Judith Post's Blog, page 57

Mystery Musings

My thoughts are muddled and cobbled together this Monday.  As so often happens to me, I’ve ended up with more questions than answers, and they’re all sort of blending together, and I’m letting them.  I finished reading In The Market for Murder by T.E. Kinsey last night.  On the cover, there’s a lady in a long coat with a maid in a long black dress and white apron.  I’ve read so many Regency mysteries and romances lately that my mind went right to that period of history.  But I was wrong.  The first book in the series takes place in 1908, and this–the second book–is shortly after.  For whatever reason, that date caught me off guard.  Lady Hardcastle and her husband were spies, and when her husband was killed, she retired to the English countryside with her maid–who traveled with her before she made it safely home.  The maid knows martial arts, and both ladies are quite capable of taking care of themselves.  But men constantly worry about their delicate sensibilities.

For me, the time period in this book feels a lot like the social niceties of the Regencies and Lady Darby mysteries that I read.  Except in this book, Lady Hardcastle decides to buy an automobile.  And that scene, in itself, made for an amusing read.  The salesman couldn’t fathom a woman buying a car by herself, with no husband, no chauffeur, and no mechanic.

For some reason, I read that scene and it triggered thoughts about my grandmother–how many changes she saw in her lifetime.  She grew up on a farm and lived through World War I.  When the men came home from fighting, she went to barn dances by horse and buggy.  She met and married my grandfather sometime during the Roaring Twenties.  Men whistled at her legs when she wore her flapper dresses, and she cut her hair in a bob.  Grandpa became a truck driver, and they moved to Chicago.  A gangster tried to hire him to run alcohol from Canada to a bar, but Grandpa turned him down.  One of his friends took the job and was shot dead on one of his trips.  Then came the Great Depression, and they lost everything, including their home.  They had to move back to live in a small worker’s shack near her mom.  And then came World War II and both of her sons were drafted.  Thankfully, both of them returned.

All of those memories, along with the books I’ve read lately, made me think about war and wars since today’s Memorial Day.  My husband put out the flag on our front porch.  Usually, a small neighborhood parade goes down our street, so loud you can’t sleep through it even if you wanted to.  Which we don’t.  We like seeing our neighbors and former neighbors who often return to see the high school band, an old train engine changed over to celebrate veterans, and all of the other groups that participate in the parade.  We visit on the side of the street and people marching by throw candy to the kids.  We linger for a while once it’s over, and then we all retreat to our homes and whatever our plans are for the day.  But not this year.  Covid19 put a stop to the celebration.  Maybe it will return next year.  Maybe not.  Things have changed.

But we’ll always honor the men and women who served our country and lost their lives to protect us and our freedom.  And that led me to think about the nature of war.  It’s always been with us.  All you have to do is read the history books we were taught growing up.  We jump from the The French and Indian War to the Revolution to the War of 1812 and so on.  History is full of wars.  Every country fought them, all the way back to the Romans, the Egyptians, even the cavemen.  And wars changed mindsets and attitudes.  They brought back new ideas and products.  But at such a high cost.  Are we forever destined to fight them?  Maybe.  There’s always someone who wants to dominate, plunder, or subjugate.  Maybe it’s part of the human condition.

When I was young and idealistic, and wondered if we’d ever get tired of wars, I read The Devil and the Good Lord by Jean-Paul Sartre.  And it made me think that wars will always be with us, that if you’re too idealistic, you’re vulnerable.  But there will always be strong, honorable people who do the right thing, who respect one another.  And I can’t help but hope that there will always be more of them than angry, disgruntled people who are willing to trample their fellow man to get what they want.

See?  I warned you that my mind was rambling today.  And I might be able to add up clues to solve mysteries, but I can’t begin to fathom the mystery of Destiny or mankind.  I hope you had a wonderful three-day weekend, and happy Memorial Day.

 

Just For Fun

Yesterday, I started working on my second Lux Mystery.  The first one is still on my agent’s desk, working its way to the top before I get any feedback from her.  It’s a straight mystery, and I don’t know if she’ll be interested in it or not.  But I’ve already delivered the 6th book to fulfill my Jazzi Zanders contract for Kensington, so I have some time to play, and I want to write another Lux.  So I am:)  I already plotted the entire book out.  Now I get to try to bring those plot points to life.

That means my head will be shifting gears, leaving Muddy River and witches and warlocks behind.  Before I leave them entirely, though, I thought I’d explain why I like urban fantasies so much…but not in a very serious discussion.  Why does UF appeal to me?

 UF heroines are kick-ass.  They make great friends, wonderful allies, and deadly enemies.
 There’s magic.  Who doesn’t like magic?
  The plots are good vs. bad.  I always know who to root for:)
  There are battles, then more battles, that lead to a final, BIG battle.  (I like battles).
  The guy love interests are powerful and sexy.  They come with different magicks.  And they all sound scrumptious.  So…which would you prefer?

A.  Vampires can glamour you and make your pulse race…before they bite you.

B.  A fire demon (like Raven) can bring the heat.

C.  A shifter (any variety) has animal magnetism…before he becomes one.

D.  A phoenix keeps things fresh, especially after he bursts into flames & starts over.

E.  An incubus can take your breath away…all of it.

F.  A warlock is magical.

G.  Voodoo can lift your spirit…and call it back.

Muddy River has them all, and they mix and mingle.  And they all play well together.  For a few months (or more), they’ll get to enjoy some down time while I focus on mysteries, but after I finish Lux, I’ll pop back in on their happy settlement to stir up some trouble and toss them into another supernatural mess.  I bet they won’t miss me while I’m gone:)

In the meantime, I hope all of you have a wonderful three day weekend, and Happy Memorial Day.

I’m impressed

I just finished another Lynn Cahoon Tourist Trap mystery:  TEACUPS AND CARNAGE.  I really enjoyed it.  And it proved that all of the truths that I’d stashed in my tiny little brain about writing could be laughed at.

This book, according to every article I’ve ever read about writing, did everything wrong.  And I loved it.  Jill, who runs the coffee shop in the Tourist Trap series, is the protagonist, and she’s DETERMINED not to get involved in another murder investigation in South Cove.  Her boyfriend, Greg, who’s the law enforcer for the area, is tired of having to rescue her when she figures out who the real killer is and ends up in their crosshairs.

But people come to her coffee shop and keep telling her things that pertain to the murder.  The woman who owns the new shop across the street from hers brings her problems to Jill.  This means that Jill REACTS to everything she’s trying to stay out of.  She’s NOT actively trying to investigate.  But she can’t help but be involved.  A whole lot of the plot; therefore, doesn’t revolve around Jill trying to solve the murder.  It deals with how busy Jill is with everything during summer in South Cove.  So busy that murder is pushed to the fringes of her life.

But readers STILL know that Jill’s going to be involved in solving the case.  It’s a pretty clever device, to be honest.  The reader finds herself busier trying to solve the case than Jill (supposedly) is.  I was impressed.

Of course, at the end, Greg still has to rescue Jill. but it’s totally not her fault this time.  And the ending is pretty upbeat.  I really enjoyed this book.  I try to learn something from every book I read, but this time, I don’t think I could pull her gimmick off.  But it worked.  Kudos to Lynn Cahoon.

Mystery Musings

I read a twitter post that made me happy.  Lynn Cahoon is coming out with a new series, The Kitchen Witch.  I’m a fan of her Tourist Trap mysteries.  Add a witch to her whodunnits, and I’m in.  I have a soft spot for nice witches and magic.

Way, way back when I wrote urban fantasies as Judith Post, I wrote a lot of Babet & Prosper short reads.  Babet was a witch, and Prosper was a bear shifter and a detective for supernatural crimes.  They lived in a city with a feel a bit like New Orleans.  I wrote them mostly for fun, like I write Muddy River now as Judi Lynn.  When I signed with Kensington to write romances, though, I left all of my urban fantasy behind.

After I wrote six Mill Pond romances, my editor let me try writing a cozy mystery, and that’s how the Jazzi Zanders mysteries came to be.  But I missed the world of magic, and I noticed there were a lot of witch and wizard mysteries making their way onto Amazon.  I bought and enjoyed quite a few of them–witches who worked in chocolate shops, in bakeries, in small towns.  A lot of them had art for covers instead of models.  Paintings of witches with black, pointy hats and black dresses.  A lot of them were fun, light-hearted mysteries, and I enjoy them.

That’s not what I wrote when I started Muddy River, though.  And that’s probably a marketing mistake, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to write humor.  I used it in my first romance–COOKING UP TROUBLE, because I didn’t have much confidence that I could write romance either:)  I’m still not sure either is my strong point.  Mae Clair, who wrote the Hode’s Hill suspense series that I love, turned to humor for her short read, IN SEARCH OF McDOOGLE, and she nailed it.  McDoogle was the perfect read for the end of a long, tiring day.

I like humor.  Sometimes, I’m even funny.  I’m just not a natural at it.  But I’ve noticed that it works really well with good witches.  And when Lynn Cahoon’s book comes out late August, I’m looking forward to see what her witch is up to.

 

Jazzi & Ansel

In THE BODY FROM THE PAST, available on NetGalley and due out in September, https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/191452   Jazzi finds a girl’s treasure chest when she, Ansel, and Jerod are clearing a house to fix up.  The girl died shortly before high school graduation.  Jerod calls her family but they don’t want it.  Jazzi doesn’t feel right, throwing away all of Jessica’s memories, so she wants to take the chest home to look through it.  Ansel’s not so thrilled about that, and here’s why:

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Ansel pinched off a small bite of his sandwich to share with George, who’d come to beg. “I don’t want to get involved in whatever happened. It couldn’t have been good if the family had to run from it.”

“I can’t throw away her treasure chest.” Jazzi raised her chin, digging in. “I’m taking it home with us and looking through it.”

Ansel closed his eyes and counted to ten. “And what if someone murdered her? What then?”

“They’re probably in prison, and I won’t visit them.”

He sighed. “And you’ll leave it alone? Even if the case wasn’t solved?”

“I don’t know Jessica. I’ll feel sorry for her, but we’re not involved with her past. It’s not as if it’s one of our friends or family.”

His shoulders relaxed and he fed George another pinch of food. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Fine. But it will drive me nuts if I don’t dig around inside that chest.”

He nodded, and Jerod shook his head. “I was a witness to this whole conversation. Ansel can use me as backup, cuz.”

“First of all, you’re my cousin, and I’m the one who cooks for you. But if you want to be like that, you two can be bosom buddies and do your thing.”

Jerod rolled his eyes. “I’m not choosing Ansel over you. But the man has a point. You don’t need to get involved in every murder that falls into your lap.”

Pressing her lips tight, she raised an eyebrow at him. “Fine.”

“When women say fine, it’s always a red flag.” Jerod stood to throw away his paper plate. “If it comes to sticking up for you, Ansel, or choosing Jazzi’s minestrone soup, she wins.”

Ansel let out a puff of aggravation.

Yippee!

I finished the rewrites of my Muddy River short read.  It ended up being a little over 15,000 words, so an Amazon 90-minute read.  On top of that, I designed a cover I like for it.  This story did exactly what I wanted it to do.  It put my mind in a whole different mode than writing mysteries.  I think I’ve found something that works for me.  There’s no guarantee that Muddy River will ever be a success, but it lets me write with a lot more freedom than mysteries do.  So I’m going to keep doing it between each mystery novel I finish.  I should be ready to put it up soon, so here goes:

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Muddy River’s charming bartender, Derek–a powerful vampire–left New York centuries ago to escape his succubus lover, Allure.  He moved to Muddy River and eventually mated with Prim Tallow, a Fae.  But Allure’s finally found him, knows where he lives.  And she wants him back.

 

How Much Tension Do You Want?

I’ve been yakking about Ilona Andrews’s SAPPHIRE FLAMES since I finished reading it.  The book and the writing have stayed me with a while.  It made me think about a lot of different things.  And tension is one of them.

Since I’ve been writing cozies for a while now, I’ve been working on making page turns rely on different dynamics than fighting terrible odds, supernatural monsters, serial killers, or ticking clocks.  Cozies have a quieter tension–discovering clues and adding them up, ignoring red herrings, and discovering the killer before the protagonist does.  Every story has to have conflict, but in cozies, it could be trying to worm a secret out of someone you’re questioning, trying to add up evidence to get closer to finding the killer.

One of the reasons I like writing Muddy River is because the tension is about trying to survive or help someone else survive.  It’s about life and death.  Ilona Andrews uses that kind of conflict in her novels, only she ratchets it up to almost every scene.  And that’s the fun of reading her.  I can’t turn the pages fast enough to see how her protagonists are going to survive another battle against an even stronger opponent.  Muddy River doesn’t do that.  There are battles, yes, but there “down” scenes, too, because I like the people and their lives and their dynamics together.

I like low-key tension as much as I like nail-biters.  Literary tension might be the one I struggle with most.  Inner conflict doesn’t grip me as much as it does my daughters.  My younger daughter says it’s her favorite.  Anyway, I’ve spent some time thinking about how to develop conflict and tension lately.  And these are just a few of my random thoughts, nothing deep or momentous, just ponderings:

 Personal Stakes:  In literary reads, the entire plot might revolve around a person getting to know who they are and what they want of themselves and life and struggling to get that.  That internal struggle is what builds tension.  For example, a book could be about an alcoholic who’s trying to stop drinking.  No easy thing to do.  It could be about an abused child who’s trying to live an ordinary life as an adult and overcome the fears and defense mechanisms she developed to cope.  The emotional toll is high, and the stakes for finding happiness or even normalcy are high.  But they aren’t life or death.  The country won’t go into chaos if the hero doesn’t succeed.  There’s no ticking clock.  That’s why it’s personal, but we can all relate to them.
  Low Stakes:  In romances, again, the stakes are personal.  The tension is driven by emotions, people hoping to find love.  Girl meets boy.  Attraction flares, but obstacles get in the way.  Can the two people overcome those obstacles and get together?  Stakes are low in cozies, too.  There’s a murder.  There’s a good reason the amateur sleuth gets involved in solving that murder.  He or she interviews people, looks for clues, and won’t be satisfied until he finds the truth.  In both of these types of books, the tension ebbs and flows.  It peaks when failure looms on the horizon, then dips when something new happens to advance the plot.  These books have rhythms and often revolve around four turning points in the story.  The protagonist might be in danger of failing to achieve his goal, but his life is rarely at risk.  There are “soft spots” for the reader to land before the next push forward.
Medium Stakes:  I’d put straight mysteries in this category, adventure stories, some thrillers, and maybe most paranormals.  There’s more action.  There’s more possibility for physical harm.  The cost of failure isn’t just emotional, but maybe getting beat up, stabbed, or shot, too.  The person a cop or hero is trying to protect might die if the hero can’t stay a step ahead of the antagonist.  The hero might die trying to protect him.
 High Stakes:  Every chapter brings a new danger.  There’s not one murder at the beginning of the book and maybe a second or third one later to keep up the pace.  High stakes is when the protagonist and the antagonist fight it out from the beginning of the book to the end, and the protagonist’s life is almost always in danger.  Often, there’s a ticking clock.  Sometimes, the battle starts small–like in women in jeopardy novels–and escalates to the end.  Always, the tension builds from the first chapter to the last.  Everything intensifies.  Often, the protagonist loses someone he’s close to or cares about.  The stakes have to be high.
  Ilona Andrews’s Urban Fantasies:  The stakes are off the chart.  The opponents take off their gloves at the beginning of the book and duke it out over and over again until the stakes are so high, you’re wrung out by the time you finish the last page.  And everything in the stories create tension:  a.  almost every conversation is fraught with tension.  People disagree, argue, threaten each other, try to outmaneuver each other, and try to worm information from one another.   b.  romantic tension:  the attraction between the protagonist and her love interest almost feels like sparring; the physical attraction is off the charts, but one or both of them resist it  c. the clashes build bigger and more dangerous from the first to the final, BIG do-or-die battle.

No matter what kind of book you write, the stakes have to keep getting higher.  The protagonist has to have more to lose.  Unless you write humor.  And in all honesty, I’ve never done it, don’t read much of it, and I just don’t know:)  (Except I did read Mae Clair’s IN SEARCH OF McDOODLE and loved it).  But whatever you’re working on now, good luck and happy writing!

The Building Blocks of Story: Scenes

Great writing advice from Staci Troilo at Story Empire

Story Empire

Ciao, SEers. Last time, we discussed Dwight Swain’s concepts of scenes and sequels. (If you missed that post, you can find it here.) Remember, a chapter’s scenes can be one of two things, a scene or a sequel. Today, we’re going to go deeper into the concept of scenes.

What are scenes?

Scenes are the “proactive” units of a story. They introduce and advance goals, conflicts, and disasters. Scenes should have all three items before advancing to the following sequel. Why must they include all three? Because all three are necessary for tension. And without tension, there’s no reason for a reader to turn the page.

Goals:

A goal is simply what your POV character desires. It could be:

an object (the Holy Grail)a position (POTUS)a state of being (overcome an injury)a change in status (going from captive to freedom)

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Mystery Musings

HH and I watch The Voice on TV on Monday nights.  Neither of us know anything about music.  We just enjoy it.  And this year, we enjoyed the show more than usual.  For one thing, it was only on Monday nights instead of Monday and Tuesday.  So we didn’t get as tired of it as we did some years.  It felt as though there were more talented singers competing than usual, too.

Maybe because there was so much talent, we became more aware than ever that the people who moved on in the competition were the ones who made the right song choices.  We listened to singers do a wonderful job when they performed, but the next singer chose something with a little more drama, a little more range or flare.  And they won.  Singers, just like writers, have to come up with a little something extra to make them stand out from the crowd.

One way some of them do that is knowing what their strengths are and playing to them.  They know their weaknesses, too, and stay away from them.  The farther the singer goes in the competition, the harder it gets to move on.  Last week, a singer HH and I both thought would make it to the finale was sent home.  Why?  Because she picked the wrong song.  What she sang was good.  But it didn’t stand out.  Good isn’t good enough.  Same with writing.

At the end of the show, there’s only one winner.  The odds of winning a book contract, of finding readers who follow you, aren’t that cutthroat, but they’re sure hard.  I read a Q & A blog by Ilona Andrews once about how to write a query letter.  It’s been a while ago, but the thing I remember is that it advised the writer to identify what they wrote.  “I’m X, and I write urban fantasy.”  That way, editors and publishers know where to put you, what genre to market you in.  BUT then, emphasize what makes your urban fantasy stand out from the rest.  What makes it unique, instead of the same.

On The Voice, the best singer doesn’t always win.  The singer who connects to the audience and stands out has a good shot.  And there are singers who do a great job who are sent home.  One wrong choice, just one, and they’re gone.  That doesn’t mean their career is over.  It doesn’t mean they won’t go on to great success.  But it’s something to think about.  Some music is more popular than others.  Some types almost never win.  If a singer comes on the show and sings rock, I think the odds are against him or her making it to the finale.  A country singer has a better chance.  RB and pop, even folk, seem to fare better.  Opera?  Good luck with that.  When a writer decides on his or her niche, what sells is worth thinking about.

We’re not all going to be #1 on the charts, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find success.  Good luck!

 

A Teaser

This is a short snippet from the Muddy River I’m working on now:  BOUNTY HUNTED.  (That’s the working title.  It may change):

Derek loaded his arms with boxes of potion to carry to his SUV. I hurried to open its rear door for him, but before we reached the corner of the house, Claws sprang to his feet and raced to stand in front of me, a low growl starting deep in his throat.

“Hold on a minute,” I warned Derek. “Something’s wrong.” As soon as I paused, I felt a shift in the magic in the air. What it could be, I had no idea. No enemy could cross the wards my witches and I had placed around the entire town.

Derek lowered the boxes to the ground and turned in a slow circle, sniffing deep breaths. “I smell a shapeshifter, someone new. I don’t recognize the scent.”

Suddenly, a silver chain snapped in the air and circled him, pinning his arms to his sides. A large, burly man stepped from behind the garage and tugged on the chain, tightening it around Derek. He aimed a glare at me. “Stay out of this, Missy, and I won’t harm you.”

Missy? This idiot came to Muddy River, a community made up entirely of supernaturals, and he was going to spare me? Did he even know what my magic was? I called for power, and it flowed from my feet to my fingertips. Then I zapped him, maybe a little more forcefully than I needed to. He flew backward several yards, losing his grip on the chain. He landed hard with a grunt. I grabbed the chain and yanked it off Derek.

Fangs slid past Derek’s lips and his eyes turned bloodred. He stalked toward the man.

“Don’t drain him!” I called. “I want to know how he got here.”