Debra H. Goldstein's Blog, page 38

Guest Blog – Gail Handler – A Writer With Special Vision

         

Gail Handler

Thank you, Debra, for inviting me to write a guest post. I’m not a mystery/thriller writer, although the writing I do can be very thrilling when it comes together. I’m a children’s book writer; mostly picture books with an occasional chapter book or middle grade novel (ages 8-12) thrown in. I can hear some of you thinking: that’s not too difficult, just make up a cute little tale, add a few illustrations and there you go.  Au contraire.

Writers of adult fiction (that’s age-related, not erotica-related) know that a good story must be well plotted. The story arc not only needs a beginning, climax, and resolution, it also needs conflict and tension, maybe some humor, and the stakes must keep getting higher for the main character in order to drive the story forward and the reader turning  pages (or in the case of an e-reader, flicking pages!)

All that is present in a picture book or chapter book as well. However, a picture book, is only about 500-750 words. While the adult author set the scene, hinted at a problem, and introduced the main character in chapter one, the children’s author has done all that plus created conflict, added tension, resolved the problem, and completed the whole book. Doesn’t sound so easy now, does it!

I admit writing a  picture book first draft IS simpler than a novel. But drafts two through six or eight or ten require a great deal of nuance. Picture books must appeal to little kids; their level of comprehension, world of experience, and certainly their sense of humor. It also needs to appeal to the “gatekeepers” of picture books, the parents, the media specialists, and the teachers. And if you want kids to read your book over and over and maybe (hopefully) pass it on to their children one day, it must appeal to older kids and contain themes that will withstand the test of time. Oh yeah, it can’t sound like it’s teaching something or feel like there’s a lesson/moral to the story because kids will get bored and put the book down. I repeat, not so easy to craft.

I guess it’s apparent that children’s book authors need to be passionate about writing their stories since they can be challenging. For me, there’s an extra challenge. I’m visually impaired and in the process of potentially losing all my sight from a hereditary disease.

I wasn’t having a lot of difficulty seeing the computer screen when I began writing six years ago (I could still read a font in 10 point). Now it’s 16 or 18 point, depending on the font. The good news is, even as my sight gets worse, I can continue to write with the help of special software and/or assistive technology devices. Smartphones especially the iPhone 4gS, have voice-to-text and text-to-voice capability. There are several magnification software programs available, as well as voice-to-text and text-to-voice software programs. So while I might not see the written page, I can still write it and hear it. Most writers will admit it’s helpful to have someone else read your words aloud; my reader will just sound a bit mechanical!

For me, vision loss is certainly an inconvenience, but not the end of the world. It isn’t crippling me, killing me, or affecting my brain. It’s just one of life’s challenges.  It has provided some humorous circumstances and a few embarrassing moments. But as I see it, that’s just fodder for the memoir I plan to write when I get my guide dog! (I want to name him “Seymour.”)

  ~~~~~~~    

Gail Handler is a retired elementary school teacher. She has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Education from University of Michigan and an additional Master’s in Counseling from Georgia StateUniversity. In addition to writing children’s books, she is a Board Member of the Georgiachapter of The Foundation Fighting Blindness, a co-leader of the chapter’s support group, and active in fundraising for research to discover treatments and cures for  retinal degenerative diseases. To learn more about her and her journey through writing and vision loss, check out her blog: www.writefromthesoulvisualeyes.blogspot.com or her  WIP (website in progress!)   www.gailhandler.com

Guest Blog: Who is F.M. Meredith aka Marilyn Meredith?

ABOUT MARILYN AND HER WRITING — IN HER OWN WORDS:

Since I'm brand new to this blog, let me tell you something about myself. I've been writing all my life, but wasn't published until 1982. My first two books were historical family sagas based on both side of my family's genealogy. The first one was rejected nearly 30 times, rewritten about half as many times, before it finally found a publisher.

After that, I wrote a mystery because that's what I liked to read. I also wrote a romance with a touch of the supernatural, a psychological horror novel, three Christian horror stories, and many more mysteries. I've had several agents, learned from some, but none ever found a publisher for me. I found them on my own. I've had plenty of rejections but never gave up, which is probably the best advice I can give to any new writer—never ever give up. Write, write write, edit, edit, edit, and keep on submitting and do it following the publisher's submission instructions.

My Rocky Bluff P.D. series began years ago with Final Respects. It's now only available as an e-book. When I wrote it, I had no idea that it would be the first in a series. My intention was to show how what happens to a police officer on the job affects his family and what's going on with the family affects the job. I also wanted to show that a police officer doesn't just follow one case, but has lots of things going on at once. When I was through, I wanted to know what was going to happen to my characters next.

My publishers of the series didn't always work out. One publisher quit after publishing Fringe Benefits and Smell of Death. And fortunately, I found Oak Tree Press who published the next one in the series in trade paper back and as e-books: No Sanctuary, An Axe to Grind, Angel Lost, and the latest, No Bells. Each one is written as a stand-alone, so it isn't necessary to go back and read the earlier ones, though you might want to in order to learn more about the series.

As far as me personally, I once lived in a small beach community in California, much like the fictional town of Rocky Bluff. When my husband and I lived there, many of our neighbors were in law enforcement and we partied with them and I had coffee with their wives. Our son-in-law was a police officer, our grandson is now an officer and a grandson-in-law is a deputy sheriff.

Hubby and I now live in a mountain community much like the fictional Bear Creek in my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series. We raised five children, now have 18 grandkids and 12 great grands. My husband and I met on a blind date and when we married, no one figured we'd make it, we fooled them all. Though I've written for a long, long time, I've had many jobs: telephone operator, pre-school teacher for developmentally disabled kids, day care center teacher for disadvantaged children, and with my husband owned and lived in a 6-bed facility for developmentally disabled women. And I wrote all the time I was doing these other jobs.

~~~~~~~~~~Guest Blogger F.M. Meredith, also known as Marilyn Meredith, is the author of over thirty published novels—and a few that will never see print. Her latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, from Oak Tree Press, is No Bells. Rocky Bluff P.D. is a fictional beach community between Ventura and Santa Barbara and F. M. once lived in a similar beach area. In No Bells, Officer Gordon Butler has finally found the love he's been seeking for a long time, but there's one big problem, she's the major suspect in a murder case. Marilyn is on a whirlwind blog tour for No Bells . As part of that tour, she is sponsoring a CONTEST: The person who comments on the most blogs on her tour will win three books in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series: No Sanctuary, An Axe to Grind, and Angel Lost. Be sure and leave your email so she can contact you!

FYI:  F. M. (Marilyn) is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and serves as the program chair for the Public Safety Writers of America's writing conference. She also has been an instructor at many writing conferences.

Website: http://fictionforyou.com/

Blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/

Toss in Those Red Herrings by Sally Carpenter

Sally Carpenter

How can stinky fish help you write a mystery?

"Red herrings," a staple in classic/traditional mysteries, refers to false

Baffled Beatlemaniac book cover

suspects and clues that the writer sets up to confuse the reader. One of the pleasures of reading mysteries is to work the author's puzzle and match wits with the sleuth to reach the same deduction.  The skillful use of red herrings will not only keep the reader hooked to the final page, but can lead to a second reading of the book to find the clues missed on the first go-around.

Agatha Christie used red herrings well by populating her stories with numerous suspects, all with valid motives, and then rounding them up into the drawing room in the final chapter to reveal the killer. The reader then, no doubt, slaps her forehead and says, "Why didn't I see that!"

Originally, red herrings were fish kippered by smoking and salting until they turned a reddish-brown. Before the invention of iceboxes, these fish were quite pungent. According to legend, hunters used the odious fish to train their tracking dogs. The smelly fish was used to lay a false trail on the ground to throw the dogs off the correct scent. Likewise, red herrings in a mystery lead the reader down the wrong path, away from the killer's identify, and keep her off balance until the end.

Here are ways to develop good red herrings in a mystery:

1.  Multiple suspects. When creating suspects, my motto is: The more, the merrier. A mystery isn't much fun if the sleuth has only one or two possible suspects to pick from.

2. Motive, means, opportunity. These are the three requirements needed to convict a person in a court of law. Red herrings also need these traits to keep the sleuth's interest.

Red herrings all need a reason to bump off the victim; otherwise, the sleuth would not pursue them.

The false suspects must also be capable of doing the dirty deed. If the victim was crushed beneath a 200-pound boulder, then obvious the small, frail elderly woman couldn't be a suspect unless she owned a forklift truck that could lift the rock.

3. Equal emphasis. Someone once said he always figured out the killer in Agatha Christie's work because "the killer is the character she never talked about."

Many mysteries shove the red herrings up front. The most likely suspects and the ones given the most page space are generally the red herrings. Spend time with all the suspects so that the red herrings don't stand out.

4. Deception and lies. A good mystery writer is a first class liar on the page (but hopefully not in real life) and knows how to make the characters lie.

When I served as a jail chaplain, I learned that the cells was full of innocent persons—or so thought the inmates who either blamed others for their crimes or justified their actions in their own minds.

Criminals plead "not guilty" because they won't admit to their guilt. In a mystery, the killer will conceal, detract and cover up. The sleuth's job is to shift through the falsehood to find the truth.

5. Alibis are made to be broken. In a premeditated murder, the killer will carefully set up an alibi to create the illusion that she was nowhere near the crime scene. In a crime of passion, the killer may retrace his stops and quickly set up an alibi after the fact, perhaps by resetting the victim's watch, writing a false name in the dead person's appointment book or deleting a computer file to hide his presence.

The red herrings may or may not have alibis. Those without will be under more suspicion. The killer may fool the reader with an apparently foolproof alibi. But the sharp sleuth will probe further.

6. Play fair. One of my biggest pet peeves as a reader is feeling cheated by the author who pulls the killer's identity out of thin air. Some writers spend 300 pages creating suspects, only to reveal the murderer as a throwaway character who briefly appeared once on page 130—or even worse, someone who pops up for the first time on page 290.

Another gripe is the writer who concocts a far-fetched motive on page 298 or presents an ending so bizarre and unbelievable (Uncle Joe was actually murdered by space aliens!) that the reader scratches her head in frustration. The reader needs enough clues scattered throughout the story that the conclusion is obvious and satisfying.

The killer's motive can be hidden, but not illogical. The writer can spring a surprise motive as long as she sets up the characters with the right characteristics to make the resolution possible.

A suggestion is to have one or more persons read your first draft for the express purpose of checking out your red herrings (putting grammar, spelling and other concerns aside). Was the mystery too easy or too hard to solve? Did the suspects keep the reader interested? Did the climax make sense?

With my book, I added more clues in the second draft. Two characters who showed up late in the story were moved earlier. I also turned another character into a "suspect." I felt these changes made the mystery more delightful and puzzling.

So get out those red herrings and confound your readers—just as long as you eventually lead them onto the right trail. Happy hunting!

Bio: Sally Carpenter is native Hoosier now living in Moorpark, California.

Her debut mystery, "The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper," is a Eureka! Award nominee for best first mystery novel as well as the first book in the Sandy Fairfax Teen Idol series.

She has a master's degree in theater from Indiana State University. While in school two of her plays, "Star Collector" and "Common Ground," were finalists in the American College Theater Festival One-Act Playwrighting Competition. "Common Ground" also earned a college creative writing award. "Star Collector" was produced in New York City and also the inspiration for her book.

Carpenter also has a master's degree in theology and a black belt in tae kwon do.

She's worked a variety of jobs including actress, freelance writer, college writing instructor, theater critic, jail chaplain, and tour guide/page for a major movie studio. She's now employed at a community newspaper.

She's a member of Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles chapter and "mom" to two black cats. Sally's next writing project is the second Sandy Fairfax book, "The Sinister Sitcom Caper." Contact her at Facebook or scwriter@earthlink.net.

Sally Carpenter

"The Baffled Beatlemaniac Caper"

Eureka! Award nominee

Winners & Miscellaneous

Sometimes a crazy week means the best one can blog is that one is surviving.  I've had that type of week for months, but this past weekend, I did something very special with the help of my husband.  I celebrated a birthday by having a day of doing nothing.  No obligations.  No one wanting me to do anything.  No promises to be anywhere.  It was delightful! 

I woke up to find the  most beautiful card and sweet gift from my husband, who had let me sleep while he went out to exercise.  He came home with breakfast for me.  Happy because I was fed and because he let me have the Sunday paper before he destroyed it (how he reads the paper is the stuff of another blog), I contently spent the rest of the day playing on my computer, reading, watching tv, accepting birthday wishes from my children, friends, and family and just smiling.  I don't get days like this past Sunday often; but, when I do, it absolutely re-energizes me for the usual treadmill of life.  Debra

The winners from the Maze in Blue giveaway are Kathy, Pat, and Carole.  Congratulations!  Please send me your respective mailing addresses at DHG@DebraHGoldstein.com to receive your signed copy of Maze in Blue.

Interested in my thoughts on "Crafting My Writing?"  Check out my guest blog on Lois Winston's Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers:  http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-club-friday-guest-author-debra-h.html

Special thanks to Terry Ambrose for the Examiner.com interview about Maze in Blue and Debra H. Goldstein.  Read it at http://www.examiner.com/crime-fiction-in-national/maze-blue-and-debra-h-goldstein

For the Love or Hate of Blogging by Debra H. Goldstein

Author Debra H. Goldstein

For the love or hate of blogging….

As a writer, I understand the need to blog, tweet, post onFacebook and be LinkedIn; but often, I resent the invasion of social media into my time and privacy.  I tend to be shy and uncomfortable with outing my thoughts and emotions.  It was so much easier to exist under the radar without the fear of a comment being misinterpreted or worse, never again being private. 

The mechanical aspects of blogging are daunting and frequently irksome.  Precious time that could be spent writing or watching Top Chef is devoted to coming up with an idea, translating it into a coherent piece, posting it, and then letting the world know the new blog exists.  Yet, that is the moment I understand the juxtaposition between hate and love.

I love the interaction a blog posting provokes from readers.  When people tell me my words resonate with them, I am touched.  If I can capture a feeling or emotion for many, like I did in the blog "Maybe I Should Hug You," I am elated.  The range of reactions to my different blog offerings astonishes me for their variety and their sincerity.  Even if readers and I don't agree, I learn from the ensuing dialogue.  The entire experience of blogging ultimately makes me a better person and writer.

 

When I first began blogging, I tried to "do it all," and quickly found myself avoiding the experience because my initial efforts felt forced and strained.  Knowing I wanted a purpose behind each of my blogs rather than for them to be just filler, I shut down.  My sense of humor deserted me.  I stopped blogging, but I began to read other people's blogs in earnest.  I marveled at the ease and grace behind blogs by people like Ree Drummond's "Pioneer Woman."  The productivity of writers like Lois Winston during her "Sit on Your Butt Book Tour" exhausted me.  I liked the way that eight writers combined their efforts to balance their respective levels of sanity and engaged me as a reader through their "Jungle Red Writers" blog.  All of this reading brought me back to blogging.

This time around though, there are a few major differences.  "It's Not Always a Mystery" reflects that sometimes I write about writing or mysteries, but just as often, I share a topic close to my heart.  By alternating a blog by me with one from a guest writer every two weeks, I am making a concession to juggling my day job, my family, my need for time to write, and my promise to bring you, the reader, a quality blog that is worth your time to read.  I hope that each of these blogs will make you want to leave comments.  The tedious process of blogging may be hateful, but I love sharing this time with you.

A word from DHG:  After having my blog, "It's Not Always A Mystery" as a part of my website, www.DebraHGoldstein.com , I have moved it back to wordpress.  Problems with a Message Box resulted in the loss of comments previously left for any of the blogs.  For a chance to win a signed copy of my debut mystery, Maze in Blue, read through all of the posts and make comments.  Each comment made before March 11, 2012 will give you a chance to win one of three signed copies of Maze in Blue.  Good luck! 

Guest Blog: A Passion for Chocolate-or Chocolate for Passion? by Judy Alter

Judy Alter

One night friends sat in my living room talking about chocolate and addiction, and I admitted to loving chocolate but claimed I'm not addicted. My oldest son, long grown, went into my office and emerged with a handful of five or six chocolate bars. "No," he said, "she's not addicted. She just happened to have these in her top desk drawer." At the time my favorite was Dagoba dark chocolate, usually the lavender blueberry bar with fifty percent cocoa. The high-powered seventy percent is too bitter for me. Today, I've moved on to Redstone's chocolate with jalopeño and peanut bits, but it is milk chocolate and not as good for you.

Do you ever munch a bit of chocolate when you come to a dead spot in your writing? I admit I do that. It seems to help, so I set out to investigate why it works.

Most of us know the history of chocolate—from the cacao bean, the name taken from the Aztec xocatel (there are many spelling variations) which was a bitter drink made from the beans. The Aztecs prized it as a gift and considered it a source of spiritual wisdom. From those days on it was considered valuable, decadent, and divine.

Over time chocolate became associated with passion, romance, and love. Believed to be an aphrodisiac, it is considered one of the best ways to say, "I love you." Thus its close association with St. Valentine's Day. During most of the year, women purchase seventy-five percent of the chocolate in this country; as Valentine's Day approaches, men purchase seventy-five percent, but, strangely, men don't crave chocolate the way women do. Fifty percent of women say they'd choose chocolate over sex and sixty-eight percent admit to craving it. The first chocolate candies in the U.S. were produced by—you guessed it, Cadbury—in the 1860s. They were also the first to package it in a heart-shaped box with red satin.

But the importance of chocolate goes beyond its romantic aspects. Scientists have demonstrated that it prevents heart disease and cancer. Most important, this food, sometimes called the "feel good" food, is a mood elevator. Scientists are in disagreement here: some point out that chocolate can lead to obesity and stimulate migraine headaches, nervousness and irritability in some people; others claim that the mild stimulants in it—caffeine and other flavonoids and anti-oxidants—do indeed give us a lift. And some say chocolate improves our mood just because we like the way it tastes.

How does that affect us as writers? We can use chocolate strategically in plots to increase the romantic or emotional feel of a scene or we can let a character eat it and feel better. Grabbing a bite of chocolate in situations of stress might be a defining characteristic of a figure. Beyond that, chocolate gives most of us a boost in energy and enthusiasm. So if you've never grabbed a bit of dark chocolate when faced with writer's block, try it next time. All things in moderation—a little bit of chocolate won't make you obese.

Confession: I had eaten only two small pieces of chocolate since New Years—part of my portion control weight loss program. While writing this, I ate my third small piece of Lind's orange chocolate. Just couldn't resist that craving.

—-Judy has written fiction and nonfiction for adults and young adults. Her historical fiction titles feature such strong women as Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Jessie Benton Frémont, Lucille Mulhall, and Etta Place, of Hole in the Wall gang fame. Now she's turned her attention to mystery. Her first cozy, Skeleton in a Dead Space, was published in September 2011 to good reviews. Due out in April 2012 is the next Kelly O'Connell Mystery, No Neighborhood for Old Women.

Retired as the director of a small academic press, Alter raised four children as a single parent and has seven grandchildren, with whom she spends as much time as possible. Judy lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with an Australian shepherd and a wild Bordoodle puppy named Sophie.  Find her at http://www.judyalter.com or check her blogs: http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com and http://potluckwithjudy.com.

MAYBE I SHOULD HUG YOU ……..by Debra H. Goldstein

Author Debra H. Goldstein

When I turned 50, it was like a switch flipped and caused my knees to ache, my cholesterol to go sky high, and my upper arms to get a flabby chicken look. My kids gave me a bored look of sympathy, but my friends got it. No matter that we say 50 is the new 30, and that we are more dynamic, community involved, and athletically inclined than our mothers at this age, we realize we have become them right down to the last detail of kvetching over our aches and pains. We also understand, even as we avoid the subject, that the mortality issues we thought belonged to our mothers' generation are now ours.

Like most of my friends, when I heard about somebody diagnosed with cancer or a debilitating disease, I was sorry, but relieved that it wasn't me or someone I was close to. I might send a card, donation, or food for the family, but I really didn't know and didn't want to know what to do or say. Those were the kind of things and exchanges of my parents and their friends, not my crowd.

Pretty naïve.

When my friend Susan's husband was diagnosed with lung cancer in July and was dead by September, I thought it s an anomaly. Jack was older than we were. People our age weren't getting sick and dying. After his death, for the first year, her friends, me included, tried to be available for dinners, movies, or taking a walk, but when she settled into a routine focused on attending church and playing tennis, we let our efforts fall off.

Then, my best friend, Caryn, was diagnosed with a recurrence of the breast cancer she thought she had beaten 12 years earlier. I wanted to hug her; tell her she would be all right, and reassure her that she would be part of many lifecycle events still to come in her children's lives, but I was so lame about it. The best I could do was provide her with detailed research on her disease stage and available treatments, try to make a bargain with God that it would go away, and cry on my husband's shoulder.

In the three years since then, I've tried to be a sounding board, a cheerleader, and too often a critical voice of reason when I see her reach a point of extreme pain and exhaustion because she wants to do everything she always has, and more, rather than let the cancer get the best of her. During this time period, it has seemed that bad things keep happening to good people our age: throat cancer diagnosed in a woman who never smoked, a brain hemorrhage in a community volunteer whose only symptom was a bad headache, death from metastasized cancer of the 58-year-old mother of one of my 20-year-old daughter's friends, and finding out my criminal law professor, who was just a few years older than the students who comprised one of his first classes, is terminal and has left teaching to spend his remaining time with his family. Yesterday, we learned the husband of the couple we laughed with over dinner last Saturday night has a mass. Surgery is Wednesday. Oh, I almost forgot, two years ago, on the same day, two friends my age lost their respective battles against pancreatic cancer and HIV.

Not only do I feel helpless and inept to help these people through the difficult journey they face, but as I've discussed with friends, I'm scared. They are too. None of us want to admit that the "D" word is creeping into our lives. We are afraid of becoming ill or just learning who might be next. It isn't paranoia, depression, or obsession about death, but dealing with the reality that the joy of life has an unpredictable ending. We stress making the most of our golden years, but then get bogged down in everyday minutia. At work, we notice we no longer are on the fast track; our kids are. Laughing, we wonder how long our houses will seem cleaner since we threw away so much clutter when we downsized. Bottom line — we keep busy moving forward knowing there is nothing we can do to avoid our eventual fate.

Like my friends, I can intellectually accept the concept of death, but I want to run away from it. There are times when I see someone who is ill, or worse, will be the person left behind, and I want to hug them, but being touchy-feely doesn't come naturally. Sometimes I just want to ask "how are you doing?" or I get the urge to call up to chatter, but I've never been good at small talk, especially now. Besides, I really hate the telephone. In fact, I hate the telephone almost as much as I despise the fear that has colored our futures since we turned 50.

Subconsciously, I believe that if I don't talk about death, avoid hugging, and ignore the phone, everything will stay as it is. The reality is that despite silence, life changes each year. So, unless I resolve to give those hugs or pick up the phone to listen or crack jokes, I will miss the very things that will shape and define the remainder of my life.

—-Debra H. Goldstein is the author of several short mystery stories including "Legal Magic" and "Malicious Mischief."  Her debut mystery novel, Maze in Blue, was published by Chalet Publishers in 2011.  "Maybe I Should Hug You" won a 2009 Alabama Writers Conclave Nonfiction Award.  A revised version was published online as "More Hugs, Less Fear" by MORE Magazine in April 2010.  "Maybe I Should Hug You" is being posted as today's blog at the request of a special friend and because, when it comes to DHG's Blog, "It's Not Always a Mystery."

Guest Blog: Those Voices in My Head by Lois Winston

Lois Winston and Mop Doll

Two kinds of people listen to the voices in their heads — schizophrenics and mystery writers. I'm the kind who doesn't talk back. Usually.

I say usually because every so often it becomes necessary for me to argue with one of those voices, otherwise known as my characters. They can be very demanding. For instance, in Death By Killer Mop Doll, the second book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, I got to a point while writing the story where Anastasia went on strike. My amateur sleuth absolutely refused to continue on the path laid out by the synopsis my editor had approved. No matter how much I tried to force her into the next chapter, she wouldn't budge.

Have I mentioned what a royal pain in my butt she is?

Being on deadline, I had no choice but to cave to her demands, especially since she'd gotten the rest of the characters to line up in solidarity behind her. Then they pooled their resources and sent my muse off on holiday.

Have I mentioned the voices in my head play dirty?

So there I was, staring at a blinking cursor for hours on end, my deadline looming closer and closer. I had no choice but to give in to Anastasia's demands. And boy did she toss a monkey wrench into my previously approved plot!

"You're taking the easy way out," she screamed at me. "I demand more conflict! Another red herring! One more plot twist!"

"My editor had no problem with the story the way it is," I whined.

"Get her on the phone. She'll see things my way."

I wondered how much editors really know about those voices in our heads. Would she think I'd gone nuts? I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Anastasia was a fictional character and only a fictional character as far as my editor knew. Best to keep it that way.

"Fine, you win," I said. "I'll write the story your way."

"You'll thank me in the end," she said.

And you know what? Damned if she wasn't right. She usually is. I've learned my lesson. I recently completed the third book in the series, and this time I didn't even bother arguing with her. I just wrote the book the way she wanted it written.

—-Lois Winston is the author of the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries published by Midnight Ink. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist and was recently nominated for a Readers Choice Award by the Salt Lake City Library System. The new year brings with it the release of Death By Killer Mop Doll, the second book in the series. Read an excerpt at http://www.loiswinston.com/excerptap2.html. Visit Lois at her website: http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. You can also follow Lois and Anastasia on Twitter @anasleuth.

Lois is currently winding up a month-long blog tour where she's giving away five signed copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll. To enter the drawing, post a comment to this blog or any of the others on the tour. You can find the complete schedule at her website and Anastasia's blog. In addition, she's giving away 3 copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll on Goodreads, http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/15173-death-by-killer-mop-doll

The Bobbsey Twins and Agatha Christie

When I was a child, I was given a copy of The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport by Laura Lee Hope.  It's book jacket claimed "Ghosts!  Everyone agrees that the old Marden House is as haunted as a chimney on Halloween, but when there's a mystery to be solved, the Bobbsey Twins, Bert and Nan, Freddie and Flossie, don't intend to let a little thing like ghosts stop them."  I became a diehard mystery reader from that moment forward.

Mysteries let me escape from school, chores, piano practice, and my pesky younger sister.  Reading the entire Bobbsey Twin series let me be part of solving a mystery at the circus, the beach, the mountains, and by the end, even Japan.  I explored more places and felt like the series' characters became my friends as I read my way through Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden.  Then, I found Agatha Christie!  Not only were the characters of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot addictive, but their reasoning abilities challenged me to read carefully so that I could beat them to figuring out whodunit.

To this day, I relish the plot line in Christie's The Pale Horse because it stumped me.  When I finished the book, I realized that Agatha Christie had hid the clues in the plot's twists and turns, but I had been so engrossed in the story that I forgot to focus on putting them together.  It was at that moment that I realized the complex analysis and delicacy of writing that makes a good mystery just plain fun to read.

Authors like Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Faye Kellerman, Carolyn Hart, Nevada Barr, Linda Fairstein, Diane Mott Davidson, Janet Evanovich, Mary Higgins Clark, Anne George, Patricia Cornwell, Carolyn Haines, Donna Andrews, John Grisham, Brad Meltzer, Richard North Patterson, James Patterson, Alan Bradley, and Alexander McCall Smith, just to name a few, remind me of the technical skills of word choice, plot, and characterization necessary to write an enjoyable mystery each time I read any of their works.  Not only is each a good storyteller, but each utilizes the fundamentals of writing to perfection so that their books are, as Flossie of The Bobbsey Twins would say, "bee-yoo-ti-ful!."

—-Debra H. Goldstein is the author of several short mystery stories including "Legal Magic" and "Malicious Mischief."  Her debut mystery novel, Maze in Blue, was published by Chalet Publishers in 2011. She still has her original copy of The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport.  — January 2, 2012

Maybe I Should Hug You

MAYBE I SHOULD HUG YOU ........

When I turned 50, it was like a switch flipped and caused my knees to ache, my cholesterol to go sky high, and my upper arms to get a flabby chicken look. My kids gave me a bored look of sympathy, but my friends got it. No matter that we say 50 is the new 30, and that we are more dynamic, community involved, and athletically inclined than our mothers at this age, we realize we have become them right down to the last detail of kvetching over our aches and pains. We also understand, even as we avoid the subject, that the mortality issues we thought belonged to our mothers’ generation are now ours.

Like most of my friends, when I heard about somebody diagnosed with cancer or a debilitating disease, I was sorry, but relieved that it wasn’t me or someone I was close to. I might send a card, donation, or food for the family, but I really didn’t know and didn’t want to know what to do or say. Those were the kind of things and exchanges of my parents and their friends, not my crowd.

Pretty naïve.

When my friend Susan’s husband was diagnosed with lung cancer in July and was dead by September, I thought it was an anomaly. Jack was older than we were. People our age weren’t getting sick and dying. After his death, for the first year, her friends, me included, tried to be available for dinners, movies, or taking a walk, but when she settled into a routine focused on attending church and playing tennis, we let our efforts fall off.

Then, my best friend, Caryn, was diagnosed with a recurrence of the breast cancer she thought she had beaten 12 years earlier. I wanted to hug her; tell her she would be all right, and reassure her that she would be part of many lifecycle events still to come in her children’s lives, but I was so lame about it. The best I could do was provide her with detailed research on her disease stage and available treatments, try to make a bargain with God that it would go away, and cry on my husband’s shoulder.

In the three years since then, I’ve tried to be a sounding board, a cheerleader, and too often a critical voice of reason when I see her reach a point of extreme pain and exhaustion because she wants to do everything she always has, and more, rather than let the cancer get the best of her. During this time period, it has seemed that bad things keep happening to good people our age: throat cancer diagnosed in a woman who never smoked, a brain hemorrhage in a community volunteer whose only symptom was a bad headache, death from metastasized cancer of the 58-year-old mother of one of my 20-year-old daughter’s friends, and finding out my criminal law professor, who was just a few years older than the students who comprised one of his first classes, is terminal and has left teaching to spend his remaining time with his family. Yesterday, we learned the husband of the couple we laughed with over dinner last Saturday night has a mass. Surgery is Wednesday. Oh, I almost forgot, two years ago, on the same day, two friends my age lost their respective battles against pancreatic cancer and HIV.

Not only do I feel helpless and inept to help these people through the difficult journey they face, but as I’ve discussed with friends, I’m scared. They are too. None of us want to admit that the “D” word is creeping into our lives. We are afraid of becoming ill or just learning who might be next. It isn’t paranoia, depression, or obsession about death, but dealing with the reality that the joy of life has an unpredictable ending. We stress making the most of our golden years, but then get bogged down in everyday minutia. At work, we notice we no longer are on the fast track; our kids are. Laughing, we wonder how long our houses will seem cleaner since we threw away so much clutter when we downsized. Bottom line — we keep busy moving forward knowing there is nothing we can do to avoid our eventual fate.

Like my friends, I can intellectually accept the concept of death, but I want to run away from it. There are times when I see someone who is ill, or worse, will be the person left behind, and I want to hug them, but being touchy-feely doesn’t come naturally. Sometimes I just want to ask “how are you doing?” or I get the urge to call up to chatter, but I’ve never been good at small talk, especially now. Besides, I really hate the telephone. In fact, I hate the telephone almost as much as I despise the fear that has colored our futures since we turned 50.

Subconsciously, I believe that if I don’t talk about death, avoid hugging, and ignore the phone, everything will stay as it is. The reality is that despite silence, life changes each year. So, unless I resolve to give those hugs or pick up the phone to listen or crack jokes, I will miss the very things that will shape and define the remainder of my life.

----Debra H. Goldstein is the author of several short mystery stories including “Legal Magic” and “Malicious Mischief.” Her debut mystery novel, Maze in Blue, was published by Chalet Publishers in 2011. "Maybe I Should Hug You" won a 2009 Alabama Writers Conclave Nonfiction Award. A revised version was published online as "More Hugs, Less Fear" by MORE Magazine in April 2010. "Maybe I Should Hug You" is being posted as today's blog at the request of a special friend and because, when it comes to DHG's Blog, "It's Not Always a Mystery." Check out DHG's Blog at www.DebraHGoldstein.com