Judith Post's Blog, page 6

Inspiration

I introduced you to Karen Lenfestey a short while ago. She wrote A SEASON OF CHANGE, and when I read that book, I fell in love with it. Everything in it–the characters, the screw-ups, and the challenges–all felt so REAL. I haven’t read a book that felt that real for a long time. So, I asked Karen what inspired her. And here’s what she had to say:

 You write women’s fiction.  How would you describe that?  I feel like women’s fiction includes stories about complicated relationships–whether they be between a man and a woman, siblings, friends or mothers and their children. And what drew you to it? I’ve always struggled to find books that appeal to me so I decided to write about people that I could relate to–yet make their lives way more dramatic and interesting than my real life.Who are some of your favorite authors? I like Anna Quindlen, Lisa Scottoline and Kristin Hannah.What books have you read lately? I’m in two book clubs because I can’t quite find one in the genre I like. In my mystery book club, I just finished An English Murder and Abandon. For the romance book club I’m reading The Fastest Way to Fall. I just finished a book I received for Christmas, Juliette Fay’s The Half of It. It’s about a woman in her fifties who bumps into a guy from high school who did her wrong. It was very compelling how their youthful mistakes had led them both to disappointing marriages. Somehow they navigate an apology and friendship in the end. I really enjoyed it.Your daughter started college this year.  Did that inspire you to write about Kimber and Megan? Yes, my daughter had been hoping to attend college far away and it was a challenge for me to be supportive of her dreams while worrying about her living an airplane ride away. As I like to do in my writing, I took an ordinary situation and ramped it up. I created a character, Megan, who is on the autism spectrum and has never fit in, which makes the thought of her leaving for college even more stressful for her mother.I fell in love with Blake.  He’s wonderful.  Can you tell us a little about him? I’m glad you liked Blake! I think there’s something so powerful about crushes from our youth so Blake is someone Kimber knew in college. He was her tutor and the roommate of the man she eventually married. The truth was Kimber and Blake both harbored secret crushes on each other back in the day. Now that Kimber’s a widow, Blake comes to town, bringing his fun-loving spirit to her just when she needs a reminder of what happiness feels like.Kimber has panic attacks, and Blake gives her ideas on how to deal with them.  Do those techniques work? Yes, it may sound simple but mindfulness and focusing on the breath help your body to relax. Personally, I love the Calm app on my phone because it offers 10 minute guided meditations. I think of them as preventative medicine because practicing mindfulness can reduce stress and inflammation.Kimber’s best friend has a son with serious autism.  Is there ever going to be a book about them? I’m not sure if they will be the focus of a book or if I’ll focus more on Megan during her transition into adulthood. Both offer complicated storylines.Anything else you’d like to share with us? This is my tenth novel and it will be the first one available as an audiobook! I welcome readers to visit my website, karensnovels.com, where I offer “happy endings with a twist.”

A Season of Change is available on Amazon.

Thanks, Judy, for letting me stop by.

Thanks for visiting my blog! If any of you try A Season of Change, I hope you like it as much as I did!

Hooray!

I finally finished The Body in the Kitchen. It’s up for preorder on Amazon and goes live on Feb. 27. Only $3.99.

Time for Rewrites

My daughter read the first ten chapters of the draft for The Body in the Kitchen. Only had a few comments, which worries me more than when she sends a list of things to fix. Makes me wonder if my book was really clean or just didn’t make her passionate enough to give me grief about anything. Sigh. If I get a long list of fixes, I worry. If I don’t get enough, I worry. Part of being a writer. 

Anyway, her comments motivated me to pull up the draft and start going through it again. So far, I’m pretty happy with it. But even after letting it sit for a while, it’s still hard for me to judge my own work. All I can do is to try to make it better. I worked at trying to create a good balance between Jazzi and Ansel’s personal life and solving the mystery, and I hope I’ve done that, but that’s always tricky for me to judge, too. M.L. Rigdon/Julia Donner (my friend and critique partner) said she’s almost through with the whole manuscript, and then I’ll know for sure. We both wield ruthless red pens when we go through each other’s work. Truth be told, I scribble more “loved this” in her margins than anything else. I love her writing. And I think it’s just as important to tell writers what WORKED as to let them know what didn’t.

For today, I’ll just do my best. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, replaying a scene I wasn’t sure about, so I know my mind’s sorting through story lines. That’s a good sign.

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The everyday life of an aristocrat

My critique partner and friend, Julia Donner/M.L. Rigdon, writes witty Regency romances. I’ve liked Regency for a long time, starting with Georgette Heyer. The male aristocrats are often seen going over numbers with a steward in an office, drinking port in their study, playing billiards, or at their club rubbing elbows with their friends. The women might be doing embroidery in the parlor, attending parties, or planning dinners. But I was curious what their daily lives would be like, so I asked. And Mary Lou was kind enough to send an answer:

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My thanks to Judy Post/Judi Lynn for inviting me to her blog and for the blog questions, asking how aristocrats spent their days. I assumed most readers of the regency knew but apparently there are those who do not. There are many variations to the schedules and activities, but to follow is an approximate explanation.

The wives woke to a brief libation, often hot chocolate, and began their first set of clothes for the day. They could change many times, depending on what the day entailed—house duties, going out of doors, seeing callers if it was their “at home” day, dinners or the theatre—every activity involved a different costume. The tasks varied slightly but included seeing the housekeeper, who often managed one or more establishments, seeing to the menus with the cook or chef, answering invitations and correspondence, returning calls from visitors, and preparations for social events of all kinds. Their days were often packed with things that needed getting done. (Barbara Cartland’s picture of a languishing lady of the house on a sofa with her fluffy dog are far from the mark.)

Girls had to learn all of this, plus dancing classes, perfecting “improving” works, such as artwork, music, a smattering of foreign languages, and basic social skills and manners. Boys had tutors for school when not getting an education away from home, which could start quite young. The higher on the social scale, the younger the boys were pushed into systems like Eton or Winchester. If lucky enough to be home, there were dancing, fencing and weaponry lessons, and intensive studies with tutors or church educators.

Gentlemen had their own tasks, such as seeing to their stewards for legal and property matters, a secretary for correspondence and invitations, visits to their tailor or bootmaker, and returning calls from visitors, which amounted to a moral obligation. All of the buck-about-town activities certainly ruled, but there were some financial obligations that could not be ignored. If they were, that ended up with entire fortunes being lost. If it was a case of ignoring the management of sometimes huge estates with many properties to go racing, card playing or bear baiting, ruin awaited.

The lives of aristocrats and gentry were profoundly affected by the presence of competent staff. The housekeeper and butler ruled. Housekeepers managed housemaids and parlor maids, the household budget and all things to do with the running of often more than one estate. The butler had the management of the footmen and boot boys, and wine cellars. (Valets, personal maids and dressers were not included.) Cooks often were excluded and ran their own staff of cook’s helpers, tweenies, and scullery girls.

When all of this worked, it was amazing, and quite often, it worked well when the lord and lady of the house were consistent, well-educated, and attentive. If not, disasters could happen. There are, of course, variations on this theme and things that I’ve left out, but you get the gist of it.

Mary Lou writes her Regencies under the name Julia Donner. Her latest novel is OPHELIA’S MARRIAGE PLAN:

Miss Ophelia Hardesty nourishes no intentions of ever getting married. In order to achieve this goal as a member of the gentry, she had to go to considerable lengths. These included making herself as plain as possible. This was to no avail. She was quite good looking and had a considerable dowry. She was indeed bookish but this was of no consequence, since most of the gentlemen she met were not overly bright. She’d tried letting herself be known as a dedicated flirt, but that meant gentlemen found her excessively attractive. She had no choice but rudeness. Which worked, when the gentleman was canny enough to take the hint. What she hadn’t taken into account was someone she’d known since childhood returned home from adventures abroad eager to foil her plans.

Waiting

I’ve started work on my next Jazzi and Ansel mystery, #12. I usually can’t do it. I can’t write a Jazzi and Ansel back to back, but for some unknown reason, because he was only a walk-on character, Eric Freeman who bought a condo on the second floor of the warehouse Jazzi, Ansel, and Jerod were converting in book 11 decided that he should play a bigger role in a story. At first, I played with the idea of making him a murderer, but he wasn’t happy with that. So, in book 12, he’s the person who FINDS the body in the condo’s lobby. And it’s someone he knows, someone he works with. He’s so nervous, he asks for help, and since the dead body was propped in their lobby, Jazzi decides to get involved in finding the killer.

The housing market in River Bluffs is still tight, so when Jazzi and her friends look for a house to flip, they can’t find one that will work. So, they buy a bed-and-breakfast to flip into six more condos. And they all sell before they can even get to the second and third floor to start work on them. That makes them wonder what they’ll do when winter comes and they still can’t find another house to flip. That’s when Jerod reads that River Bluffs has okayed using shipping containers to make into homes. Jazzi thinks he’s nuts until he shows her images on the internet of container houses. Not her favorite style. Too modern. But the interiors can be really cool. 

The warehouse was the biggest project the three of them have ever done together, but if they do this, it will be even bigger. They decide to go for it. They buy a huge tract of land to divide into six properties. They plan to build a different style of container home on each one. It’s a big undertaking that will probably last until the end of next summer or even longer. But it’s worth a shot, so they dive in. 

Oh, and Jazzi still has a murder to solve. Easy peasy.

Guilt

Guilt is a weird thing. Some people let it drag them down when they shouldn’t. And some people never feel it when you’d think they would. 

My family was raised on guilt. Whatever you did, you could always have done more. I got so sick of it, I gave it up for Lent one year, and it made my life a lot better. But my sister, who’s twelve years younger than I am, is always comparing herself to some standard of perfection no one can achieve. I’ve tried to tell her that NO ONE would have done more than she did when my mom lived with her for a while when she got Alzheimer’s. Mary rushed home from work every night to take care of Mom, and Mom wasn’t too bad at the time. No, she couldn’t drive. We had to take away her car keys or she’d end up lost. And she got confused, but she could function. Then my sister, Patty, who was only ten months younger than I am, retired so that she could take care of Mom. 

When Mom moved in with Patty, they went out for lunch every day. They went shopping. They went on rides. They loved going places. And both of them were having a ball. But after while, Patty, who never took care of her health, had her diabetes and heart hit the skids, and Mom got more confused every day, so eventually, Mary came home from work every night and bought food to take to Patty’s and to check on them. Almost every night. For years.

When Mom died, Patty was in such bad shape, Mary retired early to spend time with her. Patty was not the easiest person to spend time with. I’m just saying. I loved my sister and often cooked for her and took food over to her house since she hated to cook, but she could be a real pain in the fanny when she wanted to be. But Mary just put up with it and tried to make Patty happy. Unfortunately, Patty only lived another five weeks after Mary retired and then had a heart attack. And Mary STILL blames herself for not retiring sooner to give her good times before she passed. 

Silly. I’ve told Mary that over and over again. But it doesn’t matter. She still dwells on what she COULD have done but didn’t. 

In my 11th Jazzi and Ansel, a really nice person is shot and killed when he’s in the middle of emotional drama with a lot of people he liked. He and Trish were engaged, had sent out invitations for the wedding, when Trish loses it. She’s bipolar and hasn’t admitted it. She’s always been moody, up and down, but the impending marriage stresses her more than usual. And finally, Jordan has to walk away from her. He asks her to get help, and when she refuses, he can’t deal with it anymore. When Jordan’s killed, Trish admits herself to a hospital. He wanted her to find answers, and she’s determined to do that. Jordan and his friend Michael were going to invest in a business together, but when they found out all the details, Jordan pulls out of the deal. There are too many red flags, but Michael just thinks that Jordan bailed on him. And he’s angry. Then again, Jordan and his friend Brad have had a falling out because Brad asked Jordan, a chef, to cater a party for him. And when Brad’s apartment is robbed a few weeks later, he tells everyone that Jordan cased his place so that his partners could come in and steal his stuff. But then, Brad always blames someone else for his problems. 

After Jordan’s killed, Trish and Michael regret that they were in the middle of a falling out with him. Brad? Well, Brad is Brad. 

But it was interesting to write this book and think about how death affects the people you leave behind. It’s the people who do the most who often feel like they should have done more. 

Check it out!

I hardly ever read literary novels. Not my thing. But my friend and fellow writer Karen Lenfestey wrote A SEASON OF CHANGE, and I LOVED it! I don’t remember ever reading a novel where the people felt so REAL. There was something so refreshing about characters you felt you could bump into and like, not because they had their acts together, but because they were flawed but still wonderful. 

Anyway, I en;joyed the book so much that I asked Karen what inspired her to write it And this is how she answered me. Dear blog friends, please meet my writer friend, Karen Lenfestey:

Why Change?

By Karen Lenfestey

It’s safe to say I hate change. I’m still eating the same thing for breakfast (cold cereal with blueberries) that I did five years ago. I’m still hanging out with the women I met at a new moms group, even though our babies are nearly grown. I’m still living in Indiana, the state I moved to when I was a toddler, even though I’ve always dreamed of living somewhere warm in the winter.

A few years ago I found this Question a Day journal that I thought was so cool. It asks me a question every day such as “Should you have a Plan B?” or “When’s the last time you went swimming?” and I will write the answers each day for five years. This allows me to see what I wrote in the past to the same question and see how I’ve changed. After a while, I realized I would’ve enjoyed this journal much more in my twenties when my life was in flux. Oftentimes I write the exact same answer year after year: “What’s your favorite food?”: pizza and my Grandma Ruth’s chocolate chip cookies. When it asked what I wished I could buy, I wrote more than once that I needed a new wool coat for work (the silk lining had ripped and been mended repeatedly). Finally, I broke down last winter and treated myself to a new coat only because my journal showed me how long I had been ignoring this simple desire. Somehow I forced myself to buy the coat in a cocoa color instead of my favorite (navy blue). That was really hard.

Another example of how I like things to stay the same is illustrated by my television viewing habits. One of my favorite shows to watch is Dateline. I’m not sure why (even though I’ve tried to explain it to my husband many times.) There’s something comforting about hearing how a couple fell in love, while smugly knowing it’s going to end badly. I enjoy trying to guess who did it—the husband or the boyfriend. It couldn’t be anybody else. And I don’t want it to be anybody else. Whenever one of these true-crime mystery shows covers an unsolved kidnapping or a random serial killer, I turn it off. I don’t want to be reminded that I could be a victim, that a stranger I meet on the street could be a murderer. I have to say, I’m not happy that it seems like Dateline lately is trying to break out of its mold by doing something besides romance gone wrong stories.

So it makes sense that the main character in my latest book hates change. After all, Mark Twain said, “Write what you know.” The fun part about writing for me is starting with a seed of truth then making it better. That’s what I feel like I’ve done in “A Season of Change.” It opens with:

“Kimber Foley hated change. She hated when the IT department forced her to change her password every three months, she hated it when Kroger stopped stocking her favorite chai latte, and she really hated that fifteen years ago her husband went out for a drive and never came home. Just walking across Summit College’s campus with her teenage daughter made Kimber’s stomach twist in knots. Of course she wanted her only child to go to college, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet.”

Throughout the book Kimber struggles to let go of her daughter (who’s on the spectrum) while dealing with her own panic attacks and a former crush. Ironically, I started this novel while living in the same city I’d inhabited for 18 years, but I wasn’t inspired to finish it until I’d switched jobs and moved to a new town. Just like Kimber, I realized that the status quo was no longer making me happy. Although I was very hesitant, I’m glad I took the risk.

I often tell my daughter when she’s struggling with something new that “Change can be uncomfortable.” Even though I watched Dateline last night and will no doubt buy another Question of the Day journal when this one is filled, I treated myself to apple cinnamon oatmeal this morning and enjoyed tasting something different.

Here’s hoping that you can push through the discomfort and discover that sometimes change is exactly what you need!

Karen Lenfestey, a Midwest Writer’s Fellowship winner, writes “Happy Endings with a Twist.” During the day she’s an academic advisor, at night she writes novels and when she’s not working, she loves to travel with her family. She earned a master’s in counseling from Indiana University and a bachelor’s in advertising from its rival school, Purdue University. (Please don’t ask her to choose favorites!) You can learn more about her and her books at KarensNovels.com .

A Season of Change is available on Amazon for $2.99.

Yay!

I wrote about Reacher yesterday. I didn’t need to worry. It never went too far. As a matter of fact, the last episode was wonderful. They even threw in a twist I didn’t see coming. Loved it!

Now, I’m looking forward to season 3.

Should I cover my eyes?

I’m gearing up to watch the last episode of REACHER for season two tonight. I think I pretty much know what’s going to happen. Solid clues and hints have been sprinkled in previous episodes. So I think Reacher is going to get pounded tonight.

In the last episode, the bad guys took brass knuckles out of one of Reacher’s friends pockets before they beat him up. Agatha Christie said if you show a gun in chapter one, you’d better use it before the end of the book. Those brass knuckles were shown to us for a reason. Reacher gave himself up last week to buy time for allies to come to save him and his two friends who were captured. Before the rescuers get there, I might have to close my eyes or leave the room. I hate torture scenes. Can’t stomach them. In previous episodes, once the thugs beat the crap out of a victim, then the big bad villain picks up a long metal rod and breaks their legs. Now, let’s get real. If he breaks Reacher’s legs, our hero can’t chase him down and punish him for his wrongdoings. So I don’t expect that to happen. 

I think the good guys will get there right before Big Bad Guy can swing that rod. And then… since the villain loves to take his beaten captives in a helicopter, open the door in the floor, and toss them out so that they die when they hit the ground….what’s more appropriate than Reacher chasing him to the copter and returning the favor? A neat tit for tat. IF I’m guessing right. But my tiny mystery cogs asked how I’d end this season, and that’s what I’ve come up with. After that, the team…if anyone can still move…will have to stop the weapons dealer who loves to stab people to death from delivering 650 rockets from being shipped to unknown enemies. So tonight is going to be lots of action and violence.

But then, that’s sort of what Reacher is all about. He walks into a crime, guesses who’s behind it, and then starts bothering them so that he can stir up a hornets’ nest. Violence doesn’t bother or deter him, because he’s better at it than most of his opponents. I enjoyed last season’s Reacher more than this one’s, but that’s because the really excessive violence was mostly off camera. I love cozies. I’d rather have brutality done and over without my seeing it. That’s not Reacher’s style. The show doesn’t mind pushing the envelope. And I still really enjoy it…if I leave the room once in a while or cover my eyes.

No Luck

I know some writers follow my blog, and I know we’re all trying to find effective ways to market and promote our work. I tried something different this time, and it was pretty much a bust, so I thought I’d share what DIDN’T work. 

I’ve had luck getting my NAME out there by using a stack promotion from Fussy Librarian and Written Word media. This time, I put POSED IN DEATH up on the 11th for free. At the same time, I made FACING THE MUSIC only 99 cents. I was hoping that if people downloaded Posed in Death, they’d pick up the second Nick and Laurel mystery for under a buck. No such luck. 

POSED IN DEATH made it to #7 in free women sleuth mysteries on Amazon the last time I looked. So that part of the promotion worked, but it didn’t make me any money because there was no carry-over for the 99 cent sale of FACING THE MUSIC. 

It seemed like a good idea when I paid for the promotion. But I’ve had plenty of good ideas that have bombed, and this one did. I lost money instead of making it. The stack promos reach a lot of readers, and they’re pretty effective. Maybe I should have advertised FACING THE MUSIC for 99 cents instead of making the first book free. Beats me, but this was a bust. Just thought I’d let you know.