Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 25

Back to where it all began

By Liz, wishing winter away in Boston

Back in 2013, my first book came out: Kneading to Die, the first in my Pawsitively Organic Mystery series.

And I was over the moon.

I’d wanted this MY WHOLE LIFE – to be a published author. To see my books in bookstores. To hold a finished copy in my hands. To watch people fall in love with characters I’d dreamed up.

And it was happening.

That cast of characters fell out of the setting I’d chosen – a small town in Connecticut that was a mashup of a few towns in the area in which I lived at the time. Some of the characters (the furbabies) were based on my IRL furbabies – bittersweet, because they’re gone now, but I love that they live on in the books.

I loved spending time in that town, with those people. I loved walking into Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue in NYC and seeing MY BOOK on the shelf. It was all happening.

And that book was nominated for an Agatha Award for best first novel, too – the icing on the cake.

It was a dream come true.

That series ran for seven books. Seven moments in time where I got to tell a fun story and spend time with people I would’ve totally loved to hang out with, in a town that got to really come alive in my imagination.

When the last book came out in 2019 and I moved on to other things, it was bittersweet to see it end. People still write to me and ask if there will be more.

To which I always say, You never know.

Well, I don’t have a new book in the series for you, but I do have exciting news:

The series is FINALLY coming to audio!

Yep, Kneading to Die is out now on audio, and A Biscuit A Casket will be out in March. The rest of them will follow.

I am so excited to see this series get another life in this medium. I love audiobooks, and I love that these books are getting their day.

It’s also such a lovely trip down memory lane, thinking about where it all started.

Readers, do you love audiobooks, or do you prefer sitting down with an actual book? Tell me in the comments and I’ll randomly choose a winner of a Kneading to Die audiobook.

Wicked Wednesday–Thrilling Suspense

by Barb, in Key West where we’re thrilled to be here everyday, and the only suspense is where are we going for dinner?

Publishers and retailers love to put readers into rigid categories in terms of the subgenres they read but that isn’t my experience with the Wickeds or our blog readers. Several of the Wickeds are thriller and/or suspense readers. Wickeds, tell me what you love. Authors, books, sub-subgenres like domestic suspense or spy thrillers or serial killers or hitmen. (Hitpeople?) Specific recommendations more than welcome!

Julie: Excellent discussion, Barb! Publishers are much more rigid that readers. I enjoy mashups myself, which are more common in YA than adult fiction, though horror and sci-fi embrace genre combining. The Russell/Holmes series by Laurie R. King defines the books are novels of suspense, and I suppose they are, though they do have mystery elements. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn was a suspense thriller, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Kellye Garrett writes domestic suspense, and I can’t wait to read Missing White Woman. I don’t like dark, but I do love a good suspense or thriller, or suspense thriller.

Sherry: I LOVE spy novels and have been reading a lot of them this year. So many I wrote a post about them and added to my TBR pile reading the comments! I think the Slough House books kicked off my renewed interest in them. Like Julie, I’m looking forward to Missing White Woman!

Liz: Dark is my jam! I have always been a huge fan of suspense and thriller, or both combined. I just read Edwin Hill’s The Secrets We Share and it was phenomenal. I also love atmospheric books like Tana French writes. And I’m not sure what genre it is, but I have been loving the Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano. Finlay is the best! Funny and relatable and there’s tons of action in the books. Highly recommend.

Edith/Maddie: I don’t like too dark, but I’ll read anything by Kellye Garrett, Edwin Hill (the new book awaits on my coffee table!), and Joanna Schaffhausen. Hallie Ephron’s domestic suspense novels are fabulous. In terms of crossing genre lines, I would say Rhys Bowen’s standalone historical wartime novels are more suspense than mystery, but because they’re historical that’s how they’re shelved/marketed. I stay away from thrillers, and for the most part I don’t like unreliable narrators.

Barb: Sherry got me into Mick Herron’s Slough House books. One of Hallie Ephron’s domestic suspense books kept me up until three in the morning because I absolutely had to find out what happened. I write cozies and I usually read traditional mysteries, but I also love big, bold bestsellers like Gone Girl, The Da Vinci Code, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Readers: What about you? Thrillers and suspense, yay or nay? Give us some recommendations.

Welcome Back, Author Angela M. Sanders

Today, I’m welcoming author Angela M. Sanders. Gone with the Witch, the fifth book in her Witch Way Librarian Mystery series comes out today! Help us celebrate with her.

Take it away, Angela!

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is the number one question authors hear, second to, “Have I read any of your books?” (Which when I’m cranky I like to answer with, “I don’t know. Why don’t you list the books you’ve read and I’ll stop you if you get to one of mine?”)

For me and for probably most writers, murder mystery ideas are not a problem—even in my case when writing about a librarian who happens to be a witch. That cup of coffee you’re holding? It’s a murder weapon when the creamer is laced with cyanide. That cat in your lap purring so contentedly? She was tranquilized by foreign agents to keep you in your chair and in the sights of a sniper on your neighbor’s roof.

My best ideas come when I’m working in the garden or perusing thrift stores and my brain is occupied with an engaging but rote task. At those times, thoughts creep in, usually prefaced by “what if?”. For instance, in the garden: What if I looked out my back window and saw a tree in my yard that had never been there before? or What if I yanked out this weed to find a perfect emerald hidden in the dirt?

If one of these “what if” ideas grabs me, I cellar it and let it develop, sometimes for months. By the time I put fingers to keyboard, a full world might pour forth with characters, a setting, and snippets of dialogue that seemingly sprout on their own.

If I need to develop an idea more quickly, I turn to a few friends who have proven themselves as good brainstormers. Some of the friends are writers, and others are simply people who love to play with story. (Pro tip #1: Not everyone is a good idea person. Some of your most delightful, creative friends might be duds in the story imagination area. Pro tip #2: Wine and snacks can be useful idea food.)

While ruminating on a plot for Gone With the Witch, the latest mystery in my Witch Way Librarian series, I took a long walk. My favorite time to roam the neighborhood is when the day is fading and living room lamps snap on, but it’s still light enough that curtains are open. I love imagining the lives unfolding in the homes I pass. That night, I glimpsed a TV game show through someone’s window and thought, “What if one of my series characters is watching a game show, and she’s convinced that a contestant is her long-lost husband?” I felt that ting in my chest that told me I was on to something.

A few days later, this idea blossoming, I thought, “What if Josie, our heroine and a witch who draws magic from books, opens a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories and the great detective himself emerges from the pages to help her solve a murder?” Again, a big ting. My story was off to a good start.

In writing a mystery, coming up with ideas isn’t the problem—having the time and discipline to write them is the real challenge.

Readers: What gets your creative spark going? You have two minutes to come up with an inventive way to murder someone. What will it be?

About Angela

Angela M. Sanders is the author of the bestselling Witch Way Librarian cozy mysteries and the Joanna Hayworth vintage clothing mysteries. As Clover Tate, she wrote the Kite Shop cozy mysteries. When Angela isn’t at her laptop, she’s often lounging with a vintage crime novel at home in Portland, Oregon. www.angelamsanders.com.

About Gone with the Witch

When human bones are discovered beneath an old outhouse covered in blackberry vines, no one knows who they once belonged to. But elderly Helen Garlington wants Sam the sheriff to test the remains, suspecting they may solve the mystery of her long-vanished husband. It’s not a match, and Helen takes it hard, drowning her disappointment in sherry at the tavern—where she sees a contestant on a game show who she swears is her missing spouse, Martin. To east the woman’s mind, Josie contacts the show to track down the look-alike goes, who kindly agrees to travel to Wilfred—and then is found dead in the morning.

Worried by this fatal turn of events, Josie asks the spellbound books for help, seeking the aid of Sherlock Holmes. But strange things continue to happen—frightening images flash on the screen of a long-abandoned movie theater and flocks of crows seem to appear wherever she goes. Is Josie about to meet her own Moriarty? It will take all her courage to untangle the twisted vies of this mystery before this chapter in the colorful story of Wilfred claims another life…

The Evolution of a Cover

Edith/Maddie north of Boston, where it’s still pretty wintry out there despite being a month from the start of spring.

I might have mentioned here (over possibly the last four years…) that I’ve been writing a new historical novel. I’m delighted that a March 12 release date for A Case for the Ladies, a Dot and Amelia Mystery, is finally in sight!

After various queries, I decided to take full control of my baby’s publication. Here’s the blurb:

Amid Prohibition, Irish gangs, the KKK, and rampant mistreatment of immigrant women, intrepid private investigator Dorothy Henderson and her pal Amelia Earhart seek justice for several murdered young women in 1926 Boston. As tensions mount, the sleuths, along with their reporter friend Jeanette Colby and Dot’s maiden Aunt Etta Rogers, a Wellesley College professor, experience their own mistreatment at the hand of society and wonder who they can really trust.

I wanted this book to be a professional product, so I hired a line editor, a proofreader, a book designer/formatter, and a cover artist. Book designer Brian Shea has been amazing, proposing different options for chapter openings, fonts, line spacing, and so much more I never would have thought of. (He also happens to be long-time mystery author Susan Shea‘s son, so he knows the subject matter.)

Today I want to share the evolution of my cover with you. Many of us Wicked Authors who are published by Kensington and other traditional firms have shared over the years that we get (if we’re lucky) cover input before the artist goes to work. After that? By the time we see the cover, in general it’s too late in the complicated corporate release schedule to make any changes.

I’ve been enjoying how different my current process has been from that with a big publisher. After some investigation, I hired Gail Azdid of Desert Isle Design to present the visual face of my book to the world. Last year, she designed the cover for my Quaker Midwife short story collection, which I love. We had a few back-and-forths about details of Dot and Amelia’s era, and Gail was always happy to make changes.

She began by asking me for my ideas about this new cover. I described the 1926 era, the Boston urban setting, the Denison settlement house, and where Aunt Etta lived on Beacon Hill. I added the personal styles of Dot Henderson and Amelia Earhart, and detailed the important vehicles in the story: Amelia’s Kissell speedster, the Kinnear Airster she flew, plus other mid-twenties automobiles and older horse-drawn wagons still on the road. I sent Gail photographs and web links.

She came back with three sketches for me to look at. The first depicts a busy Boston commercial street. The second shows the settlement house, but isn’t exactly what I’d seen in the photographs. The third is the Beacon Hill setting.

I liked all of them, but I decided the city street in the first one was the backdrop I wanted.

Then we waded into clothing. I knew Amelia wore dresses to teach in, but I’d written into the story how fond she and Dot were of wearing trousers. I also knew Amelia rarely wore hats or carried a handbag, while my fictional Dorothy loves wearing and buying toppers. The more stylish the cloche, beret, or boater, the more Dot covets it.

In the end, depicting Amelia from the back in a dress, even with a good showing of her height and tousled hair, didn’t seem to work. But I didn’t like the suspenders look, either. I also realized women of the era rarely wore sleeveless dresses on the street, even though this story takes place in late July and early August.

We got closer with this draft. I suggested it would be fun to include an airplane like Amelia’s Kinner Airster in the distance. Brian, the book designer, got involved with the cover at this point, proposing different fonts for the cover. He also worked on the book spine and the back cover.

So many choices! Title font. Big airplane, small airplane. Author name color and case. And more permutations I don’t show here.

Wow. More choices! Luckily, Brian is a patient sort. He kept saying, “It’s your cover. I want you to be happy.” He put up with all my mix-and-max choices. In the end, I cut down the bio, added a clip from one of the fabulous endorsements my book has received, and made a few more changes.

In the end, here’s the final product.

Do you love it as much as I do? I also worked extensively with Brian on the interior, a similarly fascinating and detailed process I don’t have room to go into here. I did learn the term “objective correlative.” That’s what you call the small airplane graphic tucked onto the first page of each chapter, the same Kinner Amelia flew that’s featured on the cover.

I wish I had a Case for the Ladies pre-order link for you, but that will come in time, and for sure by March 12, when the book will available in paper and ebook wherever books are sold!

Readers: What do you look for in a book cover? Do you judge a book by what’s on the outside? I will send five lucky readers a 1920s cocktail recipe card!

A Wicked Welcome to Jennifer J. Chow

by Julie, what season is it? in Somerville

I am beyond thrilled to help Jennifer J. Chow celebrate the launch of her new Magical Fortune Cookie series. Welcome, Jen!

The Enchantment of Magical Cozies
By Jennifer J. Chow

When I decided to marry magic with mystery in my newest series, I was in for a treat. And not only because the Magical Fortune Cookie series centers around a delightful bakery carrying Chinese pastries.

Well, food has been shown to give you endorphins and boost your mood. Cacao, a fine example, also helps with the release of serotonin, the “happy” chemical—thanks, chocolate! In Ill-Fated Fortune, though, the enchanted baked goods produce magical joy.

Ever since reading Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, I’ve been intrigued by magical realism and food. In my novel, I decided that the handmade fortune cookies baked by my protagonist, Felicity, would not only bring happiness, but the messages inside them would also predict the future.

I didn’t stop at just magical people. Everyone loves a cozy mystery with a pet, right? (Have you noticed how many cozies have cats on their covers?) I gave Felicity a pet bunny who can help my main character understand her magic better. Whiskers isn’t a typical rabbit; she came straight from the moon. Yep, in Chinese mythology, we have a bunny in the moon instead of a man. I actually share a condensed version of the myth in my novel.

On my shelf, I have books about mythology. My fascination with the subject began when, as a kid, I borrowed a book about Greek gods. Happily, my editor also requested I add my own folklore behind Felicity’s magic.

The origin story of Felicity’s power is now one of my favorite passages in the novel. I’m grateful I got to write Ill-Fated Fortune. From charmed food to fantastical pets to supernatural origin stories, I’ve loved diving into the realm of magical cozy mysteries.

What magical books (or books that have felt like magic) have you read?

BIO:

Jennifer J. Chow writes cozies filled with hope and heritage. She is an Agatha, Anthony, and Lefty Award-nominated author. Her newest series is the Magical Fortune Cookie mysteries; the first book is Ill-Fated Fortune (February 2024). Jennifer’s previous series is the L.A. Night Market Mysteries. Death by Bubble Tea was reviewed by the New York Times, featured in Woman’s World, and hit the SoCal Indie Bestseller List. Jennifer currently serves as Immediate Past President on the board of Sisters in Crime and blogs at chicksonthecase.com. She is an active member of Crime Writers of Color and Mystery Writers of America.

WEBSITE: JenniferJChow.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Felicity Jin grew up literally hanging onto Mom’s apron strings in their magical bakery in the quaint town of Pixie, California. Her mother’s enchanted baked goods, including puffy pineapple buns and creamy egg tarts, bring instant joy to all who consume them. Felicity has always been hesitant in the kitchen herself after many failed attempts, but a takeout meal gone wrong inspires her to craft some
handmade fortune cookies.

They become so popular that Felicity runs out of generic fortunes and starts making her own personalized predictions. When one customer’s ill-fated fortune results in his murder, Felicity’s suspiciously specific fortune has the police focusing on her as the main culprit. Now Felicity must find a way to turn her luck around and get cleared from suspicion.

BUY LINK:

Ill-Fated Fortune

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Facebook, Instagram/Threads: @JenJChow

Genre-Hopping with Author Jenn McKinlay and a Giveaway!

When I discovered our monthly genre-hopping feature was the day after Valentine’s, my thoughts turned naturally to romance. Edith/Maddie suggested Jenn McKinlay and I jumped at the chance. Jenn has one foot firmly in the rom-com world, while the other remains firmly in cozy mystery–very much a part of our Wickeds’ world. I couldn’t wait to ask her about that.

Jenn agreed, and is generously offering to giveaway a signed copy of her just released cozy mystery, Fatal First Edition, book 14 in her Library Lover’s Mystery series, to one lucky commenter below.

Our conversation follows below.

Barb: Hi Jenn! So great to have you here. What is a rom-com? How do you describe the characteristics of the genre?

Jenn: Thanks so much for inviting me to the Wickeds. Rom-com is a romantic comedy mashup. So it’s a romance but funny! The characteristics are a meet-cute (think when Sally gave Harry a ride to NYC and they were horrifically incompatible). After that, it’s usually a trope like enemies to lovers or friends to lovers that drives the plot to the HEA (happily ever after) which is an unspoken guarantee between the author and the reader. If one of the main love interests dies or they don’t end up together, that is NOT a rom-com.

Barb: You started off writing rom-coms then moved to mystery. In your bio you say, “I learned that I was not a romance writer so much as a mystery writer. I’m just better at killing people than I am at making them fall in love.” What shifted that enabled you to return to rom-coms, happily and successfully this time? What did you learn about writing about love?

Jenn: I think I was too young to write romcoms when I first started. I hadn’t even had my own happily ever after so I was writing from inexperience. The truth is mysteries are easier because a dead body really a plot along but a romance has to have authentic emotional angst and growth, which is not intuitive for me as I prefer to crack and joke and move on, in fiction and in life.

A thirty-year-old woman retraces her gap year through Ireland, France, and Italy to find love—and herself—in this hilarious and heartfelt novel.

Barb: Even while writing rom-coms, you’ve kept on writing your mystery series. In fact, Fatal First Edition, the fourteenth book in your Library Lover’s Mystery series came out just two days ago. Is your process different for writing a mystery versus a rom-com? Do you use the same approach?

Jenn: Same approach! I’m a plotter so I work off a ten-page outline for every book, no matter the genre. Although recently, I neglected to finish the outline and I had to seat of the pants write the second half of the book. It was actually a heck of a ride and not having a plot set up, I didn’t know who the killer was and was able to add some unexpected plot twists. So, I might start writing half outlines. We’ll see. I have come to realize the process is a constantly evolving thing.

Barb: Your books take place in a series of swoon-worthy settings—Martha’s Vineyard, Sussex, Ireland, Paris—as well as richly-detailed fictional towns. How do you choose your settings? What’s the difference between writing about a real place and a fictional setting?

Jenn: I choose my settings by thinking of a place I’d like to go. LOL. I have planned many a vacation around my books. Paris is Always as Good Idea was the easiest because I’d already been to two of the places (Ireland and Italy) and only had to shoehorn in a trip to Paris (hardship, I know). The upcoming Love at First Book is set completely in Ireland so it required a trip back because I needed to DRIVE the Ring of Kerry. Yes, there was a moment I was certain I would get my travel companions and myself killed but I managed it and it became a fun scene in the book!

When a librarian moves to a quaint Irish village where her favorite novelist lives, the last thing she expects is to fall for the author’s prickly son… until their story becomes one for the books, from the New York Times bestselling author of Summer Reading.

I’ve only made up a few settings for the books because I feel like a real place gives the book more heft. I live in Scottsdale, where I set the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries and I get a lot of readers who read the series specifically to visit a place they’ve been to before. I think writing a fictional place, which I did for the Library Lover’s mysteries makes it a bit easier. I chose to make that setting fictional because I knew if I used the real location Stony Creek, CT (I call it Briar Creek) all of the persnickety historians would call me out if I took fictional license with the local history. Scottsdale (1894) is centuries younger than Stony Creek (1685) which does make it easier.

Barb: Right. And the people complaining about one way streets going in the wrong direction or it’s a stop sign, not a traffic light. What do you see when you look up from your writing place?

Jenn: I write in two spaces. The kitchen table which looks out onto the backyard where my lemon tree is fully loaded at the moment and I can watch my dogs playing. And the second is my office which overlooks the front yard, which is desert landscaped with loads of cactus and agave, and I have a bird feeder hanging in the window to invite the rogue flock of lovebirds that live in our neighborhood. The cats and I both enjoy watching them!

Barb: What are you working on now?

I am currently writing proposals and working on a brand new project called Books of Dubious Origin in the cozy fantasy genre which I’m very excited about. The goal is to write a mystery, a rom-com, and a fantasy book every year. We’ll see if I can pull it off!

Barb: Books of Dubious Origin! I would definitely read that.

Readers: Will you follow a favorite author into a new genre? What if it’s one you haven’t read or haven’t resonated with before? Leave a comment or just say “hi” to be eligible to win a signed copy of Fatal First Edition.

About Jenn McKinlay

Jenn is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author of several mystery and romance series. She is also the winner of the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for romantic comedy and the Fresh Fiction award for best cozy mystery. A TEDx speaker, she is always happy to talk books, writing, reading, and the creative process to anyone who cares to listen. She lives in sunny Arizona in a house that is overrun with books, pets, and her husband’s guitars.

About Fatal First Edition

People are dying to get their hands on a rare, valuable book in the newest Library Lover’s Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot and the Pendulum.

Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble.

But just hours after the pair boards the train back to Connecticut, rumors that the Highsmith novel has gone missing buzz amongst the passengers, and they soon find the conference director murdered in his private compartment. And worse—the murderer planted the book in Lindsey and Sully’s room next door, making them prime suspects. Now, they must uncover the murderer and bring them to the end of their line, before they find themselves booked for a crime they didn’t commit.

Featuring a cameo by a beloved character from the New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile series!

Wicked Wednesday–Crime and Romance

by Barb, celebrating Valentine’s Day in Key West

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, our topic is obvious–romance. Just as all stories, regardless of genre, often contain a crime, all crime stories, regardless of subgenre, may contain romance, or romantic tension. There are straight up Romantic Suspense stories, there are Rom-Com mysteries, there are continuing series with continually growing relationships.

Wickeds, tell us about your favorite combinations of crime and romance. Favorite romantic suspense or rom-com, favorite couple, (or triangle), best author of crime and romance, favorite story of falling in love, or any other combination.

Julie: This is a tough one! My favorite couple is probably Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson, and the triangle would include Sethos. Elizabeth Peters kept the romance alive throughout the series. The difference between romantic suspense and mysteries with romance is an important distinction. K.D. Richards writers romantic suspense for Harlequin, and she needs to make sure that the romance is at the forefront. I enjoy that these sorts of books focus on different characters in the world of the book, and that they move around. Romances in mysteries that don’t get resolved aggravate me if they go on too long, though I was frustrated by one and realized that though the series is 20+ years old, in book time it’s been 3 years.

Liz: I think hands down my favorite couple is Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne from Julia Spencer Fleming’s series. I was alway smitten with the two of them! I don’t love triangles either, but I definitely do always like a romantic subplot.

Jessie: I enjoy a bit of romance in the mysteries I read and the ones I write. I don’t ever want it to hijack the story, but I appreciate the way it rounds out the lives of characters. As to a favorite, I find the on again, off again romance portrayed in Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels. It feels messy and real.

Barb: I’m happy with a little romance in my mysteries, though I don’t read romantic suspense and haven’t yet dipped into rom-coms. I have been reading more widely in women’s fiction and fantasy-romance since covid–something I would never have considered before. My favorite couple in mysteries are Reg Wexford and his wife Dora. For me, their long marriage was an antidote to the substance-abusing, tortured, lone-wolf detectives I kept encounting in the 90s. An unabasedly uxorious man, Wexford does have his flaws. He prefers one of his daughters over the other, something he feels profound guilt about. I thought this was a great flaw to explore as this story is so seldom told from an aware parent’s point of view.

Edith/Maddie: I have read a few of Jenn McKinlay’s recent rom-coms and really enjoyed them. One of my favorite couples in crime fiction is Deborah Crombie’s Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid. They’ve been wrangling jobs with the London police even as they manage parenting three children and keep their relationship alive – for about twenty books now. I always have romance in my protagonists’ lives, too.

Readers: Do you read romantic suspense? Rom-coms? Romance? Who are you favorite mystery-related romantic partners?

A Wicked Welcome Back to Diane Vallere! **giveaway**

by Julie, doing February in Somerville

Diane Vallere amazes me. She’s publishing her 40th novel, sends wonderful newsletters, and packs for a conference like no one else. Welcome back, Diane!

ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Sometimes, the most difficult thing for a control-centric person to do is take their hands off the wheel. To just let go and put their trust in someone/something else. I feel well-qualified to make this statement because I am, or have been, that person, the one with a death grip on the steering wheel of her life, laser-focused on where she wants to get, unaware that there are multiple ways to arrive at her destination.

But at times in my life, I’ve also been the other kind of person. The one who shows up with minimal baggage and rides shotgun, prepared for an adventure. Some of my favorite memories start out this way: no clue of what’s about to happen, just a series of yesses or why nots. The opportunity for discovery is high, and curious minds appreciate discovery. In fact, discovery is often at the intersection of curiosity and creativity, two well-traveled roads for any mystery writer!

I’ve been doing a daily count-up from my first book to my fortieth, which comes out on February 27, and it’s given me the opportunity to revisit beloved characters in early books and really see what makes me want to return to them over and over again. Writing about a series character is like putting on a favorite pair of broken-in shoes and going for a walk on an unfamiliar path.

And the control! Writing is control on steroids. We get to decide what our characters say and do, where they go, who they suspect. We get to drop them into any situation we want and write them out of corners.

But sometimes, our characters take control. Sometimes a story will feel like it’s writing itself. We might think we know who the killer is, or what scenes we’re going to include, we might plan to send our main characters out of town, thus cutting them off from the other series regulars. We might have the best outlines, but sometimes, we have to take our hands off the wheel and let the story go where it wants to go. We have to follow our instincts, not our outlines, and when an unexpected fact shows up during research, we have to let it blossom into an aspect of the story we never saw coming. I feel well-qualified to make this statement because it happens to me all the time.

In RANCH DRESSING, Samantha Kidd’s fifteenth mystery, she is off to a dude ranch that her father-in-law is thinking of buying. Samantha is not one to take her hands off the wheel, but she goes into this adventure as a guest. She knows nothing about western life—it’s her least favorite trend in fashion and she’s borrowed everything she packed—but when the owner turns up dead in the stables, Samantha can’t go along for the ride anymore, not when she knows someone at the ranch is a murderer.

Unknown – wooden signpost with one arrow, sky with clouds

When I start writing a book, I have an idea of the setting, the hook, and the life lesson my character has to learn. I know who the victim will be, and I have a general idea of the suspects (but not always the killer). I think I’m in charge. But somewhere along the way, an arrow that says This Way and points into the mist appears and I have a choice: follow the arrow into the unknown or stay on my charted path.

I always follow the arrow.

You never know what treasures you’ll find when you allow for the possibility that what you don’t know might be better than what you do.

What about you, reader? Do you like to be in control or are you up for unknown adventures?

DIANE VALLERE BIO:

National bestselling author Diane Vallere writes funny and fashionable character-based mysteries. After two decades in luxury retailing, she traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. As past president of the national Sisters in Crime organization, she edited the Agatha-Award-winning essay collection PROMOPHOBIA: Taking the Mystery out of Promoting Crime Fiction. Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:FB: https://facebook.com/dianevallereauthorIG: https://instagram.com/dianevallereYT: https://youtube.com/dianevallereWebsite: https://dianevallere.comRANCH DRESSING BLURB:

When fashionista Samantha Kidd’s father-in-law arranges a week on the dude ranch he’s aiming to buy, Samantha preps for blue skies and clean living. But all too soon she learns life on the ranch is anything but calm. When the owner is found dead inside one of the stables, all signs point to murder.

As Samantha wrangles clue after clue, she smells something rotten—and it’s not manure. In her quest for the truth, she encounters quirky cowhands, brazen barrel racers, and suspicious horseplay—not to mention a social paradigm straight from the eighteen hundreds.

Can Samantha bring justice to the wild west of eastern New Jersey, or will a renegade ranch dweller get away with murder?

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Unraveled

Jessie: Back in New Hampshire after a pleasurable weekend on the coast of Maine.

I don’t know how things customarily are where you live, but in northern New England, people have generally behaved courteously behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.

We understand potholes, black ice, and tourists with appalling manners they’ve brought from back home. Most of us seem to have mastered time management sufficiently so as to not hurtle down the roads at break-neck speed because we are chronically late. We generally understand that leaving enough stopping distance and observing the rules pertaining to school buses are signs of common decency.

At least, that has been the way for most of my life. But I am beginning to worry that we are in the end times and that the social fabric is unnervingly frayed. It all comes down to traffic lights. I am not much of a yeller. I am emphatic, opinionated, and inclined to talk with my hands, but I almost never raise my voice, except when it comes to traffic lights.

For the past couple of years, every single time I am out and about in my car, I encounter at least one, and often several, drivers who seem to feel that red lights do not apply to them. They brazenly turn left against traffic that should be able to be oncoming. They blow through great whacking wide intersections. They don’t ever look ashamed. Not that they need to; I am ashamed for them.

I used to fear they didn’t have a mother during their formative years. I often considered that they must have been having a stroke. I wondered if it was a rarely discussed symptom of Long Covid. Now, after watching the problem increase to such a scale that I consider it an epidemic, I just scream and yell and make remarks that would make a pirate clutch his pearls.

Which brings me to fiction. Whenever I am concerned that I might run out of ideas for finishing people off on the page I think of those drivers. When I need to imagine the sort of people who operate so blithely outside of the common good as to murder I think of those drivers. When I need to dredge up an understanding of the sort of furious passion that leads to the crimes portrayed in a murder mystery I cast my mind back to a recent jaunt in the car and instantly find that I am ready to sit down to work. The best part is that in my books, unlike in real life, the bad guys get their comeuppance no matter how unraveled society seems to have gotten to be!

Readers, are traffic lights still sacrosanct where you live? Is there something else in the world that turns you into a raging volcano? Writers, is your work cathartic?

Welcome Back Kait Carson — Learning to Reason Without the Hurricane Season #Giveaway

Sherry — after six weeks in the South, I’m heading north tomorrow

I’m delighted to welcome back Kait Carson and hope you will love hearing about her big life move (in real life and her fictional world) as much as I did!

Kait: Greetings Wickeds. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I freely confess, I’m at a crossroads in my writing life.

If you are familiar with my books, you know I’m a Florida writer. The Hayden Kent Series is set in the Florida Keys—with side trips to Grand Cayman and Belize. All places close to my scuba-diving heart. Hayden is a Florida paralegal. In Death Dive, she expands her probate practice by working for an insurance company as a paralegal/investigator. It’s all Florida law. By coincidence, I had a twenty-year career as a Florida paralegal.

Life in the tropics was familiar and comforting. I knew when the temps dropped into the 50s to beware of falling iguanas. They’re fine, just inanimate until the weather warms. When June rolled around, I stocked the pantry with non-perishables and got the go bag together. Only had to leave once—for Hurricane Irma. If my first stage blew up at one-hundred and twenty feet under water, I had a plan. It worked, I survived, and Hayden had a like experience in Death by Blue Water.

Yep, Florida was home. Except this writer is a Jersey Girl who, after forty years, missed the changing seasons. Hubs and I had bought a Maine camp intending to move full time when we retired. The 2020 pandemic forced our hand. Far northern Maine sounded its siren call and off we went.

Now it’s time for a second confession. I love change. It fills me with a heady sense of possibility. If you are uprooting your life, you might as well go big! I’d been a part-time author for years. It wasn’t satisfying. I had so much more to say. With Florida in the rear-view mirror, literally, I ditched the day job, and dove in.

Since I’ve been writing full time, I’ve edited and re-published the first two of the Hayden Kent series and written and published the third, Death Dive. It was time to cast around for what’s next. Ideas were popping for a series in the Keys. When I sat down to write, my heroine refused to cooperate. I was a Mainer now, and danged if Sassy Romano didn’t want to see the north country, too. What’s a writer to do? At the end of the day, the author takes dictation and the characters drive the bus. Sassy wanted nothing to do with Florida. After all, she was on the run from a bad marriage in California. She wanted the change of seasons, too.

Together, she and I set out to explore this gorgeous state. Sassy lives in a fictitious town in the Allagash. She grew up in Tremayne Lodge. An inn and artist colony her family owned for generations. One she’s now inherited. Bears, moose, deer, and fisher cats, don’t bother her. They’ve always been in her backyard, but a body in the pottery studio. That’s another matter.

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My trips through the uncharted north Maine woods have been a revelation. There’s a raw beauty that steals your breath. Northern lights dance overhead. Stars blanket the night sky. Hoar frost shimmers on icy branches under cloudless blue skies. It’s a land ripe for mystery, and one I’m proud to share.

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June passes unnoticed these days. There’s no hurricane season here. December, that’s a different story. Time to hunker down when nor’easters blast through the trees, and power lines bend under icy coats. Maine in the winter holds no forgiveness but the promise of spring. A time when the landscape fills with all shades of green and the beauty of a pointillist painting. A place where secrets, and ideas, percolate.

Readers: Have you ever reinvented yourself? How did it work out? How do you feel about change? Kait is giving away a Kindle copy of Death Dive to two lucky commenters. US only, alas!

Kait Carson left Florida living behind to move to the Crown of Maine. Her latest book is Death Dive. She lives on 120 wooded acres with her husband, four cats, six conures, and a Cavapoo puppy. Visit her at www.kaitcarson.com