Judith Post's Blog, page 52

Calming Down

Things have been more scrunched for time for me lately.  Life does that.  Sends you way too many things at the same time to see if you survive.  I have, but I’m really ready for life to slow down a bit.  I feel like I’ve been juggling too many balls and I barely got through without them all crashing down.

I’m not looking for sympathy, because I’ve worked through most of it, but my sister died, and then my other sister had to endure three surgeries really close together, and my cousin–who lived with Patty and now will live with Mary–has all kinds of health issues, and Mary couldn’t lift more than twenty pounds.  You’d be surprised how much that limits you.  None of it’s been horrible, but it’s all been trying.

Mary, with HH and my help, has been trying to empty Patty’s house to sell, and Jenny fell three times so that I had to spend the night sleeping in a recliner to keep an eye on her.  My sister Mary has done much, much more, so I’m only backup.  But it’s been rough.  On top of that, I’ve been writing and editing, and living my life.  I’ve had writing meetings at my house.  Because of Covid, we can’t meet in our usual room.  And I’ve been cooking for HH and me and sending leftovers to my sister (she hates to cook), and cooking for Scribes (because I love them) and cooking for kids whenever they come up to see us.

And I’ve loved all the good things.  Survived the bad things.  But I’m SO grateful it looks like we’re going to have a few weeks of down time.  I’m really ready for days with no pressure.  And I feel like a wimp, because Mary still has crap to deal with it, but I can’t help her with it.  I’m not power of attorney, so it’s all on her.  And I feel bad for her, but I have to admit, it’s going to be nice that I can’t do anything for a while, except send leftovers to her and my cousin.  Which they love and appreciate, and that even makes me feel tacky, because the leftovers are no big deal.

BUT, I think I’m going to have time to start plot points for my next Jazzi book (#7).  AND I got an idea for a new series–which I have no idea how I’ll find time to write, but the idea won’t go away.  SO, I’m going to plot out both books because I finally can write, then stop, then write again, until I figure out what I want to do.  And I’m not going to be rushed.  And that’s wonderful.  So I’m going to give both books time to unravel themselves and come to life for me.  And I’m grateful.

Hope you’re writing, too. May the Muse smile on you:)

Treasures

Our grandson, Nate, gets out of the Marines on Oct. 13 and is moving to Indianapolis to settle for a while and start school on the G.I. bill.  We’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.  We live about 2 hours away but within driving distance.  And we asked him what he’d like to celebrate his becoming a civilian.  He used to cook with me when he was growing up and loves puttering in the kitchen, so he said he wanted a great start on kitchen products.

He told that to the right person:)  Nate and I still talk recipes, so little by little–(we’ve had almost half a year), I’ve been buying him kitchen gear.  He has 51 more days before he’s released from duty, and we’ve bought him a huge set of pots and pans, a Geoffrey Zakarian cast-iron grill with a heavy top to smash hamburgers and steaks, dishes, silverware, casserole dishes, a stoneware 9 x 13 pan, a Ninja multi-cooker, spatulas and cooking spoons, and much, much more.  I’m going to start stocking him up on spices and seasonings next, then glassware and mugs.  His kitchen will be better stocked than we ever had when HH and I started out.

It made me think of girls I knew when I was young who had hope chests.  They started them in high school and collected all kinds of things they thought they’d need when they got married.  I wasn’t sure that would ever happen to me, so I never had one, but I had lots of friends who did.  I don’t know if girls still do that, but it was popular when I was in school.  Then, on top of that memory, our good friend Ralph Miser told me about a friend who bought a house and found a young girl’s treasure box in its attic.  The girl had saved all kinds of things that made her happy–pretty rocks, a science fair ribbon from school, good report cards, and little odds and ends that she’d collected.

When Ralph told me about the treasure box, it made me think of a story for my Jazzi and Ansel cozy series.  I wanted them to buy a fixer-upper and find a treasure chest in a locked bedroom full of a young girl’s journals and prizes.  When Jazzi looks the girl up online, she learns that she was pushed off a balcony shortly before her high school graduation and her murder was never solved.

I grew really fond of Jessica, but it was her treasure chest that enchanted me.  A box full of memories and a promise of potential that never came to be.

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How sad.  Jazzi thinks so, too, and is determined to find who pushed her to her death.  Hope for the future is such a powerful thing, it’s sad when it’s destroyed.  That’s what happens in The Body From the Past.  And it was interesting to explore it.  I’m going to start plot points for my seventh Jazzi mystery soon, with a different theme, and I’m looking forward to it.

 

Whatever the theme is for your writing now, enjoy.  And Happy Writing!

 

It’s up!

Just wanted to let you know that MURDER THEY WROTE is now available on Kindle.

C.S. Boyack wrote a speculative fiction type mystery with lots of humor, featuring Jason Fogg.

Mae Clair wrote a medieval murder mystery with a young, newly married knight as her protagonist.

Julia Donner contributed a humorous Regency mystery, featuring Lord Peregrine with his wife, Elizabeth.

I wrote a cozy with Jazzi, Ansel, and Jerod.

Kathleen Palm wrote a psychological horror mystery with not one ghost, but two.

D.P. Reisig wrote a courtroom mystery featuring Abraham Lincoln.

And Rachel Sherwood Roberts contributed a literary mystery with a young, lonely widow as the protagonist.

7 stories, 7 authors, and 7 different genres.  Should be fun!

 

An Abundance of Riches

Okay, I might have outsmarted myself.  I can’t seem to get this timing thing quite right.  I liked C.S. Boyack’s idea of writing two manuscripts at the same time so much, I managed to finish a few things all close together.  And then what do you do?

I don’t know how I managed it, but I ended up with three finished projects–my last Muddy River short read, a new Lux novel, and an anthology I put together with friends–back to back of each other.  It feels awesome!  But I don’t want to try to market too many things at the same time.  One of the contributors to the anthology, C.S. Boyack, put his new book,  HMS Lanternfish, on sale on August 8.  He’s been writing guest posts to promote it on other peoples’ blogs since it came out.  That takes a lot of time and work.  He’s starting storyboards for new books, too.  So I didn’t want to crowd his book’s debut too much.  And I wanted lots of people to find it.  I just finished reading it, and boy, was it fun!

I can’t wait too long on the anthology, though.  My fifth Jazzi Zanders mystery comes out on Sept. 22, and I want to give myself some time to promote the anthology before Lyrical steps up marketing for The Body From the Past.  So, I’ve decided to put up MURDER THEY WROTE on August 27.  That feels like a happy medium for both Craig and me.

And as for the new Lux book?  It’s polished and ready to go, but I’m going to hold it in the wings for a while until Jazzi and the anthology get a fair shot of my time.  A hard thing for me to do.  I hate waiting.  I did a lot of extra work on this Lux, and I’m really happy with it.  It has to get in line, though.  And when I think about it, I guess there are worse problems a writer could have:)

While I’m waiting, I have half of the plot points done for Jazzi 7, so I want to finish those and start work on the next Jazzi mystery.  That should keep me out of trouble for a while:)  And since I mentioned the anthology, here’s a little teaser.  I think it turned out pretty special![image error]

Oh, boy!

I’ve spent 49 years with the same man, as of Friday, Aug. 21st.  Happy Anniversary to us:)  Our daughter, grandson, and his wife are coming up to celebrate with us.  On Saturday, not the official date but close enough, we’re making one of the fanciest suppers we can to celebrate since none of us go to restaurants at the moment.  Duck breasts with cherry sauce, crab cakes, a Greek salad, and chocolate pavlova with sliced strawberries and whipped cream.  All of our favorites.  All of us together.  It’s going to be great.

Looking back, WAY back, HH and I got married three days after he was discharged from the army.  While he went through basic training and got sent to Vietnam, I taught my first year of first grade.  His friends teased him that he was jumping out of the frying pan (military service) into the fire (the horrors of marriage).  We’d been engaged for a year before we drove to a retired minister’s house whom we both liked and said our I do’s.

Back then, I had no inspiration of being a writer.  All I wanted to do was teach grade school.  How times change!  And maybe it’s a good thing we can’t see too far ahead of us.  If I’d known the many bumps in the road ahead, I might have wimped out.  When I had my girls and decided to try writing a few short stories to see if I could sell them, I had no idea how many rejections I’d get in between every sell I ever made.  And honestly?  Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.  The good…and the bad…shape our lives and make us who we are.

I didn’t want to hear that when I was young.   When people said things like “Challenges make you grow,” I wanted to skip all the crap and get straight to the best-selling author part.  And to this day, I’ve only done that once.  It was fun, and I’d love to do it again, but it’s not so easy to accomplish.

After 49 years with HH and lots of years of writing, I still haven’t accomplished lots of my goals.  And maybe that’s a good thing.  I still have lots to do to make my writing better, my marketing smarter, and my pocketbook richer.  So I don’t expect to get bored for a long time.

Wherever you are in your journey, happy writing!  And happy life!

Motivation

There’s nothing like red ink to motivate me.  Sometimes, I get lucky and give a manuscript to my critique partners and the only things I have to fix are small things–word choices, awkward sentences, and adding more description.  (That’s almost always a given).  And sometimes, like now, I’ve screwed up more than usual.  I was concentrating so hard on making Lux and Keon come to life, I muddled through a mushy plot until the first body appeared.

Once I read the scribbles on my pages, I realized I had TONS of opportunities to jazz up the clues from the first chapter on.  Which is what I’m doing.  But, boy, has that made the rewrites more work.  Work that is worth every minute of my time.

Plotting is usually my main focus when I start a book.  That’s how my brain works.  But knowing what happens and getting it on paper–so that it’s interesting and the dynamic builds–isn’t always the same thing.  And one of the best ways to do that is to bring in the action sooner, to introduce characters affected by what’s happening, and showcase them so that when things happen to them, the reader cares.

The plot starts when Lux drives to storage units she’s rented to sort through some of her dead parents’ things and decide what to keep and what to sell.  She discovers that some of her favorite  items are missing, but the only way to steal them is to punch in a code at the main gate and another code to open the heavy metal doors of the units.  The only other person who has those two codes is Cook, the one person Lux cherishes who worked for her mother and father.  Cook would never betray her.  So what happened?

In Chicago, Lux was a newspaper reporter.  When she moved to Summit City, she decided to freelance, writing articles for newspapers and magazines.  She’s used to digging for information, and that’s what she does in Heirlooms To Die For.

In each book, I hope to give her a different topic that she’s working on to meet a deadline.  In the first book, Bad Habits, she was researching drug addiction, and the plot played into that.  In this book, she’s writing an article about Aging in America.  That, too, connects to two of the book’s subplots.  One of Tyson’s favorite elderly ladies, who’s a regular at the community center where he works, suffers a  mild stroke and is sent to rehab to learn to walk again.  And then Keon’s grandmother falls and breaks her hip.  His dad brings her to Summit City to live with him and his wife until she’s better.  The difference is, Elsie is a cheerful, friendly person and everyone at the center misses her.  Mrs. Johnson is a bitter, mean-spirited woman whom everyone dreads spending time with.

It feels like I’m getting the balance of the book right now.  A theft, two murders, and lots of suspects.  Keon’s family.  And Lux and Keon’s relationship.  I want to include serious topics, but my Lux books are supposed to be my FUN series.  My teeter totter of goals got a little out of sync for a while, but I’m beginning to find my happy medium.  I’m halfway through rewrites.  I only have another half to go.  I’m making progress.

So, once again, thank heavens for critiques and rewrites.  Some people might be able to get everything right the first time around.  But the good news?  You don’t have to.  You can always make your manuscript better when you polish.

 

Short Fiction

I love short fiction.  A blog friend of mine, Mae Clair, has been participating in a flash fiction internet prompt, and she’s killing it with pithy stories with big emotional punches.  Here’s her latest: https://maeclair.net/

I’ve played with flash fiction before but I’ve grown fonder of Amazon’s short reads.  A 15-minute read can be 1-11 pages.  30 minute is 12-21, etc.  But I especially like the 90 minute reads (44-64 pages).  I like them so much, I’ve been using them for my latest Muddy River stories.

My good writer friend, M.L.Rigdon aka Julia Donner, and I have talked about doing a project together for a long time but could never figure out how to do it.  I write cozies.  She writes historical fiction and Regency romances.  And believe me, our styles are really different.  But then I thought of anthologies.  And I thought it would be fun to write mysteries in our own styles, so that every story comes at a mystery from a different angle.  To that end, I asked some of the author friends I admire to join us.  And boy, did we come up with some fun stuff!  I’m putting the stories together now, and Mae Clair designed the cover.  I’m so proud of this collection, I’m making myself not hurry.  I want to take my time and do everything well.  But I can’t wait until I push “publish” and people can read it.

This is what we ended up with him: (in alphabetical order):

C.S. Boyack sent me a romp of a mystery, featuring Jason Fogg.  He’s featured Fogg before in some of his stories, and he makes a great detective.  He can dissolve into fog to roll through open windows or under door cracks to break into houses and snoop through things.  Craig has a certain kind of humor that I can’t get enough of.  And this story is permeated with it.  A joy to read.

Mae Clair’s writing is layered and evocative.  She often uses paranormal elements in her stories.  In the mystery she’s including in the anthology, she went with a Medieval time setting–a castle, lots of guests, and a dead body.  Shades of Agatha Christie…in the past.  And a protagonist with lots of flaws but even more heart.  Nice!

Julia Donner writes Regencies, and I buy every single one of them, devour them, and can’t wait for the next.  Her wry humor colors every bit of her delightful Regency mystery.  Her main characters, Lord Peregrine and his Elizabeth, earned my love and devotion the first time I read them in her novel, The Heiress and the Spy.  I mean, who wouldn’t love a wealthy woman in that time period who controls the purse strings and marries a husband who always carries a stiletto in his boot?  A match made in heaven.

Judi Lynn–me–wrote a cozy mystery featuring Jazzi, Ansel, and Jerod.  The three fixer-uppers have volunteered their time and expertise to renovate a kitchen, dining room, and half-bath of an old, wonderful house that other decorators are restoring, too.  When it’s finished, any profits from the sale will go to the local arts.  And of course, a dead body’s found in the hall closet.

Kathleen Palm writes YA and horror.  When I asked her for a mystery, she said, “Huh?”  Her brain didn’t work that way…until she thought of the perfect ghost story.  Add an old house and an attic with a secret room…and wow!  Lots of immediacy and emotion.  That’s how I think of her writing.  And boy, did it work!

D.P. Reisig loves historical fiction and nonfiction, so when I asked her to write a mystery for me, she balked.  Okay, to be honest, everyone did.  How to take what they write and make it a mystery?  But I had faith in them.  And boy, did they come through.  D.P. has studied Abraham Lincoln for a book she’s going to writing, so she sent me a true case that she fictionalized when Lincoln defends a friend’s son in a murder case.  It’s a legal/courtroom mystery with Lincoln as a lawyer.  So much fun!

And last, but never least, Rachel Roberts wrote a literary mystery for the anthology.  Her writing is beautiful and subtle.  I always calm myself to appreciate it properly.  It’s full of nuances that I have to let bloom.  When I asked her to send me a mystery, she asked, “But what could possibly make someone commit murder?  What would the motivation be?”  Because she’s character driven, not plot driven.  But she thought of something.  And I’m so happy she did!

Well, there you have it.  7 stories that would work as Amazon short reads.  Most came in at 10,000 to 15,000 words.  I have to say, I think an author can say a lot and develop a strong story in 50 pages.  It’s a length I especially like.  When it comes out, some time in September, and if you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy the variety of styles as much I did.

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Success, despite the timing

I’m skipping my usual Mystery Musings to share C.S. Boyack’s newest book with you. I love this series and I’ve been waiting for this installment since I finished reading Serang. The Lanternfish has friends who are coerced into becoming pirates, and their crew isn’t like any other pirate ship you’ve read about. The story has adventure, great characters, and lots of humor. You might want to check it out!

Entertaining Stories

Amazon finally came through, but I’d like to have had a few more hours to work on this project. HMS Lanternfish is now a book for sale.

It’s priced at 99¢ for right now, and I’ll raise it after my blog tour ends. I sent one post out already, but it probably won’t go up until Tuesday.

I also did five free days for Voyage of the Lanternfish. I kind of wanted day one to be announced at my first tour stop, but we can’t have everything. It should go live tomorrow.

The Lanternfish crew completed their original mission, but got exposed to a more global problem. An entire continent is at war, headed up by a head-strong young king with dreams of power, and pushed from behind by a mysterious religious order known as the Fulminites.

Rather than let their country fall under the iron boot of conquest, James…

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How I spent my day

My blog friend, C.S. Boyack, is writing a series that I love. And he’s making the first book FREE.

Entertaining Stories

I started off setting up the old Mac, now that my work PC has been replaced by a laptop. The laptop gives me more versatility, and I have my desk back.

After the inevitable upgrades, I spent some time letting my email program catch up. All of that took a few hours. They weren’t wasted hours, we played ball with the dogs and did more regular things.

Then I knuckled down and put HMS Lanternfish through Amazon’s grist mill. This led me to adding the series data to Voyage of the Lanternfish, which I managed to screw up. It probably doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but I wanted to call it the Lanternfish Trilogy, and wound up submitting as the Lanternfish Series.

I decided to go with it at that point. It was that or wait a day, change book one again, then take a stab at book…

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Shameless Plug

I just loaded my 6th Muddy River story, SURVIVAL, and for whatever reasons, I’m inordinately happy with it.  Mind you, that doesn’t mean that it’s better than any other story I’ve written.  It just means that I had goals in mind for this story, and I feel like I met them.

I’ve been reading the snippets of Ryder that Ilona Andrews has been putting on twitter.  Damn, they’re good.  She can take ANYTHING and fill it with tension.  Probably why she’s a best-selling author.  But that’s not in my nature.  I like down scenes, “soft” scenes with people who care about each other enjoying the solace that loved ones can bring.

That fellowship of good people who care about each other became the theme of this story.  Yes, I wanted to write memorable battle scenes.  I wanted the danger to be notched up in this story.  I wanted Hester and Raven and their friends to face off against adversaries who were as strong as they are.  But I also wanted to focus on people who really care about each other and not just people who band together to win.

I try for something different in each Muddy River tale.  Next time, I’m not even sure if I’ll have a battle.  Maybe, maybe not.  I want to go in a different direction, focus on something different.  But that’s WAY in the future.  Only in the planning stages.  So who knows?  For now, I’m happy with SURVIVAL.  And if you give it a try, I hope you are, too.

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