortable, since I knew that profession. But also challenging enough to keep my interest, as I figured out different messes Kate might find herself in as she tried to help her clients.
Inevitably, however, I became bored. I’d experimented with shorter, cozy-mystery-type reads in a parallel series of novellas called the Kate on Vacation Mysteries. I enjoyed the cozy style so much, I decided to write a cozy series, the Marcia Banks and Buddy Mysteries.
To raise consciousness about the mental health issues of veterans, and because I love dogs, I made my protagonist a young woman who trains service dogs for military veterans with PTSD.
But now I was no longer following the comfortable edict of “write what you know.” My protagonist was a Millennial, divorced, commitment phobic, and a dog trainer. And I am none of those things.
I had to do a lot of research with this series, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. It’s hard to be bored when you’re researching tasks service dogs can do, the inner workings of the various branches of the military, and different ways that combat soldiers might be injured, physically and/or mentally.
But now the dog-trainer series has almost run its course. Marcia (pronounced Mar-see-a, not Marsha) has grown from a somewhat flaky young woman to a mature married lady. (Well, “lady” may be an exaggeration). I’m currently writing the last novel in that series, and then her “character arc”—as we authors call it—will be completed.
So the bored part of me got a hare-brained idea. Why not write a police procedural series? There was a police detective character in the Kate books I’d grown fond of. Why not give her a series all her own?
Well, I may have changed things up a bit too much this time. I’ve moved way, way out of my comfort zone.
The only things I have in common with this protagonist—we’re both female and recovering Northerners now living in Florida.
But I’m certainly not bored!
I’m discovering that the “police procedure” we see on TV is often quite different from reality. Lots and lots of research is happening now, and I even got a chance recently to see the jury selection process up close and personal.
And the totally cool thing about police procedurals—there’s LOTS of variety in the crimes we homo sapiens commit. (Okay, maybe only a mystery writer would see that as cool.)
It may take a bit longer than usual for me to become bored with this series!
Bio:
In her youth, Kassandra Lamb had two great passions—psychology and writing. Advised that writers need day jobs and being partial to eating, she studied psychology. Now retired from a career as a psychotherapist—which taught her much about resilience, perseverance, and the healing power of laughter—she spends most of her time in an alternate universe populated by her fictional characters. The portal to this universe (aka her computer) is located in Florida where her husband and dog catch occasional glimpses of her.
Lethal Assumptions, A C.o.P. on the Scene Mystery
Judith Anderson’s no-nonsense attitude and confidence served her well in her climb to homicide lieutenant in the Baltimore County PD, but that confidence is shaken when she finds herself one step behind a serial killer—just eight days into her new job as Chief of Police in a small Florida city.
With a leak in her department, she doesn’t know whom to trust. If she makes the wrong assumption, the wrong decision, it may be her last. In a race to save lives, she’ll draw on every talent and instinct that made her a star in Baltimore. But will that be enough this time?
BUY LINKS:
AMAZON UNIVERSAL: http://hyperurl.co/c1g4ta
KOBO: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lethal-assumptions
NOOK: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lethal-assumptions-kassandra-lamb/1140506231?ean=2940165631856
WEBSITE: https://kassandralamb.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/kassandralambauthor
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/kasslamb/
BOOKBUB PROFILE: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kassandra-lamb
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February 13, 2022
Love and Valentine’s Day
When I think about Valentine’s Day, which today is, I think about it in a commercialized sense. Although the holiday’s origin is related to two saints, I had to look that up on Wikipedia. I’m more familiar with the cards, boxes of heart shaped candy, special dinners, and even boxers with cupids and hearts that are sold in the name of love. But, what is love?
Yes, there is the romantic type of love that the ads depict for Valentine’s Day, but is that all there is? I don’t think so.
I think the concept of love is wider. Recently, I talked with a friend caring for her husband after a head injury. Because he is in a rehab center, she won’t be going to a special dinner, receiving a card, or smiling when her favorite flowers are delivered unless she does any of those things for herself. She will be running back and forth to the center, making sure he is comfortable and taken care of, encouraging him, and putting up with his complaints about whatever annoys him at that moment. That’s love.
When I look at my children and the time and care they are giving to their children whether reading stories every night, showing them how to skip a stone across water, pushing a swing for the millionth time, running behind a bicycle the first time training wheels come off, kissing a boo boo away, or simply listening to their tales of woe, I see love.
Some of my friends never married or had children, but they have pets who snuggle next to them, give happy licks, or wait patiently for attention. The relationships between these humans and their animals are another example of love.
My next Sarah Blair book, Five Belles Too Many, which won’t be out until June 25, but is available for pre-order, features five couples who are finalists to win a perfect Southern wedding. Each relationship is different in terms of motivation and interaction. For a chance (U.S. only) to win an ARC of Five Belles Too Many (which just arrived), leave a comment about how you define love or an example of how it has occurred in your life.
Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
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February 7, 2022
Murder in the Magic City and Murder on the Menu
Debra will be live at Murder in the Magic City – Birmingham – February 5 and Murder on the Menu – Wetumpka – February 6
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January 31, 2022
When Setting is Also Character
By C. Hope Clark
The most enticing books for me to read spin setting into character. In other words, the story wouldn’t be nearly as delicious without a well-defined sense of place. Even more so if the story couldn’t exist without that specific locale.
If a story is in Los Angeles, then it needs to be there for a reason. Likewise, if it’s in Alabama or India or Portugal, the setting has to carry its weight in perpetuating the story and adding substance to its telling.
A setting can be more than a town or country, too. The setting might be a haunted resort like in The Shining, a train like in Murder on the Orient Express, or a cabin cruiser as in The Woman in Cabin 10. The point is that place is crucial to the tale.
I write mystery. A fan once told me that my stories were “destination mysteries.” She nailed two words into a description I hadn’t quite parsed into the right phrase, and I love the term. My fourteen novels are divided into three series, and setting gives them as much considerable strength as the strong protagonist women who solve the crimes.
All my books are set in South Carolina, and my goal in The Carolina Slade Mysteries was to be the Sue Grafton of South Carolina, setting each book in a different county or region of the state I love so much. The places are real, and the protagonist solves crime that falls under the department of agriculture, which further defines the setting in places like farms, secluded wooded areas, and marshes. A reader opens the book knowing there’s nothing urban about these crimes, and bodies disappear under the oddest of circumstances from gators to poisons existing in plants that grow in everyday ditches.
In The Edisto Island Mysteries, my largest and most popular series, Police Chief Callie Morgan manages the island town of Edisto Beach, actually located in the southern end of the state. The setting is rich with nature since this area is far from developed like the average tourist beach. There’s jungle, boggy marsh, and deep ocean for all sorts of debauchery, and along with the setting comes senses galore. The vinegary scent of Carolina pluff mud against the brine of the sea. Humidity you can drink and temperatures that cook you red and peeling. The salty taste of shrimp and the bite of a heavy-handed gin and tonic on a hot August evening.
My newest series is The Craven County Mysteries, somewhat similar to Karin Slaughter’s Grant County Series in that everything happens in one community, allowing the reader to become personally invested in its people, places, and style of living. The protagonist Quinn Sterling is not only a private investigator, but she is “the last heir in the oldest family in the oldest county in South Carolina.” Circumstances tore her from her FBI dream and into the role of owner and manager of a 3,000-acre pecan dynasty in the dark, humid Lowcountry. That 300-year-old farm is wrought with incredible sensory stimulation along with the black-water Edisto River snaking its border.
I write what I love to read . . . a story sunk into a world I can disappear into, become intimate with, and feel the gist of coming home when I pick up the next book in the series. And from the comments of readers, they seem to love the familiarity just like I do.
C. Hope Clark’s latest releases are Murdered in Craven and Burned in Craven, books 1 and 2 in The Craven County Mysteries. Hope lives on the banks of Lake Murray in central South Carolina when she isn’t walking the state’s Edisto Island beach. She lives with her husband, a retired federal agent, and two dachshunds, and her previous career in agriculture as a financial manager and subsequent internal investigator and director comes out in her tales. She has more books under contract and will write South Carolina mysteries until she can write no more. Hope is also founder of FundsforWriters.com, selected by Writer’s Digest for its 101 Best Websites for Writers for 20 consecutive years, and freelances in Writer’s Digest books, magazine, and online events. www.chopeclark.com / www.fundsforwriters.com
Buy Links:Murdered in Craven –Amazon – https://amzn.to/3EaPwoH
BN – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murdered-in-craven-c-hope-clark/1140504992
Autographed copies – http://www.chopeclark.com
Amazon – https://amzn.to/32fRPtp
BN – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/burned-in-craven-c-hope-clark/1140505085
Autographed copies – http://www.chopeclark.com
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January 25, 2022
Mystery Rat’s Podcast features
We are doing something a little different with this episode, we are offering a story in 2 parts.
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January 17, 2022
What’s in a Name?
By Maggie King
What’s in a name? With due respect to Mr. Shakespeare, who immortalized the catchphrase in Romeo and Juliet, names matter. Ask any parent, pet owner … or writer.
People ask me how I come up with my characters’ names. I might hear a first name and read a last name and put them together. The names need to sound right and need to suit the character. In Murder at the Book Group, #1 in my Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries, I chose the name Hazel Rose for my main character because it appealed to me.
But some names have more interesting backstories. The silver screen contributed a name for a character who appears throughout the series. One day I was watching The Philadelphia Story (1940) and saw the name Wade Rubottom in the credits. He was an associate art director for many films in the thirties and forties. I thought, “What a great name for a character” and I christened one of the book group members Sarah Rubottom.
Another recurring character is Kat Berenger. Her full name is Katrina Alexandra Berenger. Katrina Alexandra was the name of an unconventional teacher I had in high school. Kat is a logical diminutive of Katrina and also reflects the character’s love of leopards. I like the actor Tom Berenger—so that’s how I cobbled together the name Kat Berenger.
Unfortunately, Carlene Arness doesn’t get to be a recurring character, as she dies at a meeting of her book group—hence the title Murder at the Book Group. Her name was originally Deanna Arness and at some point I changed it to Sharon Arness. Then I went to work for a woman named Sharon and figured it was a bad idea for my victim and my boss to share a name, so Sharon became Carlene. As for Arness, likely I was thinking of Gunsmoke. James Arness starred in the popular western that my father watched religiously on Saturday nights from 1955-1975.
Carlene Arness was prone to tweaking her name as often as she changed her makeup. Carla, Carlotta, Carolina, were a few of her variations. She also had an assortment of last names. Her name hopping made investigating her murder challenging for Hazel Rose.
In Murder at the Moonshine Inn, Hazel Rose goes undercover to a redneck bar to investigate a murder. She consults an online database devoted to redneck baby names (yes, that’s a thing!) and picks an alias of Shelby Austin for herself and Ricky Austin for her husband, Vince. Characters she encounters in the bar are named Susie McCool, Maylene, and Duane.
For my recent release, Laughing Can Kill You, I don’t have as many interesting side stories about the names. Sarah Rubottom and Kat Berenger are recurring characters, so I’ve explained their name origins. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe inspired the name Claudia Marlowe, a new character. I appropriated last names of people I’ve worked with over the years and gave them to Matt and Susan Rowan, Lorraine Popp, and Sherry Guanzon,
After watching (and loving) the Danish drama Borgen, I plan to name a character Hesselboe. A suitable first name will come to me.
A few years back, I wrote a post with tips about naming characters. You can read it on the Sister in Crime Central Virginia’s Lethal Ladies Write blog: https://www.sistersincrimecentralvirg....
Readers, what are your favorite character names? Let me know for a chance to win an e-book of Laughing Can Kill You.
***
Synopsis of the book:
He who laughs last, laughs longest.
Unless he’s dead.
When romance author Hazel Rose is dropped by her publisher, she sees herself heading down a path strewn with has-been authors. While disappointed, Hazel won’t give up without a fight—she signs up for a mystery-writing class, thinking that crime fiction will jumpstart her career.
But what’s a mystery-writing class without a mystery? So when Randy Zimmerman, an obnoxious classmate given to laughing at others’ expense, is murdered, Hazel tackles the case. Solving a real-life murder will surely lend authenticity to her creative writing.
She recruits her book group pals to help with the investigation. Trouble is, there are more suspects than they bargained for—even Hazel herself, who endured Randy’s thumbs-way-down review of her writing, had a motive.
A second body drives the stakes higher, and Hazel doubles her efforts to find who’s behind the murders, unearthing secrets that a killer would go to any lengths to keep hidden.
Will Hazel succeed? Or will this be “The End” for her?
***
Biography:
Maggie King is the author of the Hazel Rose Book Group mysteries. Her short stories appear in various anthologies, including the Virginia is for Mysteries series, 50 Shades of Cabernet, Deadly Southern Charm, Murder by the Glass, and Death by Cupcake.
She is a member of James River Writers, International Thriller Writers, Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a founding member of Sisters in Crime Central Virginia, where she manages the chapter’s Instagram account.
Maggie graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in Business Administration, and has worked as a software developer and a retail sales manager. She has called New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California home. These days she lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and two indulged cats. When Maggie isn’t writing she enjoys reading, walking, cooking, traveling, movies, British TV shows, and the theatre.
Social Media:
Website: http://maggieking.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaggieKingAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaggieKingAuthr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authormaggieking/
Buy Links:
Universal Book Link (ebook): https://books2read.com/u/3n2ZAK
Amazon print: https://www.amazon.com/Laughing-Can-Kill-You-Mystery/dp/B09MYQ549Z
Barnes & Noble (print): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/laughing-can-kill-you-maggie-king/1140566735?ean=9798985231816
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