R.E. Donald's Blog, page 5

Hi-yo, Freightliner! Away! A hero like the Lone Ranger, but he rides an eighteen wheeler

It began back in 1994.  I wanted to write a mystery series with a male protaganist, similar to the mysteries I loved to read, but I wanted a unique character.  I enjoy reading about moody L.A. homicide detectives, brilliant Scotland Yard detectives and smart aleck private eyes, but I felt that I couldn’t do a character in those professions justice, and other writers had already created series that I couldn’t compete with around similar characters.

Write what you know, they say.  Well, by 1994 I’d spent around twenty years working in the transportation industry, so I figured I had a good handle on that.  My husband had once done undercover work for the police and had used a truck driver as his cover.  Interesting how truck drivers can show up just about anywhere without raising suspicion, I thought.  And another plus about a truck driver, he wouldn’t be limited to one geographical area, which would certainly provide a variety of locales for murder.  (At the time, I was concerned that the entire population of Cabot Cove would be killed off to keep Jessica Fletcher busy in Murder, She Wrote.)

That’s how I first decided on the main character in my Hunter Rayne highway mystery series.  He’s a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police homicide detective who resigned from the force after over twenty years of exemplary service after the sudden death of his colleague and best friend, and a painful divorce that caught him by surprise.  He’s hoping that the solitude of life on the road will help him to heal from what he considers his personal failures.

As much as Hunter tries to keep his new life simple and uncomplicated, circumstances, with the help of his boss, Elspeth Watson, conspire to get him involved in murder investigations even in his civilian life.   As a boy, his heroes were cowboy crusaders like Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, and he just can’t seem to let go of what motivated him to become a law officer in the first place, that need to see the guilty party captured and justice done.

My books aren’t thrillers or full of heart pounding suspense, but they will keep you guessing.  This is what some of my readers have been saying:

“Those were the best mysteries I’ve read in a long time!! As soon as I finished the first one I bought the second and felt empty when I finished it! The characters were awesome and so there that I somehow think they are in my life and I should be bumping into them at IGA or Gibson’s Building Supplies!”  Judi H., Roberts Creek, B.C.

“… this book caught my attention from the very first pages and it only got better. …I recommend this book to anyone who has a love for a good mystery. I usually figure out who the guilty party is when I read a book but this time it was a surprise. I think that Hunter Rayne would make a great TV detective, driving around the country in his rig visiting different states and helping to solve crimes. He is that interesting of a character.”  See full PRG review of Ice on the Grapevine by Linda Tonis.

“The Hero to me is the heart of the story and having only just discovered a second book in this series I’m anxious to read more.” See reviews for Slow Curve on the Coquihalla on Amazon.

“Great trucking detail, hardboiled characters, no-nonsense dialogue, and a surprise ending.”

“One of the fine traditional mysteries that keep who-done-it on everyone’s favorite reading lists.”

“Whodunit addicts will not be disappointed.”

See full reviews for Ice on the Grapevine on Amazon.

Check out my recent interview on Laurie Hanan’s Mondays are Murder blog.

_______________________________________________________________

The first mystery in the series is Slow Curve on the Coquihalla.  When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why his truck left the road on an easy uphill curve.  Her resemblance to his own daughter compels Hunter Rayne, a fellow trucker and former homicide detective, to help her find answers.

As he uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be  an international smuggling ring. But while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles.

Finally, putting all the pieces together, there in the dark on the same uphill curve on the Coquihalla highway, Hunter risks it all to confront the murderer.

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is “on special” for a limited time.  Until May 31, it is only $0.99 on Amazon.com, and free in multiple formats from Smashwords.com.  Links to both sites are on the right hand side of this page.

The second mystery in the series is Ice on the Grapevine.  The story opens on a July morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the suspects, a newlywed couple, won’t speak up in their own defence.

The circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is eager to score a win.  The investigation crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused couple.  Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the truth.

I’m working on the third novel in the series, which will be set primarily in the resort community of Whistler, B.C., which was the location of the 2010 Winter Olympic games.

I hope you enjoy reading about my truck driver hero as much as I enjoy writing about him!

Mystery of mysteries

What’s the mystery?  I want to know just what makes a mystery qualify to be described as a “traditional mystery”.   I always thought that the term traditional applied to a mystery novel that existed primarily to pit the author’s skill at sprinkling subtle clues against the reader’s skill at solving the puzzle of “who done it” before the story’s protaganist did.  That’s the kind of mystery I like to read the best – not something with a lot of fear and violence, like a thriller or suspense novel might have, but a story that presents an intellectual challenge.  Who did it?  No cheating!  No clairvoyance or lucky guesses on the part of the sleuth!  The clues have to be there for the reader, albeit well hidden within the story.

I think I can identify a cozy, I used to think I had a good handle on what makes a hard boiled mystery, it’s easy to identify a thriller or suspense novel.  But just what can be called a traditional mystery?  Is it a whodunnit?  A locked room style of murder mystery?  Does it have to be set in England?  What do you call a mystery that’s not hard boiled, not a thriller, not a cozy and not a suspense novel?  Just a plain old mystery?

In an effort to enlighten myself, I turned up some of the following:

Author Lea Wait writes: “traditional mysteries, also known as cozies, in the Agatha Christie tradition where, it is often said, “more tea is spilled than blood,” have been popular for decades, and are still selling. Their readers and authors are predominantly – but not exclusively – women.”

According to Travis Casey, “There’s two basic kinds of mysteries — what I like to think of as ‘traditional’ and ‘mystery-suspense’. “

In connection with the Agatha Award given each year by Malice Domestic, the traditional mystery is defined as one that contains no explicit sex, contains no gore or gratuitous violence, usually features an amateur detective, and takes place in a confined setting and contains characters who know one another.  It seems that novels featuring police officers or private investigators can also qualify for the award, but “hard-boiled” detective novels do not.

Hmmm.

However they’re classified, it’s easy to see that what makes a good mystery for one reader may be precisely the thing that makes it not such a good mystery for another reader.  Some readers like blood and guts, or psychotic villains stalking the hero – others not so much.  Check out the reviews on Amazon for any given mystery novel.  A novel that receives five stars from most readers gets panned by others.  The beauty of a good mystery is obviously in the eye of the beholder.

Take Michael Connelly’s The Last Coyote for example.  Michael Connelly is one of my favorite writers, and that Harry Bosch novel was one of my favorites.  Reviews range from “gripping, forceful novel. … I defy you to put Connelly’s book down for more than a few hours, if at all” to ” This book is not fast paced at all. I found it very boring.”  Were both reviewers reading the same book?

All of this is academic, ultimately.  Because I am first and foremost a reader, and I am writing to suit readers like myself.  I know I’m not alone.  I like my characters and situations realistic, I like my characters to have lives outside of the mystery plot, and I look forward to changes in their lives in subsequent novels.  One of my readers did use the term hard boiled about my series, but I suspect that’s because there’s a bit of swearing and sex involved.  (Well, some of them are truckers.  What do you expect?)

I’d be interested to know how you (I must assume that anyone reading this post is a mystery reader like myself) would classify the novels in my Hunter Rayne highway mystery series.  Traditional, cozy, hard boiled?  For the remainder of May, the first novel in the series, Slow Curve on the Coquihalla, is free on Smashwords, or just $0.99 on Amazon.

Let me know what you think!

The death of the English language: a murder mystery

Just like everyone else, I studied English grammar and usage in school.  I was taught that using the word ain’t would brand me as a hillbilly (not such an awful thing, after all) and when to use who and whom.  I’m sure it gave me great delight to correct other students who were using lay and lie incorrectly.  I still take pains to make sure I use the words right, although not quite as religiously as in the past.

You see, I also studied English literature, starting with Beowulf and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, moving along past the works of Shakespeare and Donne, Dryden and Swift.  Only snippets of each, mind you, but the message was clear.  “Ek gret effect men write in place lite; Th’ entente is al, and nat the lettres space” was perfectly good English in 1400 AD, while “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man” was well said in 1614.

And I studied Latin for at least a year in high school, which is so long ago now that I don’t remember exactly if it was for one year or two, but I do remember that the energetic vice-principal, Mr. Todd, taught the class and that he was a very entertaining speaker.  I learned, of course, that Latin is a dead language.  It is no longer living, because it is not being used outside of academia and the church.  Because it’s no longer living, it doesn’t change, or perhaps the other way around.

Then in university, I studied several other languages: French, Russian, German and Serbo-Croatian.  I also took what was called Slavonic Studies as part of the Russian major program.  One of the courses was in linguistics, and that was very enlightening indeed.  The course traced some of the European languages back to their roots, and illustrated the connections between them depending on who conquered whom (ha!) or which peoples migrated where.  Germanic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French, Greek, Scandanavian, Turkish, Hungarian - a whole smorgasbord of languages and dialects in close proximity, sharing words and expressions and sentence construction over centuries.

Studying linguistics in general made me want to explore the evolution of English spelling and grammar.  It made me wonder if English could possibly have stopped changing when they published my high school English textbook in the 1960′s, or if it stopped changing when I graduated from university in the 1970′s, or if it stopped changing in 1984, or perhaps at the end of the millenium.  The only conclusion that I can come to is that it hasn’t stopped changing at all.  It’s still a living language.  English isn’t dead!

So what does that mean?  Obviously common usage has dictated the rules of grammar, and not the other way around.  Words – their spelling and their use – and grammar, the way sentences are constructed, changed over the centuries as they began being used differently.  Ergo, common usage trumps a rule.  As a writer, and a speaker, and an ordinary everday English speaking person, I feel tremendously empowered by that thought.  Here we are, on Facebook and Twitter and in ebooks and blogs, shaping the English language of the future by the way we use it today.

I know, I know.  That’s no excuse to get sloppy with my spelling and grammar.  As Hemingway once lamented, “all our words from loose using have lost their edge”.   So I’ll do my best not to annoy the academics by murdering the English language in my writings and speech, whilst bearing in mind that changes in usage are the very thing that’s keeping it alive.

(Did I say that correctly?)

A new hero for mystery fans – meet Hunter Rayne!

“Those were the best mysteries I’ve read in a long time!! As soon as I finished the first one I bought the second and felt empty when I finished it! The characters were awesome and so there that I somehow think they are in my life and I should be bumping into them at IGA or Gibson’s Building Supplies!”  Judi H., Roberts Creek, B.C.

“… this book caught my attention from the very first pages and it only got better. …I recommend this book to anyone who has a love for a good mystery. I usually figure out who the guilty party is when I read a book but this time it was a surprise. I think that Hunter Rayne would make a great TV detective, driving around the country in his rig visiting different states and helping to solve crimes. He is that interesting of a character.”  See full PRG review of Ice on the Grapevine by Linda Tonis.

“The Hero to me is the heart of the story and having only just discovered a second book in this series I’m anxious to read more.” See reviews for Slow Curve on the Coquihalla on Amazon.

“Great trucking detail, hardboiled characters, no-nonsense dialogue, and a surprise ending.  If you enjoy mysteries, you’ll like Ice on the Grapevine …  I hope to see the Hunter Rayne series become movies and audio books.”  See reviews for Ice on the Grapevine on Amazon.

View a recent press release titled Mysteries on North America’s Highways.    Look for “Ice on the Grapevine” and “Slow Curve on the Coquihalla“.

The first mystery in the series is Slow Curve on the Coquihalla.  When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why his truck left the road on an uphill curve.  Her resemblance to his own daughter compels Hunter Rayne, a fellow trucker and former homicide detective, to help her find answers.

As he uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be  an international smuggling ring. But while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles.

Finally, putting all the pieces together, there in the dark on the same uphill curve on the Coquihalla highway, Hunter risks it all to confront the murderer.

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is the first in a traditional mystery series featuring “semi-” professional sleuth, Hunter Rayne. After serving over 20 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and becoming a skilled detective, Hunter resigned from the force and took to the road as a long haul trucker.  His ex-wife is convinced he is running away from the personal tragedy that made him leave a job he loved.  Hunter himself doesn’t know why, he only knows he has to keep following the white lines.

The second mystery in the series is Ice on the Grapevine.  The story opens on a July morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the suspects, a newlywed couple, won’t speak up in their own defence.

The circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is eager to score a win.  The investigation crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused couple.  Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the truth.

Hunter’s ex-wife maintains that by taking to the highway Hunter is running away from his past, but he believes that the solitude of days on the road is helping him to heal from guilt over the failure of his marriage and the suicide of his best friend. His life gets more complicated when he feels an unwelcome attraction for a lawyer representing one of the

accused.

Tangled relationships and multiple suspects emerge throughout the novel, as Hunter butts heads with more than one officer of the law to solve the crime.

Feel free to post comments!

It started with a Kindle and Louise Hay

I read mysteries, mostly.  Sometimes I'll read a non-mystery book recommended by a friend, but if I'm searching out a book to read for escape and enjoyment, it will always be a murder mystery.  I think it's the puzzle that attracts me, but why murder?  I don't know.  I like to watch true crime on TV and I like a novel where the characters seem real to me, as if their stories could one day be told on Dateline or 48 Hours Mysteries.

So it was totally out of character for me, the summer day in 2011 when I first got my Kindle, that the first book I purchased on it was Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life.  It's a self help book, so even if I didn't consciously think so, maybe I needed help.  The book had loads of great reviews but the deciding factor was that it was only $0.99 that day.  I not only downloaded it, I read through it twice over the next couple of weeks, doing all the excercises to one extent or another.

That book changed my life.  I know it sounds trite, but it did.  Louise Hay led me to Wayne Dyer's Excuses Begone.  I started to look at myself differently, and to look at my life differently, and it started me on the road to publishing my first two mystery novels, written over ten years ago, rewritten, revised and polished several times, and waiting patiently for the "some day" that a publisher would accept them and they would be published.  That "some day" was no longer beyond my control.  Louise and Wayne gave me the push that I needed, and Amazon's Kindle gave me the ability to make my novels available to readers.

When the reviews started coming in, I knew I was on the right path.  I might never make a lot of money, nor be interviewed on TV, nor have a novel on the New York Times bestseller list, but I am hearing from readers who enjoy my novels and are looking forward to the next one.  That gives me a reason to keep writing, and getting back to writing has added an exciting new dimension to my life.

Thanks, Louise!  Thanks, Wayne!  Thanks, Amazon!  Thanks, Smashwords!  And above all, thank you, readers!

 

A new hero for mystery fans – meet Hunter Rayne!

"Those were the best mysteries I've read in a long time!! As soon as I finished the first one I bought the second and felt empty when I finished it! The characters were awesome and so there that I somehow think they are in my life and I should be bumping into them at IGA or Gibson's Building Supplies!"  Judi H., Roberts Creek, B.C.

"… this book caught my attention from the very first pages and it only got better. …I recommend this book to anyone who has a love for a good mystery. I usually figure out who the guilty party is when I read a book but this time it was a surprise. I think that Hunter Rayne would make a great TV detective, driving around the country in his rig visiting different states and helping to solve crimes. He is that interesting of a character."  See full PRG review of Ice on the Grapevine by Linda Tonis.

"The Hero to me is the heart of the story and having only just discovered a second book in this series I'm anxious to read more." See reviews for Slow Curve on the Coquihalla on Amazon.

"Great trucking detail, hardboiled characters, no-nonsense dialogue, and a surprise ending.  If you enjoy mysteries, you'll like Ice on the Grapevine …  I hope to see the Hunter Rayne series become movies and audio books."  See reviews for Ice on the Grapevine on Amazon.

View a recent press release titled Mysteries on North America's Highways.    Look for "Ice on the Grapevine" and "Slow Curve on the Coquihalla".

The first mystery in the series is Slow Curve on the Coquihalla.  When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why his truck left the road on an uphill curve.  Her resemblance to his own daughter compels Hunter Rayne, a fellow trucker and former homicide detective, to help her find answers.

As he uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be  an international smuggling ring. But while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles.

Finally, putting all the pieces together, there in the dark on the same uphill curve on the Coquihalla highway, Hunter risks it all to confront the murderer.

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is the first in a traditional mystery series featuring "semi-" professional sleuth, Hunter Rayne. After serving over 20 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and becoming a skilled detective, Hunter resigned from the force and took to the road as a long haul trucker.  His ex-wife is convinced he is running away from the personal tragedy that made him leave a job he loved.  Hunter himself doesn't know why, he only knows he has to keep following the white lines.

The second mystery in the series is Ice on the Grapevine.  The story opens on a July morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the suspects, a newlywed couple, won't speak up in their own defence.

The circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department is eager to score a win.  The investigation crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused couple.  Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the truth.

Hunter's ex-wife maintains that by taking to the highway Hunter is running away from his past, but he believes that the solitude of days on the road is helping him to heal from guilt over the failure of his marriage and the suicide of his best friend. His life gets more complicated when he feels an unwelcome attraction for a lawyer representing one of the

accused.

Tangled relationships and multiple suspects emerge throughout the novel, as Hunter butts heads with more than one officer of the law to solve the crime.

Feel free to post comments!

In praise of the independent book reviewer

You know who you are.  You're the reader who takes a few minutes to post a review of something you've just read on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you "hang out" to buy ebooks.  You are not doing it for yourself (or maybe you are, because you like to keep track), but you are helping millions of readers make that most important decision of what to purchase to read next, and helping one writer at a time learn what he's doing right, or what he's doing wrong.  Both readers and writers appreciate your comments, but …

There are over 400,000 fiction books for Kindle on Amazon.com,  some 53,000 of them are in the Mystery & Thrillers section, and over 11,000 under the Mystery category.  At 12 books per page, that means a mystery junkie like me who wants a mystery fix has over 900 pages of mystery novels to browse through when making a selection.   (And you thought zeroing in on the right book on the many shelves at Barnes & Noble was hard!)   Thanks to the reviewers, we decide we can narrow that down to the ones with the best reviews.

But wait!  Over 6,000 of those ebook mysteries have a rating of 4 stars or more!  That's still some 500 pages of books to browse through.  A reader's got to consider herself (or himself) lucky to have such a great selection, of course.  But sometimes a selection that size can be overwhelming.  I don't know about you, but even on the bestseller racks, I tend to stick with the authors I am familiar with.  I've been burned many a time when I've tried to judge a book by its cover, including the cover blurbs.  Granted, many ebooks, especially those by independent authors and publishers, are much more affordable ($4.99 or less) but impulse buys can add up quickly.  (I know that of which I speak.)

So if a reader is in search of a new, affordable independent author and feels overwhelmed by the multitudes on Amazon or other ebooks sites, the next step might be to narrow the field by visiting an independent ebook review or promotion site that specializes in fiction, and perhaps even in the genre you like the best.  I've come across several, which I can share with you, in no particular order.  (If you know of any others, please feel free to post them in the comments section below!)

Goodreads:  A site made for readers!  If you aren't familiar with Goodreads, check it out.  You can connect with other readers who share your passion.  It may, however, expand your list of potential books to purchase instead of narrowing it down.

The Independent Author Network: a sprawling site that incorporates a Book Directory, a weekly Featured Author, The Avid Readers Cafe, and a Blog site as well as a store.

Kindle Mystery Authors: with reviews, descriptions, excerpts and bios of two to three new mystery authors per week.  Great for us mystery junkies.

The Paranormal Romance Guild: another large site with reviews, author interviews, giveaways and more.   (Not just Paranormal Romance, by the way - ahem – my own mystery novel received a five star review from reviewer Linda Tonis on that site.)

Indie Review Exchange: a new site that links up writers with reviewers, a simple concept that may work well for both parties.  Hurry before it gets too big!

Indies Unlimited: A site that features well-reviewed books, and provides Sneak Peaks complete with reviews and excerpts.  There are lots of interesting items on this site if you take time to browse.  I especially enjoyed reading Ed's Casual Friday  from Jan. 20th.

World Literary Cafe:  Another site with something for everyone – readers, reviewers & writers.  Lots of reviews and book recommendations, a forum for you to post & discuss reviews.  (Formerly "Women's Literary Cafe", but they let one guy join and the dam broke!)

Digital Book Today: "Helping Readers Find Authors in a Digital World."  Features a lot of free Kindle books available for reading and review.

Celebrating Authors: Another site dedicated to bringing readers and authors together.  It very handily breaks down the reviews and interviews by genre.

5- Star Books:  Easy to navigate site that essentially provides a filter for books in a multitude of genres.  Updated regularly, the site features only 12 of each genre at a time, so you don't have to wade through piles of them.

Not all of the above sites include reviews, but they can narrow the field and direct you to Amazon.com or another purchase site where you may find a review.  So if you do read one of the books that you find on these sites, and you like it, let the author and future readers know by giving a review.  It doesn't have to be a long review (although I heartily admire reviewers who are able to give a tightly written synopsis and comprehensive critique – wow!).  Just a few sentences that say how much you liked it and why will do.

If you don't like a book you've read, please review it anyway but don't be unkind.  You may not see their faces, but writers have made themselves very vulnerable by putting their work out for anonymous readers to judge, and a nasty review can cause sleeplessness and even (sob!) tears sometimes.  Constructive criticism is good, however, and may help the writer to do better next time.  (Note to writers:  Don't cry!  Check out the one star reviews for your favorite authors or read Ed's Casual Friday .)

One more note: the beauty of a book is in the eyes of the reader.  If the reader is having a bad day, she (or he) might not like anything!  To be honest, some days when I read something I've written, I think my own writing totally sucks, but the next day, reading the same passage, I'll be bursting with admiration for my deathless prose.  So sometimes if you're having trouble "getting into" a new book, switch to something else and go back to it again a few days later.  You – and the writer – might be glad you did.

When I'm bummed out about my writing I just think about what some of you, my precious readers, have said in your reviews of my novels, and I know I'm on the right track.  Hey!  There are readers out there who can't wait for me to finish my next one!

Thank you!

Five Sentence Fiction – Exquisite

Hunter smiled as he watched his daughter busy herself at the stove in the little studio apartment she now called home. She had talked non-stop since he'd arrived, showing him around the suite, pointing out the treasures she had brought from the townhouse she'd lived in with her mother and sister and showing off furnishings she'd found at thrift stores. She'd settled him at the semi circular table with a mug of beer in front of him while she finished getting the dinner ready, until finally she set two steaming plates on the table and sat down.

They had started to eat when she looked up at him, saying "Oh no, Dad, the meat is tough and the potatoes aren't cooked through," with an expression of such sorrow that his heart ached.

"It's absolutely delicious," he said with a smile, and took another bite.

***

Inspired by Lillie McFerrin's blog at http://lilliemcferrin.blogspot.com/p/five-sentence-fiction.html

The Reader

I am a reader. That's what made me a writer, and I may choose one day not to write, but I will never stop being a reader. My 94 year old father is in a home, and cannot carry on an intelligent conversation, but put words in front of him, and he will read them aloud. My uncle is 96 years old. He can hardly see, and hardly hear, but he always has a book going. He is still a reader.

It was my uncle who introduced me to the mystery.  I was on my way to becoming a teenaged literary snob, hooked at the time on the classic Russian, French and English novels, but whenever I went to visit my uncle at Shuswap Lake in British Columbia's Thompson-Okanagan, I would devour the mystery novels he had by the hundreds on the bookshelves in his cabin.  Rex Stout, John D. MacDonald, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, Dick Francis – my days sitting on the dock watching the waves dance and listening to the call of the loons were filled with mysteries.

My family has always shared a passion for mysteries, although our tastes may have changed and diverged over the years.  In the 80′s, I discovered Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Georges Simenon and Tony Hillerman.  In the library, I always headed straight for the mystery section looking for new series.  After my mother's death in 1990, my father and I used to buy and share their books with each other.  My favorite writers were Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George, then John Grisham and Michael Connelly were added to the list.  We exchanged "The Cat Who …" novels by Lillian Jackson Braun (we had a Siamese cat at the time!) and my father loved the Sue Grafton series.  I was also a fan of Minette Walters and Edna Buchanan, and read many novels by Canadian crime writers Laurali (Bunny) Wright,  Laurence Gough and Peter Robinson.

My current favorites, although I still read all of Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George's novels, are John Lescroart, Michael Connelly and John Grisham.  John Lescroart is probably at the top of my list. There are writers that I've read and admire, like the Kellermans, James Lee Burke, Robert Crais and Patricia Cornwell, but for one reason or another, their novels have less appeal for me.  Perhaps because I am not fond of "fantasy", (although all fiction is fantasy, isn't it?)  I most enjoy stories that seem real to me.  (The subtitle on John Lescroart's website is: "Real people…real suspense".)  When there's an overload of violence, weird villains or too perfect heroes, my "too far-fetched" alarm goes off and I'm thrown out of the story. (Sorry, but I don't like horror or vampire stories for the same reason.)

"Write what you like to read." Or as Toni Morrison said, ""If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."  I've also heard it said, "Write what you know."  I took both suggestions to heart, and created a mystery series set in a world I'm familiar with, featuring characters that seem real to me, characters that have flaws and foibles, loneliness and self-doubt, loves and hates and prejudices that they must learn to deal with.  I try to craft a mystery that will keep the reader guessing, and hopefully surprise him or her at the end.  My characters could be you or me, your brother, your husband or your father, your co-worker, high school pal or your boss. In the end, I hope my main characters will be your friends.

I'd love to hear what you, the reader, think about my main characters, J. Hunter Rayne and Elspeth Watson, as well as Dan "Sorry" Sorenson, the jolly biker from Slow Curve on the Coquihalla and Russell Kupka, the L.A. County cop, from Ice on the Grapevine.  I'm writing the next book in the series for you.

Five Sentence Fiction – Sacred

Was nothing sacred?!  Elspeth tossed the morning paper into the trash can under her desk and harrumphed her way over to the gurgling coffee maker to pour her first coffee of the day.  How could that SOB at the paper dare to write such drivel about Princess Diana, a woman who represented beauty, grace and a generosity of spirit that most humans could only dream about.  El sat back down at her desk, threw her baseball cap on the spare chair, and wiped the cream off her fingers on the only clean spot left on her jeans.  She couldn't start her day properly without coffee and the paper, she decided with a final harrumph, and reached down to pull the newspaper out of the trash.

Inspired by Lillie McFerrin's blog at http://lilliemcferrin.blogspot.com/p/five-sentence-fiction.html