Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 26

Never Stop Learning, But Erase Your Browser History

By Julie, finding it hard to believe it’s supposed to be close to sixty degrees on Saturday

On February 24 I am going to moderate one of the panels for Sisters in Crime’s SinC Into Great Writing: Top Five Tips for Writing Mysteries. My panel is Top 5 Fave Poisons for Fictional Murders. I am enjoying the conversation the panelists are having on an email thread as they make sure they don’t duplicate choices. Some of the poisons are familiar to me, but I’m learning about new ones.

Let me repeat that. Some of the poisons are familiar to me, but I’m learning about new ones. When I was fifteen, I never thought I’d type those words, but here I am.

As mystery writers, we do a lot of interesting research and think about some dire circumstances, trying to figure out how they work. How would a person get free if they are bound with duct tape? How do you pick a lock? Release handcuffs? What poison can mimic other symptoms, or isn ‘t traceable, or is traceable and rare? How can you kill someone with food? How long can someone hold their breath without passing out? How long does it take for [insert biological function here]? There’s other research we do that may not be appropriate for early morning reading, but you get the gist. We never stop learning.

And our browser history could get us in big trouble.

I’ll never forget meeting a friend’s husband for the first time, at a dinner party. She and I went to grad school together for business degrees. I knew he was a doctor, and asked him over the first course what the best household poison was that could mimic symptoms from a natural death. He turned pale, and his mouth hung open a bit.

“Oh,” I said. “She didn’t mention I wrote mysteries, did she?”

To my credit I had him laughing in a few minutes. And to his credit he emailed me the next day with some ideas.

Crime writers are usually fun people to be around. But trust me, these things are also true. First, we never stop learning. Second, at any given moment we’re thinking about how to kill people.

And we should all clear our browser history on a regular basis.

I’ve just ordered a lock picking kit from Amazon. Never stop learning indeed.

Friends, do you love learning new things, even if they are a bit untoward?

Wicked Wednesday–Crime Short Stories

by Barb, in Key West, where the crime column used to be the funniest thing in the newspaper

During February, our Wicked Wednesdays will explore various crime subgenres and forms. Since February is the shortest month, we’re starting with short stories.

Wickeds, tell us–crime shorts–do you like them? Do you write them? Favorite stories, authors, collections, publications. Lay it on me.

Edith/Maddie: I love reading short stories and I do write them, usually two or three a year. (I just counted them on my website – I’ve had thirty published!) My stories have appeared in conference or themed anthologies, in the Best New England Crime Stories collections, and in both Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Three have been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story. I enjoy writing darker in my short fiction, playing with unusual characters or premises, and giving myself a change of pace from writing series novels.

Julie: Edith, that’s amazing. I have published short stories, and I write them. But I find it a very difficult genre. Usually I end up starting a novel. Lately, though, I find them a fun way to explore genres I don’t usually write. A little darker (though never dark), a bit more noir.

Sherry: As a kid I read a short story collection called Night in Funland and Other Stories. Even though the book is long gone, I’ve never forgotten the short story Night in Funland. It scared me! I managed to track it down and you can read it here. The first short stories I wrote as an adult were for the Edgar Allen Cozy collection some of The Wickeds wrote stories for. Writing short stories is hard, but I have a short story, The Ultimate Bounty Hunter, coming out in the Three Strikes You’re Dead anthology this spring.

Jessie: I am so impressed! I never write short stories even though I often enjoy reading them. I particularly like those written by Agatha Chris.tie. It’s fun to see a master at work in a different format!

Barb: I wrote a lot of short stories in the years of busy jobs and kids. For the last several years the novellas I’ve written for Kensington have scratched that particular itch. Since I’ve been here in Key West this year I’ve heard Karen Russell speak, author of the brilliant St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and Ann Beattie, whose latest collection is Onlookers. Both fascinating speakers. My favorite short story writer is Alice Munro (not an original choice I know–there’s that Nobel Prize for one thing). My favorite short story is Horseman by Richard Russo, which I believe is perfect. My favorite crime short story is “The Woman in the Wardrobe,” in Death of a Salesperson and Other Untimely Events by Robert Barnard. I urge you to try them all.

Readers: Do you like short stories? What makes a good one or makes you like them, or what makes them not your choice? Tell us a favorite.

Welcome Back Author Darci Hannah and a Giveaway!

Last year I was published in a collection, Irish Coffee Murder, built around Saint Patrick’s Day. I had a blast writing it. I was excited to see that Friend of the Wickeds Darci Hannah has a book just out with the same wonderful theme. Naturally, I invited her to visit us here on the blog.

Take it away, Darci!

It’s such a pleasure to be a guest today on The Wickeds Blog. Thank you, Barb, for inviting me. I love that we both have new release that came out at the end of January. Being so cold, snowy, and dreary in the north, January is my favorite month for reading and catching up on all those books in my TBR pile! While Barb’s Easter Basket Murder novella centers around that quintessential springtime holiday, Easter, my new release, Murder at the Blarney Bash, takes place on a cold St. Patrick’s Day in the picturesque Michigan lakeside village of Beacon Harbor. And yes, there are leprechauns in it too (wink-wink).

Murder at the Blarney Bash is my third holiday themed cozy mystery.  I’ve written about Christmas and Halloween, but I never gave much thought to writing about St. Patrick’s Day until my editor floated the idea to me. I’m sorry to think that the first image that popped into my mind as he was talking about St. Patrick’s Day, besides a vision of the leprechaun on the box of Lucky Charms, was a really great loaf of Irish Soda Bread.

Now, at this point I think it’s helpful to know that I write the Beacon Bakeshop Mystery Series, largely because I love to bake, and also because l have a real fondness for Michigan lighthouses. But baked goods are a focal point of my series. This is because I write about a bakery in a renovated old lighthouse. Whenever I think of a new adventure in my fictitious town of Beacon Harbor, often the first thing that pops into my mind is a baked good associated with the holiday or time of year I’m writing about, and the whole time my editor was talking about St. Paddy’s Day, I was thinking about soda bread.

Growing up, my family celebrated St. Patrick’s Day like every other family that wasn’t Irish. My mom would make the traditional corned beef and cabbage supper, with boiled carrots and potatoes. To be honest, it wasn’t something we looked forward to as kids. However, my mom would always serve that once-a-year dinner with a loaf of really good dark rye bread, probably because she was Swedish and didn’t know that Irish Soda Bread even existed. It was also because with that dark rye bread on the table, and a jar of good mustard, along with a plate of sliced pickles, and slices of Swiss cheese, my brothers and dad had all the ingredients they needed to make their favorite St. Paddy’s Day deli sandwich—the corned beef and Swiss on dark rye! As for the boiled veggies and cabbage, they were regarded as garnish for the corned beef, something colorful to look at but not to eat. Because they were garnish, it wasn’t unusual to see a bag of potato chips on the table about halfway through the meal. A guy needs his meat and potatoes after all. 

It wasn’t until my youngest brother was married that I had my first bite of Irish Soda Bread. His wife, a fabulous cook, had made it for St. Patrick’s Day, and it was just about the best thing I had ever tasted on that holiday. She was gracious enough to give me her recipe, and ever since that eye-opening meal our festive St. Patrick’s Day supper of corned beef and cabbage is eaten exactly the way the Irish intended, placed on a plate with a large slice of butter-slathered Irish Soda Bread beside it. It certainly is a day worth celebrating.

If you would like a copy of this delicious Irish Soda Bread, please click on the link below.

https://www.darcihannah.com/recipes

Readers: I would love to give away a copy of Murder at the Blarney Bash to one of you awesome readers. To enter to win, please tell me what your favorite St. Patrick’s Day treat is. US only please. The winner will be chosen at random on February 9th.

Wishing you the luck of the Irish!

About Darci Hannah

Darci Hannah is the bestselling author of the Beacon Bakeshop Mystery Series, the soon to be released Food & Spirits Mystery Series, the Very Cherry Mystery Series, and two works of historical fiction. Darci grew up in the Midwest and currently lives in a small town in Michigan with her husband and two dogs. Darci is a lifelong lover of the Great Lakes, a natural wonder that inspires many of her stories. Passionate about family, dogs, food, baking, history, books, lighthouses, laughter, good conversations, coffee, and the paranormal, Darci feels especially blessed to have found a way to combine her interests in the stories she writes. It brings her great joy to be able to share them with you.

Connect with Darci at www.darcihannah.com. Instagram: @authordarcihannah. Facebook: Author Darci Hannah. Twitter: @darci_hannah. YouTube: @darcihannah. You can even listen to Darci and her sons on the Nearly Literate Podcast @ https://rss.com/podcasts/motherboy/  or Watch the Nearly Literate Podcast on YouTube @NearlyLiteratePodcast 

About Murder at the Blarney Bash

Follow the aroma of shamrock sugar cookies to the Beacon Bakeshop, a lighthouse on the shores of Lake Michigan where amateur sleuth Lindsey Bakewell is busy preparing for Beacon Harbor’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities – with a little help from her adorable Newfoundland, Wellington, of course!

Lindsey is baking up a storm—shamrock sugar cookies, Guinness chocolate cupcakes, Irish soda bread—for the well-timed grand opening of the Irish import gift shop, the Blarney Stone, owned by her boyfriend’s uncle, Finnigan O’Connor, recently relocated from the Emerald Isle.

But it’s Uncle Finn himself who seems full of blarney when he gleefully reveals a pot of real gold he claims he stole from an actual leprechaun. And Finn’s fortune takes a turn for the worse when he’s arrested for the bludgeoning of a small unidentified man dressed as a leprechaun—the murder weapon alleged to be his now-missing shillelagh.

Eccentric Uncle Finn may enjoy believing he’s outwitted a leprechaun, but he would never be so deluded as to clobber one with his walking stick. Now Lindsey will need more than the luck of the Irish to seize a golden opportunity to catch the real killer . . .

To purchase a copy at your favorite bookstore, click the link below. Thank you!

Book Details

The Tale of the Tale of Peter Rabbit

by Barb, still in Key West, where we’re all still complaining about the cold. (68 degrees right now.)

I’ve told the origin story of how I came up with the plot of “Hopped Along,” my story in Easter Basket Murder, in a post on the Jungle Red Writers blog here.

The next step was to write the synopsis, which I submitted to my editor, John Scognamiglio at Kensington, on September 1, 2022. From my brainstorming session with other Maine writers, I had the basics of character and plot. The challenge remained to tie all this together in a way that made it possible for my main character Julia Snowden and her boyfriend Tom Flynn to solve the mystery.

Though the original idea included both Easter Sunday and the Easter bunny, I felt I needed at least a nod to the title of the book, Easter basket. One of the pieces of connective tissue I included in the synopsis was this:

All that remains is the Easter basket, with a note, “for the little guy.” Julia picks it up and realizes it also contains a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit.

The mistake in the title, as is obvious here, is entirely mine. I often find I make the worst mistakes with the things I am absolutely certain of. So certain that I never look them up. As a friend of mine says of his dynamo wife, “Often wrong, but never uncertain.” The same can be said of me.

1901 First Edition, independently printed by Beatrix Potter

After the synopsis was accepted I got on with the business of writing the novella. In a later draft, I realized that I didn’t need Peter Rabbit as a clue. Julia had another reason to look where it pointed. I eliminated the book from my book.

With the Maine Clambake Mystery novels John Scognamiglio always asks me for input on my covers and Kensington has used that input all but once. He also asks for me to write a little marketing blurb, which Kensington’s marketing department always takes and makes much better. (Except for once, when they made it much worse. John let me rewrite it that time.) John sends the proposed blurb to me before it is finalized and has worked with me long enough to ask, “Is the book still about this?”

But with the novellas, I never see the covers until they turn up in my email, finalized. (They’ve all been great). I never see the blurb until the book is on Amazon and the other retailers for pre-order, which is where I discovered it in May of 2023. Here’s what my part of the back cover copy said.

Julia Snowden’s Easter Sunday at Windsholme, a sprawling mansion tucked away on a remote Maine island, looks like it’s been borrowed from the pages of a lifestyle magazine. But when a dead body is discovered in the garden—then vanishes soon after without any explanation—an innocent hunt for eggs becomes a dangerous hunt for answers. With no clues beyond a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, Julia must find out if April Fool’s Day came early or if she’s caught in a killer’s twisted game . . .

Yikes! I had handed in the manuscript at that point but not yet done the copy edits. I was faced with a dilemma. I could ask Kensington to change the blurb, one of three for the three novellas in the book and already published on the various retail sites, or I could put Peter back in the book during the copy-edits. Peter had been in the book until quite late in the process and reinserting him would only effect two scenes. The solution was obvious.

The copy-edits came back in June of 2023 and I did a deep dive on The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It really is a remarkable story.

Peter began life as a series of illustrated letters to the sickly eldest son of Beatrix Potter’s former governess and lifelong friend. It was she who suggested the story could be a book. Potter was quite the entrepreneur. When The Tale of Peter Rabbit was rejected by publishers, she printed two editions independently. One of the publishers who’d rejected her then picked the book up. Potter didn’t stop there. She patented a stuffed bunny to be sold with the book, followed by a board game, wallpaper and other goods. Thus becoming the first content creator ever to invent that thing we’re all obsessed with now. Merch.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit has never been out of print in over 120 years. Beatrix Potter’s life was remarkable before she published the books and in a wholly different way afterward. She was one of those upper class, late Victorian woman with way more brains and energy than the society she was born into was prepared to let her exercise.

So now I had a bead on The Tale of Peter Rabbit and its publishing history. One challenge remained. As a clue it had to lead back to my regular character Quentin Tupper. Quentin is childless and not interested in anything childish or cute. For the clue to work, the edition of Peter Rabbit that Julia finds had to be worth a lot of money. That’s why Quentin would have collected it. But how much was it worth?

After touring around online auction and antique book sites, I turned to my friend Annette Holmstrom, an expert in rare and collectible books. Her response was reassuring.

Ok if it’s one of the really rare 450 copies Beatrix Potter had personally printed -and signed – it’s worth a LOT – the only copy I could find is priced at $100,000!

Whew! I was off and running. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was back in “Hopped Along.” And you know what? I think it makes the story better.

Readers: Did you have copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit when you were young? Did your kids?

Why the Easter Bunny Wears a Top Hat

by Barb in Key West where it’s c-c-c-old (64 degrees)

In the reader letter at the end of “Hopped Along,” my novella in Easter Basket Murder, released last Tuesday, I explain why my Easter Bunny wears a top hat.

I know why my Easter Bunny wears a top hat and tails. It comes from one of my favorite stories told by my father. When he was small, maybe five or six, he heard a noise outside just after dawn on Easter morning. Hoping to catch the Easter Bunny in the act of leaving the basket, he got out of bed and sat at the top of the stairs. Through the transom over the door, he was thrilled to see a top hat bobbing down the front walk. When the door to the house started to open, he lost his nerve and darted back to bed.

I don’t know how many years later it was that my father figured out that he’d seen the top of his father’s head as his parents returned at dawn from a formal party. But after my dad witnessed that scene through the transom, he said forever after he pictured the Easter Bunny wearing a top hat, and thus I do, too.

I especially loved this story because my father wasn’t given to mythologizing his childhood–or telling many stories about it at all. I adored his parents. As a teenager in the 1960s, their tales of the 1920s, beaded dresses and bathtub gin, where entrancing to me. I spent a lot of time with them and their colorful assortment of friends–millionaires, gigolos, B-to-D list celebrities, gay couples. All people who were kind and lovely to me. My grandparents were wonderful in an Auntie Mame-ish sort of way. Now that I’m older I can see that while that was great for grandparents, maybe it wasn’t the greatest for parents. Returning at dawn from a party on Easter Sunday may be emblematic of my father’s almost-never-spoken-about reservations about his upbringing.

As it happens, I still have that top hat, still in its original packaging. I have no idea why my grandparents saved it or why my parents saved it when it came to them or why I’m saving it except that having lasted this long…

The label on the box says it was deliverd C.O.D. to R. M. Ross for $9.94 to 38 Westminster Court in New Rochelle, NY, on December 22, (unfortunately no year). My father’s family, which included his mother’s father, lived at that address in the 1930s. By the mid-thirties when my father would have been old enough to have observed the hat bouncing down the front walk, the days of flappers and bathtub gin were over. Neither my grandfather, who was stockbroker, nor my great-grandfather, who had worked in my grandmother’s family’s interior design business, was working. (Neither profession is built to withstand economic downturns.) The only income coming in would have been from my grandmother, who worked at Saks Fifth Avenue. She eventually became a millinery buyer, but in those years she may have been behind a counter selling hats.

Paying $9.94 for a top hat during the Depression must have been an indulgence. On the other hand, having the chance to go to a fancy party and recapture a bit of your younger years must have been irresistible.

Inside the hatOriginal tissue paperBack of the sales slip above

I love that R.H. Macy’s, however diminished, is still at Herald Square. Given the many evolutions and revolutions in retail in the last 90 years, it seems like a miracle.

So now you know why my Easter Bunny wears a top hat.

Readers: Does your Easter Bunny wear a top hat? Do you have a tale from a parent’s or grandparent’s youth that you treasure? Tell us about it.

Rejection is Part of Publishing

I think people who aren’t writers have a skewed vision of what a writer’s life is like. Most of us don’t make a lot of money, our publishers don’t pay for us to go on book tours or to conferences, and no matter how many books we’ve published, the next one isn’t an automatic yes.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I’ve written a Hallmark-movie type romance. I turned it into my agent in November 2022. He sent it to eleven editors in April of 2023. Then the waiting began followed by the rejections. While it’s never easy to get a no, a rejection can also educate you.

Thank you so much for sharing this one with me! This is such an adorable concept, and is chock full of romance tropes that I love as a reader. Ultimately, it isn’t the right fit for my list. But I really did enjoy the writing, and do appreciate you thinking of me for this one. Best of luck finding the right home for this manuscript.

Thank you so much for thinking of me. Regretfully, I don’t see how to launch this successfully in today’s overcrowded romance market.

Getting back to you on your submission which I’ve now had a chance to read and discuss here. While the concept is such a cute idea, we’re being incredibly selective about our rom-com acquisitions these days and I’m afraid the writing just didn’t grab me in this one.

I felt there was nice nostalgia injected into this project, with the protagonist having to face her past no matter how hard she tried to avoid it. The small town of Sea Cove is very cute as well, but I’m afraid small town romance is quite crowded at the moment.

I thought the concept was cute and fun, but the story felt too familiar to me to really stand out for us in a big way. I just didn’t feel that it had a strong or fresh enough hook to work for us, even with the dog aspect.

Sherry is a talented writer, and I think her interest in a pivot to romance is very exciting. But unfortunately, I just didn’t fall in love with the overall plotting of this book in the way I’d need to in order to champion this here. So, this is a pass for me.

While Sherry is a strong writer, I’m afraid I didn’t connect with this enough to pursue for our list.

Compared to rejections for my first hasn’t-been-published-and-probably-never-will-be book, these rejections aren’t bad. I find the varied responses fascinating and I have done some reading between the lines – the book needs more work. Four publishers haven’t responded. It could be the slow no, as we call it in the business, or it could be it’s still in a stack of manuscripts to read. I want to do another edit on the manuscript before my agent reaches out to those who haven’t responded or before reaching out to other publishers. I haven’t given up on this project even with the rejections.

Readers: Have you had rejections? Have they ever motivated you?

Looking Forward To . . . A Project

This month the Wickeds are looking forward.

Wickeds, lets talk about writing. Do you have a project you’re looking forward to taking on this year? Sing out book releases, but also let us know if there’s a project you’d like to tackle for yourself. Or is another sort of creative project calling you?

Sherry: Maybe this will be the year I finally write the thriller that’s been whirling around in my head for a few years. I have an outline which is unusual for me so maybe I’ll settle in and write it. It’s an action/adventure story about a young woman on the run who turns to her estranged mom. But can she trust her?

Edith/Maddie: I like that sound of that, Sherry! I have two books due this year, and another due in early 2025, so those will get written. I also agreed to write a short story for a collection about party crashers, so that will be fun, and a couple of other short crime stories are rattling around in my brain.

Liz: Sherry, this is going to be the year for thrillers! I’m determined to get mine done too. I also have a new Cat Cafe book out this summer, Shock and Paw, which I’m looking forward to.

Barb: I’m looking forward to working on a personal project, something with an audience more family than fans. I haven’t started yet though I’ve been threatening since Christmas. Something always seems to get in the way. Hoping to buckle down this month.

Jessie: I am looking forward to finishing up our home renovation at the beach, moving in, and overhauling the garden. It has been an exciting project and it is almost done! I cannot wait to enjoy the changes! I also am looking forward to bringing a stand alone book to completion. It has been in the works for a while and is providing me with fun new experiences!

Opening Lines: Clowns!

by Julie, surviving a wintry mix in Somerville

I am a fan of public art, and love when it surprises me. In the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, there is a new exhibition of public art that has Bostonians talking. (Here’s an article. It’s a very interesting and fun exhibition.) My friend Dawn M. Simmons posted pictures and agreed to let me use one of them for this “opening lines” prompt. This piece is called “End Game” and is by Max Streicher. The heads are resting in an alley between two buildings. They are very large. I suspect the subject will foster some wonderful opening lines.

“End Game” by Max Streicher. Photo by Dawn M. Simmons

Barb: “Heads will roll!” Dan cried.

Sherry: I told my Aunt Bess and Uncle Bill to quit clowning around but they never listened.

Edith/Maddie: Max didn’t listen when I told him if he enlarged his head one more time, it would stick. At least he and Dawn were together when it happened, but they’ll never recover. This is the end of them.

Julie: Coulrophobia wasn’t funny. Ben’s fear of clowns had held him back from parties and circuses his entire life. Clowns as big as a building would probably kill him. At least I hoped so.

Readers, share your opening lines with us!

A Wicked Welcome to Lara Bricker!

by Julie, disliking the wintry mix in Somerville

I was delighted when Lara Bricker agreed to be on the blog today. Fans of Crime Writers On will know her from the podcast. She is also an author of a cozy series, the Piper Greene Exeter series. Welcome to the blog, Lara!

Finding Piper Greene

I always knew I wanted to set a book in the very real town of Exeter, New Hampshire, where I’ve lived for almost 25 years. Seriously, the town could be the set for a Hallmark movie with its historic brick buildings and quaint AF downtown. Locals affectionately refer to Exeter as Stars Hollow, as a nod to the Gilmore Girls. In my imagination, Exeter was screaming to be the setting for a cozy mystery.

But finding my amateur protagonist wasn’t as easy.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked as a journalist, a private investigator and have written a true crime book. I considered several career paths for my sleuth as I brainstormed what is now the Piper Greene Exeter mystery series. I rewrote the opening chapters with different protagonists about four times, but nothing felt right, and so I put them off in a drawer, and returned to the rest of my life.

And then the pandemic hit. I found myself at home, supervising remote school for my son, and suddenly laid off from my job.

It was time to write my Exeter cozy mystery and now the protagonist came easily. I thought about where I would like to be other than an extrovert stuck at home during a global pandemic, and I homed in on the old weekly newspaper newsroom I’d worked at for my first job out of college. That’s where I wanted to be. The characters in the newsroom and the town came to life as did Piper Greene, a journalist who returned to Exeter to look after her eccentric Aunt Gladys. I love Piper but Aunt Gladys is who I want to be when I grow up.

People often ask me if I am Piper Greene and I tell them that Piper is like a version of me on steroids. I’m also asked if the characters in the book are based on real people in Exeter. The characters in the book are more mashups of the many interesting people I’ve met during my career. But the town of Exeter, its landmarks and its history are very real. Businesses and people are figments of my very overactive imagination.

About Lara:

Lara Bricker is an award-winning journalist, podcaster, licensed private investigator, certified cat detective and true crime author. She is one of four crime writers on the hit podcast, Crime Writers On and the author of the true crime book Lie after Lie: The True Story of a Master of Deception, Betrayal, and Murder.

Her work has appeared in the Portsmouth Herald, the Exeter News-Letter, the Hampton Union, the New Hampshire Union Leader, Woman’s World magazine, USA Today, Vulture, and the Boston Globe. In 2008, she covered the first death penalty case to go to trial in New Hampshire in almost fifty years for the Associated Press. As a news reporter, she has received numerous awards from both the New Hampshire Press Association and the New England Newspaper & Press Association for her crime and investigative reporting.

Dead on Deadline and The Final Curtain, the first two books in the Piper Greene Exeter mystery series, were the best sellers of the year at Water Street Bookstore in 2021 and 2022.

Lara lives in Exeter, where she can often be found walking around Exeter pondering where her next local murder mystery will take place. www.larabricker.com

About Dead on Deadline:

Just as her journalism career in the city is taking off, Piper Greene returns to her tiny New England hometown to care for her beloved aunt, Gladys. She takes a job at the Exeter Independent, where her days are filled with stories of church bazaars, runaway turkeys, and news from the garden club.

Piper assumes her assignment to cover the American Independence Festival, honoring her town’s role in the Revolutionary War, is just another mundane event. But when a body dressed in a Red Coat soldier jacket is found hanged from the top of the historic Town Hall, Piper finds herself in the middle of a murder. The victim is her news editor, Charlotte Campbell, and there is no shortage of people who would be glad to see her dead.

Suspicion quickly lands on the paper’s photographer, who was fired the day before, but Piper cannot believe he is capable of murder. With the help of her high school crush, now a detective, her best friend at the bakery, and the town historian, Piper sets out to prove her friend’s innocence. But as she persists, she learns that unearthing small-town secrets is harder than she thought—and that some parts of local history can be deadly.

A Wicked Welcome to K.D. Richards

by Julie, staying warm in Somerville

I am delighted to welcome K.D. Richards back to the blog today. She writes the West Investigations romantic suspense series. Book 8, A Stalker’s Prey, was released this week.

Character – It’s Personal

I’m often asked whether my story ideas begin with character or plot. To be honest, I’ve had ideas come to be both ways. Sometimes the plot comes first, often driven by an important scene. Other times it’s a character that pops into my head, clear as a bell. But whether the idea for a story starts with plot or character, to me the characters are what really drive the story.

The characters mold the plot. A main character that is outgoing, maybe even a little aggressive, is going to pursue solving a mystery in a much different fashion than a reserved, introverted character. And importantly, they are going to think and feel about things differently. And it’s those thoughts and feelings that make a character believable and relatable.

To me, creating a character that feels real is particularly important in the procedural type novels that I write. It is usually pretty easy to explain why at least one of the protagonists is involved in the mystery. My West Investigations series revolves around a group of private investigators. Of course they find themselves in all kinds of suspenseful investigative situations! But if the only reason the characters are involved in solving the crime is because they are paid, well, that’s not all that interesting is it? Giving the characters a personal motivation, something that goes beyond a paycheck, is what really hooks readers.

In my first novel Pursuit of the Truth, my PI starts investigating when the woman he’s been crushing is almost killed multiple times. In my second novel, another PI at the firm jumps in to help his former flame find her sister. Both, of course, have the skills necessary to do the job in a believable way, but it’s personal, not professional, reasons that really drive their actions and that connect the reader to the character.
Of course there is a lot more that goes into creating well-rounded, believable characters. But if you start with what drives them personally, you’ll be on the right track.

Readers, what do you think is the most important aspect of crafting relatable characters? What draws you into a story?

About the Author

Daphne du Maurier Award finalist, K.D. Richards writes pulse pounding romantic suspense and thrillers. K.D. was born and raised in the Maryland suburbs just outside of Washington, D.C. A writer since a young age, after college she earned a law degree and worked as an attorney and legal instructor for fifteen years but never stopped writing fiction. She currently lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.

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About the A Stalker’s Prey

Hollywood actress Bria Baker has all that comes with worldwide fame…including a stalker who’s followed her to a New York City film set. To assure her personal protection, the superstar hires bodyguard Xavier Nichols—the man whose heart she once broke. As the stalker’s threats escalate, so do Bria’s feelings for Xavier. But the stalker has a special role for Bria: his and his alone.