Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 40

A Wicked Welcome to K.D. Richards!

I met Kia through Sisters in Crime, and am thrilled that she recently joined the board. She is a prolific writer of romantic suspense, and it joining us today to talk a bit about process and getting stuck.

The Dreaded Writer’s Block
by K.D. Richards

I’m currently working on the eleventh (!) book in my West Investigations series. Every single book has been different and a learning experience. However, writing this installment has been different in a lot of ways than writing the other books in the series. For one, I attempted to pants it -write it without first drafting the comprehensive outline I normally do before I sit down to write.

Maybe this is why I’ve struggled a getting the words to come with this book. I’m presently stalled at about 45,000 words of a book that needs to be between 55,000 and 60,000 but my brain is refusing to cooperate, instead demanding that I scroll through my Threads feed instead of writing! I even have the perfect happily-ever-after ending but how do I get my characters there? Okay, so here are some strategies I’ve been using with varying success.

Take a break. OK, I know I just said I’m scrolling social media instead of writing but sometimes your body and brain just need a rest. You might find it helpful to put your current work in progress aside and start something new (or return to the last thing you set aside). Or you may need to take some time off from writing altogether. Take a weekend – longer if need be. Get outside, stream a movie, call a friend just to chat (I’m talking to you, my fellow introverts). Give your characters time to figure out what they want to do next and they just might come back to you raring to go.

I am not good at relaxing but I decided to take a weekend off and do nothing but chill! No stressing over deadlines, no outlining, no editing or revision. R-E-L-A-X. I’ll be honest, it was difficult for me to not write or even thing about writing for two days, but, by the end of the weekend I could feel that my body and brain were more rested.

Read. If you are like me your TBR pile is ever growing. When I get really involved in a new writing project a lot of other things fall to the wayside, including reading. You can choose to read something that is similar to what you are writing, analyzing it to see how the author achieved the elements you are struggling with. I’ve found that reading for pleasure is the best way to move my own writing out of the mushy middle.

I took a bit of a different route this time. A writer friend suggested watching movies as the trick he uses when he gets stuck. I’m not generally a television or movie person but I gave it a try this time and spent the weekend watching Gone Girl (I may the last person on Earth to see this movie) and Spiderman Into the Spider-verse for the eleven thousandth time (kid’s choice although it remains an awesome movie). No brilliant plot ideas sprung to mind for me, but I did enjoy the movies and family time.

Skip around. You can’t see the next scene clearly but you know how your protagonist is going to discover the killer, so write that scene. Who said your manuscript has to be written in a certain order? Write the scenes you can see clearly in your mind’s eye and come back to the scenes that are more elusive.

As I mentioned earlier, I knew exactly how I wanted this book to end so my plan once the weekend ended was to get started writing it. I really loved the ending I had planned for the characters. Because I’d given my brain a break, I was able to bring all the enthusiasm I felt for these characters the page and I think the scene turned out awesome. That enthusiasm also triggered the creative side of my mind to figure out how to get them from where they are now to the end of their journey. Yay!

Writers, what do you do when you get stuck in your writing? Readers, how do you handle being stuck on a project? Drop a comment and let me know.

About the Author

Bio 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. www.kdrichardsbooks.com

Social:
www.instagram.com/kdrichardsauthor
www.facebook.com/kdrichardsauthor

About Her Books

She’s kept her secret for years…

But now a killer knows. Journalist Simone Jarrett and Carling Lake sheriff Lance Webb have kept their casual affair clandestine to avoid gossip. But as his feelings for Simone deepen, Lance is troubled by the knowledge that she’s hiding something. Then, after twenty years, the Card Killer strikes again. And Simone’s secret puts her in the killer’s sights. Now the two must team up to find the murderer…and save Simone’s life.

From Harlequin Intrigue: Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served. Discover more action-packed stories in the West Investigations series.

All books are stand-alone with uplifting endings but were published in the following order:

Book 1: Pursuit of the Truth
Book 2: Missing at Christmas
Book 3: Christmas Data Breach
Book 4: Shielding Her Son
Book 5: Dark Water Disappearance
Book 6: Catching the Carling Lake Killer
Book 7: Under the Cover of Darkness (releases in December, available for pre-order)

Lessons from a Not-So-Skilled Project Manager

By Liz, loving the beach weather…

I am a chronic learner. I would go to school forever if I had the unlimited funds it takes to get degrees these days (and yeah, I’m still paying off that grad school degree from many years ago, so there’s that). I do manage to find a way to keep learning though. I love online courses and have taken a number of them over the past couple of years, mostly related to my business venture. I’m also loving memberships – both running one and belonging to them.

During the course I took about how to create a membership, I met a fellow writer who was also launching a membership. But she’s not just a writer – she’s a project manager. And she’s not only used that superpower to manage her own writing life, but now she’s helping other writers do the same. So when she launched her membership on how to make your writing life more joyful (yes please), I had to sign up as a founding member. Because, let’s face it. I’m a good writer. I am NOT a good project manager. When faced with project management realities in my corporate life, I used to ignore them as best I could. As I got higher up in the food chain, I hired people to deal with that kind of thing. It’s just not my wheelhouse.

Yet here I am, determined to figure out how to manage my work life – and possibly my whole life – better. Part of the problem is I pile too much on. I’m still working during the day, although it’s shifted to a consulting role, which just means less politics and meetings. The amount of work is the same. I’m also working on getting my business off the ground. And, of course, there’s the writing.

So I’m a few weeks into this membership, and I wanted to report on my progress. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Stop over-scheduling myself. I have a tendency to want to get everything done RIGHT NOW. I would make giant lists and expect to do it all in a week or less, then get so overwhelmed I shut the laptop and sat on the couch. Now, I’m learning to estimate how much time I WANT (not should) to spend on tasks and only note the ones that can be done during that amount of time. Prioritize ease. Much to my shock, I’m learning that doing more is not always better. I was raised with an overachiever mindset, and if I’m not constantly producing or feeling like I’m advancing something, I feel like I’m not doing enough. Here, I’m learning to be realistic about what I can do and not stress about more. Celebrate myself. I’ve been talking about this for a while, but it’s a hard lesson for me (see above point). It feels very foreign to me to pat myself on the back for something. It’s much more normal to say, Wow, that’s it? You could’ve done more! I’m learning how not to do this. Schedule something fun. I just learned this one today. The facilitator asked what fun thing I’ve been putting off. When I identified it, she told me to take one work thing off the list and put the fun thing in instead – not to just add it to the list, which I’d been about to do. This whole process is about finding more space, and while it’s WAY out of my comfort zone, I’m definitely learning how to think about work very differently.

I can already tell this isn’t going to be an overnight transition. But I can tell that once I learn these lessons, they’re going to pay off exponentially.

Readers, how have you learned to think about time/work/effort in a new light? Tell me in the comments!

Wicked Wednesday: Celebration

by Julie, excited about blueberry season

Today we continue to celebrate Murder At A London Finishing School!

Continuing the theme of castaways, a London finishing school feels like a great place to explore one of the definitions, that of an outcast. The outcast plays many roles in a mystery novel. The feeling of being an outcast is something we all understand. Wickeds, do you use outcasts for characters, or as a theme?

Barb: Congratulations, Jessie! I cannot wait to read Murder at a London Finishing School. When I created my protagonist, Julia Snowden, for the Maine Clambake Mysteries, I deliberately had her returning to her home town after a decade and a half away, an outsider. Certain things about her parents made her always feel like an outsider even when she lived there. I’m not a native Mainer and I knew I couldn’t pull that off. But I also think that outsider perspective, or in Julia’s case, insider/outsider perspective, is very useful in solving crimes.

Edith/Maddie: So many congrats, Jessie! Hmm, Barb. Now you’ve made me think about outcast vs. outsider. I think almost every good amateur sleuth is an outsider, so they can ask questions and not assume they know the villagers’ motivations. Quaker Midwife Rose Carroll is an outsider for lots of reasons – being a Quaker possibly primary among them. But an outcast, someone shunned, seems different (think high school cliches). An outcast might feel they need revenge, on the spot or years later.

Sherry: Yay, Jessie another fabulous book to read–congratulations! Excellent point, Edith. I’ve never thought of any of my characters as being outcasts. Really, when you think about it, it’s such a cruel thing to toss someone aside for how they look or what they believe.

Liz: Congrats, Jessie! I definitely think all my main characters have that outsider perspective, but like you, Edith, I never really thought of them as outcasts. Except maybe Violet a little bit, because certain factions of her new world don’t want her there which also makes for good conflict.

Julie: Outsider v. outcast is a great conversation. Outcasts are interesting characters. They could be motivated protagonists, as victims with many suspects, villains with interesting backstories, or side characters the reader can’t quite get a read on. I agree that being an outcast is painful, but it is also great fodder.

Jessie: Thanks so much everyone! What a thought-provoking question, Julie! I have written about outcasts as secondary characters, as suspects, and even as victims. I think they bring a lot of tension to the page because we all understand how vulnerable being rejected by the group makes a person. For me, it can create an immediate feeling of empathy for the character depending on why they are in that position particularly because, as Sherry mentioned, it is often quite cruel. I think it is fascinating to explore what would make someone an outcast at different times in history and how some of those things no longer apply today.

Readers, outsider v. outcast? The role of each? What do you think?

Murder at a London Finishing School Release Day and a Giveaway!

Jessie: In New Hampshire where the skies are blue and the breezes are sweet.

Launch day for any novel is always a treat. It is such a gratifying thing to see so many hours of creation and months of waiting come to fruition. From the earliest inklings of an idea for a plot to the final pass through before the manuscript heads to the printer there is so much attention and emotion invested in the outcome. It really is a bit like seeing one’s child face to face for the first time.

This novel was particularly pleasurable to write. I have known since the beginning of the series that my protagonists, Beryl and Edwina, met at Miss Dupont’s Finishing School for Young Ladies. I discovered as I got to know them better over time that Beryl had first taken notice of Edwina when she raised her usually soft voice to defend a student from the school bully.

This installment in the series takes the pair of friends back to where it all began and even brings the bully back into their orbit. As I wrote it I got to know more about how both of my sleuths felt about their time at boarding school, some things they had each believed about themselves, and even how their perceptions of their teachers who had seemed ancient to them so many years before had become more understandable and perhaps even likable. I ended up well pleased with how it all turned out and hope that my readers will enjoy it as well.

Here’s the teaser from the back of the book:

American adventuress Beryl Helliwell and prim and proper Brit Edwina Davenport team up once again as enquiry agents to solve a mystery at their alma mater in this historical English village mystery set just after World War I.Neither Beryl nor Edwina are the least bit interested in attending events at their alma mater, Miss Dupont’s Finishing School. Their lives are very full indeed in the village of Walmsley Parva. However, when a letter arrives from Miss Dupont herself requesting their help in a professional capacity, they reluctantly pack their bags for London.Upon arrival, they learn from Miss Dupont that her business has seen a steep decline since the days before World War I and that now she is concerned a saboteur is attempting to damage the school’s reputation. Students have reported items missing, damaged possessions, and strange noises in the night. Some of the girls even insist ghostly forces are at play.Then a former classmate of theirs and mother of a prospective student is found dead on the school grounds. The roll call of suspects is long, and if Beryl and Edwina are to have a ghost of a chance of solving the murder, they can’t rule out the possibility that Miss Dupont herself may have finished off the victim…

If you are interested in acquiring a copy of your own in hardcover, ebook or audiobook, it is available at local bookstores or from a host of online sources linked here. You can also take your chance at winning one of three hardcover copies by leaving a comment on this post by midnight on Sunday, July 31. Good luck!

Readers, do you remember when you first noticed someone who became an important part of your life? Or, did you have a favorite teacher?

All Over the Map

Edith/Maddie here, luxuriating in full summer north of Boston.

My July has been all over the map, virtually and literally, and it ain’t over yet. The month started out quiet enough. Working on Murder in the Rusty Anchor revisions every morning. Walking, tending my tomato plants, seeing friends, eating salads, and grilling dinners.

The usual early July things. No beach, but around here the biting greenhead flies come out in July and I never go to the beach until the end of the month.

Then the map shifted to coastal Maine, where we rented a cottage in Owl’s Head near Rockland for a week. We did all the Maine things!

Lighthouses, lobster rolls, a boat ride to see puffins, the Wyeth museum, blueberry pie, and more, including reading Barb’s Hidden Beneath on our little patio.

It was a lovely getaway, and I didn’t do a lick of writing.

We got home and life traveled to hell in a handbasket. My back went seriously out. An odd upper-GI thing flared. The impinged nerve in my wrist made itself known, big time. One day I was flat on the couch, worried my writing career was over.

I’m happy to report that with some rest and ibuprofen and a visit to the chiropractor a short walk away, my back is back to normal. The GI thing is clearing. The wrist hurts, but I know how to take care of it. Whew.

Meanwhile the book is STILL due August first and it’s still too short. Gah. I keep massaging it, but I really need a couple new scenes and I can’t figure out which area needs clarifying and deepening and how to work that in. So my work is all over the map, too. And, gentle reader, time is getting short.

But yesterday I got the biggest boost. Some of you might have seen this on Facebook, but here’s what happened. I was volunteering at a local charity yard sale, to which I had donated some of my own books. A shopper asked how much one of my books was. I told her, then I said I wrote it. She was completely, utterly gobsmacked. She kept asking me if I was serious. She said how much she loves my books and cozy mysteries and could we do a photo so she could share it to Instagram and and with the cozy You Tube community. (Of course!) We took a picture, Jeannie bought nine books, and I signed them all. It was such a fun encounter for both of us.

So I’ll keep picking blueberries (yay, more delicious summer things!) from my own bushes, keep eating sweet corn from the local farm, and keep working on the book until it’s due, but with a lift from that chance encounter.

My longtime picking bucket was a pail of my sister’s Quebec honey long ago, and the ribbon lets me pick two-handed.

And the book will either get longer or it won’t. My editor will either ask for changes – or he won’t. I might even get to the beach at the end of the week.

Oh, and if you’re in New England, please head over to the Ashland, MA public library Saturday for a cozy mystery afternoon with Barb, LeslieMeier, Barbara Tanner Wallace, and me!

Readers: What has lifted your spirits recently?

Welcome Guest Beth Dolgner #giveaway

I met Beth when we recorded (via Zoom) a cozy mystery panel for DragonCon along with Mia P. Manansala. I wrote her after to tell her I loved the wallpaper behind her. I noticed it while we were recording. Beth is delightful and I wanted to introduce all of you to her!

Desert Heat, Halloween, and Homicide   I am not a desert person. Let’s just get that out into the open right now, shall we? I was born and raised in Florida, which means I’m used to lush green grass, short drives to the beach, and humidity so thick you could cut it with a knife.  

So, when my husband and I moved to Tucson, Arizona, nearly two years ago, it was a big adjustment for me. I’ve lived in several places since my upbringing in Florida, including a few years in Germany, but I felt more like a foreigner in Tucson than I ever did in Berlin.   It didn’t take me long to figure out why I felt like such a fish out of water. The desert landscape gave me the sensation that I had stepped off the airplane and onto a distant planet. Even the craggy mountains surrounding Tucson looked strange to my eyes.  

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I was delighted to learn Tucson has an excellent haunted house attraction that was only a 10-minute drive from our new home. (Well, our old home: we live in a possibly haunted Victorian bungalow.)   This discovery led me to casually lament that we had never lived in a place with a year-round haunted house, where I could go scare myself silly anytime I liked. Why did I have to wait for October to get chased by actors in zombie makeup?  

I decided that if I couldn’t have a year-round haunted house, I could write about a town that did. And, not only that, but my main character would actually work there, and she would discover that her co-workers weren’t just playing parts every night. They were, in fact, the very supernatural creatures they were pretending to be for the tourists.   Add in a dead body, and I had the beginnings of a new paranormal cozy mystery series. All I needed was a quirky small town to host my heroine and the haunt.  

And then, a few months after we had moved to Tucson, my husband and I made a day trip to Tombstone, Arizona. Yes, that Tombstone. The one where the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday were part of the infamous shootout at the OK Corral.   I fell in love with every tacky, touristy bit of Tombstone. The city has covered their main street in dirt and given the buildings a Wild West makeover. Stagecoaches give rides to the tourists, and actors dressed as cowboys regularly stage shootouts in the street.  

What if, I wondered, my fictional haunted house was in a Wild West tourist town like Tombstone? What if the regular, human residents were so quirky that no one noticed if there were vampires, a werewolf, and even a chupacabra roaming around?   The fictional town of Nightmare, Arizona, was born.

I channeled all of my discomfort about adjusting to desert life into my heroine, Olivia Kendrick, a Nashville woman on her way to California for a fresh start after a messy divorce. When she breaks down in Nightmare, she gets the first job she can find, then stumbles across a dead body.   Homicide at the Haunted House, book one of the Nightmare, Arizona paranormal cozy mysteries, debuted in March of 2023. Like Olivia, I have decided that living in the desert isn’t so bad, after all. I have yet to meet a chupacabra, though.  

Readers, what’s your favorite holiday? Comment below with your answer to be entered to win one of two ebook copies of Homicide at the Haunted House!

Bio: Beth Dolgner writes paranormal cozy mysteries and romantic urban fantasy, including the Nightmare, Arizona paranormal cozy mysteries. She lectures on Victorian death customs and Spiritualism, and she has been a ghost tour guide, a ghost hunter, and a volunteer at a Victorian cemetery. She likes to think of it all as research for her books.

She’s online at bethdolgner.com.   Links Website: https://bethdolgner.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bethdolgnerauthor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beth_dolgner/ BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/beth-dolgner

About Homicide at the Haunted House: Murder, monsters, and a midlife crisis in Nightmare, Arizona Divorced, broke, and broken down in the old mining town of Nightmare, Arizona, Olivia Kendrick is desperate for a job. At forty-two years old, she never thought she would be starting over like this, let alone in a tucked-away town filled with tourists, offbeat residents, and an outspoken UFO hunter. Olivia takes a job at a year-round haunted house, but when she arrives for her first day, she faces real horror: a local man’s body has been dumped at the front entrance.

Olivia is an immediate suspect. After all, she’s a stranger in town. As Olivia tries to find the real killer, she begins to realize her co-workers aren’t just putting on a show every night at Nightmare Sanctuary Haunted House. And why does the “dog” running around have such long fangs?

Things only get worse when Damien Shackleford, the son of the haunted house’s missing owner, shows up. He might be handsome, but his arrogant attitude makes everyone miserable. Olivia must forge a new life, solve a murder, and decide who’s more of a monster: Damien or the actual monsters she works with…  

Amazon Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN2D835V

Genre Hopping with Author Lucy Burdette

by Barb enduring the rainiest New England summer evah!

Today, I’m welcoming to the blog Friend of the Wickeds, Lucy Burdette. However, Lucy’s not here to talk about one of her Key West Food Critic Mysteries. She’s here for our monthly Genre Hopping feature with her latest release, The Ingredients of Happiness, which is–gasp–not a mystery!

Welcome, Lucy.

Barb: How do you characterize The Ingredients of Happiness? Is it women’s fiction or what? (I think of it as Book Club Fiction because it gives people plenty to talk about afterward, which is the key to a good book club read, in my opinion.)  

Lucy: I love your description, Barb, book club fiction it is! It could also be categorized as women’s fiction or contemporary women’s fiction. I think my agent once described my writing as upmarket fiction written in a commercial voice, LOL. One thing that means for sure is that I am not a literary fiction writer, and I am fine with that. As Popeye and Barbara Ross would say, I am what I am.  

Barb: The Ingredients of Happiness is a departure for you. You’re known for your cozy mysteries, especially the Key West Food Critic series. What was the impetus to write The Ingredients of Happiness?  

Lucy: There are authors who declare their books arrived in their minds whole cloth, almost like a movie unspooling—their challenge was to write fast enough to get all the ideas and plot twists on paper. Not The Ingredients of Happiness! This book has been a labor of love, with years and years of revisions and new ideas and old ideas brought home again. But the thing that has never changed is the presence of the basic character, Dr. Cooper Hunziker. I’ve always had the idea of writing about a happiness expert who is not happy in her own life; I just had to figure out how to dig deeper, to understand who she really was and why she was that way. I enjoyed weaving in my favorite parts of writing a cozy series—a network of close friends, and lots of food.  

Barb: Each chapter in the book begins with an epigraph from the book that the main character, Cooper Hunziker has written. How was it to work with this book-within-a-book? How hard was it to write the epigraphs? Did you have to write Cooper’s book before you could write your book? What was the process like?  

Lucy: Oh lordy, no, I certainly did not write the book that Cooper was writing! For years, I have been collecting quotes from research psychologists about how to be happier, so it wasn’t too difficult to sort through them, and find one to fit each chapter. However, it was challenging to work with the British publisher Severn House on this, as they are much stricter about using quotes in books, even with proper attribution. So I had to take each of the quotes that I borrowed from real happiness research, and translate them into what I imagined would be Cooper’s language.  

Barb: Was it hard to write a book without the lovely elements of murder, sleuth, suspects, and red herrings to hang the plot on? How did you find the plot for this book?  

Lucy: This was SO hard! I suppose it shouldn’t have been because I read a lot of women’s fiction, but the mystery skeleton is so familiar and the plot points and suspects so welcome. Luckily, at one point my wise agent mentioned that I should not forget to use my mystery chops in the women’s fiction book. There can be mysteries without bodies!  

Barb: That is wise! You are a psychologist like your main character. How much of this book is taken, not from your life, but from things you’ve observed or heard about?  

Lucy: There are things from my real life that I used in this book. For example, Cooper’s research started out as my dissertation from graduate school. Luckily, my writers group kept encouraging me to cut back the academic jargon. No one wants to read that much about attachment research in a novel! Also, I spent three years at Yale, doing my internship, and two post-doctoral years. So I enjoyed weaving in the Yale backstory, though the bits about the Yale psychology department are complete fiction. I think I always bring the psychologist’s perspective to what I write, wondering what in a person’s background brought them to this extreme moment today. The answer can often be found in family drama and angst, at least in my books!  

Barb: What are you working on now? More specifically, you released a thriller in 2021 and now this book. Are you gone from the cozy mystery world forever? Will there be another Cooper book? Will there be another woman’s fiction book? Will there be another thriller? Inquiring minds want to know.  

Lucy: Oh no, not at all finished with the cozy world! A Clue in the Crumbs, Key West food critic mystery number 13, will be out on August 8. And I am very busy tackling the last quarter of the 14th book which is due September 1. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it has two timelines, one from the present, and one from the 1970s when a fictional girl disappears from a commune on Big Pine Key and is not heard from again. One of the other campers has returned to the keys to try to sort out what really happened. Of course, Hayley Snow’s assistance is requested.   When I finish that, I am hoping to work on another women’s fiction book based on one of the more minor characters in The Ingredients of Happiness. (I envision Winifred going to Paris to track down her biological father, a well-known French chef, for those who wonder.) After that, book 15 in the Key West Series will clamor to be written! That’s about as far out as I can think…  

Thanks so much for inviting me to be a guest with the lovely Wickeds! I hope you will enjoy Happiness and look forward to your questions and comments.  

Readers: What do you think about the idea of happiness? Is it something that happens, something you make or somewhere in between?

About the Ingredients of Happiness

Thirty-two-year-old ‘happiness guru’ Dr Cooper Hunziker has it all – a dream job as assistant psychology professor at Yale University, a soon-to-be published self-help book, The Happiness Connection, and the perfect guy. But there’s a problem. Cooper isn’t happy.

Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s facing cut-throat competition for her tenure at Yale, an accusation of plagiarism that could cost her everything, or that her new book has irritated the department chairman, who assigns her to co-lead a happiness group at the New Haven library.

As her friendship with the other ladies in the group flourishes, Cooper finds herself questioning her choices. Forced to face a life-changing betrayal, a gargoyle’s wisdom, and her own traumatic past, can she navigate her own path to happiness?

About a Clue in the Crumbs

A Clue in the Crumbs, #13 in the Key West food critic mystery series, Coming August 8th!  

Food critic Hayley Snow and her pal Miss Gloria are overjoyed to welcome Violet and Bettina Booth, aka the Scottish Scone Sisters, to Key West. The sisters will host The UK Bakes!—Key West Edition. But the same day they arrive, the bed-and-breakfast hosting the sisters is torched.   The contest begins the next morning featuring three local bakers. One is the inn owner’s wife, Rayna, who is not only the most talented chef of the group but now a person of interest in the fire. The next night, a dogwalker discovers a body near the bed-and-breakfast. The victim appears to be Rayna’s husband, and the murder weapon points directly to the Scottish Scone Sisters.   But the show must go on. In between filming sessions, the three elderly ladies and Hayley must search for clues to the brutal murder in order to find out who wants to force them out of the kitchen. But as they draw closer to the answer, the threats from a murderer grow closer too. Are they now in danger of getting baked off?  

“Food lore, island delights, and mystery provide something for everyone.” —Kirkus Reviews  

“But how many new ways can an author concoct for the protagonist to find a dead body? I needn’t have worried – and neither should fans. This Key West murder mystery has twists, turns – and cake.” –Cathy Salustri, The Gabber   Order the book wherever books are sold: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729842/a-clue-in-the-crumbs-by-lucy-burdette/https://lucyburdette.com

https://facebook.com/LucyBurdette www.instagram.com/LucyBurdette

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lucy-burdette  

About Lucy Burdette

Clinical psychologist Lucy Burdette aka Roberta Isleib is the author of 23 mysteries, including A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS (Crooked Lane Books.) Both the twelfth book in her Key West series, A DISH TO DIE FOR, and the tenth, THE KEY LIME CRIME, won the Florida Book Award’s bronze medal for popular fiction. Her first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS and her first thriller, UNSAFE HAVEN, have been published by Severn House. Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She’s a past president of Sisters in Crime, and currently president of the Friends of the Key West Library.  

Wicked Wednesday: Tossing Ideas

by Julie, enjoying summer

Wickeds, one of the hardest things to do as a writer is to toss an idea that we love. What do you do with those ideas? Do you have a file of ideas? Do you bring them back in other books? Is there an idea you’ve tossed that you hope to use someday?

Edith/Maddie: I keep a few ideas for short stories on my white board, but I’m not disciplined about recording sparks for short fiction. I’m secretly (ahem, not anymore) delighted that a protagonist for whom I conceived an entire (and editor-rejected) series will have a starring role in DEADLY CRUSH, the second Cece Barton mystery (said editor had no issues with accepting Josie Jarvin as a supporting character). When an idea pops up for the next book in any of my series, I always try to add it to a file. If it doesn’t get written down, the memory evaporates.

Jessie: Congrats on reviving someone you wished to use, Edith! This question really got me thinking, Julie! Over the years I have found that my books evolve over quite a long period of marinating in the back of my mind. I thought about my Change of Fortune series for several years, including the research, before I started the actual writing. I have been researching and mulling over my current work in progress for more than two years. So, the ideas I have seem to be evaluated on an unconscious level before I ever get to a point of pain with having to discard them. Something I have done on a couple of occasions is to write what turned out to be two books whilst thinking that I am writing one. It is a terrible muddle when it happens, but I end up prying them apart and enjoying the end result. Nothing goes to waste!

Liz: I definitely keep an idea file, Julie! I also like to let projects marinate for a while, Jessie. For me it’s about the evolution of some long-term projects where situations and people evolve from when I started thinking about it, which changes a lot of the trajectory of the story. And I definitely have characters that are still kicking around from books that never got published. I’m sure they’ll make an appearance somewhere down the line!

Barb: I don’t keep an idea file. For years, I’ve believed that the ideas that keep coming back to you, kind of haunting you, are the ones to pay attention to. Now that I’m older and have a tendency to forget things, maybe I should revisit this premise! I do think my best books, and the books that were easiest to write, are the ones that had time to marinate. I love to find a good narrative, non-fiction book about whatever I’m writing about and read that well ahead of when I have to start writing. I often revisit themes. It seems like it takes me at least a couple of books to be done with them. So in that sense I definitely reuse ideas instead of tossing them.

Sherry: I remember reading (somewhere) that Handel wrote the Messiah in three days. If that was true there must have been a LOT of marinating going on. I have a computer file called “book ideas.” It has proposals my editor asked for that went nowhere and other ideas that I’ve played around with, but never fully developed. Sometimes I pull it all out and blow the dust off.

Julie: Sherry, a lot of marinating indeed! Or maybe he got the gig late, and had to hit a deadline? I have been working on an idea file for the past couple of years. Usually they are attempts at short stories that became the beginning of a novel. But I’ve also had characters, or scenes, that I loved and hat to cut. Those also go in a file to help prompt me for another project. I find that if I don’t write it down it’s gone.

Readers, what do you do with ideas that you love that don’t “fit”? These ideas can be craft patterns, recipes, book ideas, songs? Do you revist them for inspiration? How do you keep track?

A Wicked Welcome to Vaseem Khan!

by Julie, summering in Somerville

I am delighted to welcome Vaseem Khan to the blog today! Many of us had a chance to meet him at Malice Domestic this year, and perhaps be introduced to his Malabar House series or his Baby Ganesh Agency series, or to learn more about them. There’s a new book in the series coming out soon, so there’s time to catch up.

An elephant in a crime novel?  

I wrote my first novel aged 17 – a comic fantasy. Even then I loved the notion of being a tweedy writer, a man of letters, admired, envied, a doyen of the literary establishment… I also thought it would be a good way to avoid having to get a real job. There was one small problem with my cunning plan… that first book was rubbish!

I wrote six more novels across twenty-three years before finally being published at age 40 with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, a crime novel about an Indian policeman who is forced into retirement in his forties and, while solving a murder, also has to deal with the unusual predicament of inheriting a one-year-old elephant. The book was a bestseller and picked by the UK Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels published 2015-2020. Many readers tell me it’s the closest they’ve come to actually traveling to India!

Why the elephant? Though I was born and grew up in London, England, I lived in India for a decade in my twenties. One of the first sights I saw was that of an elephant swaying through the insanely congested traffic of a Mumbai road. That image stayed with me, so that when I returned to the UK, and decided to write about this incredible country, I knew an elephant had to be part of the cast.

After five books in that series (known as the Baby Ganesh Agency novels), I moved back in time to write a historical series set in 1950s India, written in a Golden Age style. The Malabar House novels were born of my desire to explore India just after Independence, when the modern India we see today was formed.

Beginning with Midnight at Malabar House, we witness a nation still reeling in the wake of Gandhi’s assassination and the horrors of Partition when a million Indians died in religious riots. My lead character, Persis, India’s first female police detective, is determined to prove herself in a man’s world, but is banished to Bombay’s smallest police station, Malabar House, populated by rejects and misfits. (The Times said: “Think Mick Herron in Bombay”!) And then the murder of an English diplomat falls into her lap, and she is forced to work with Archie Blackfinch, an English forensic scientist deputed to Bombay from the Met Police in London. It’s an uncomfortable, will they-won’t-they relationship. After all, how can an Indian woman in post-colonial India consider an Englishman as anything more than a colleague…?  

I have readers all around the world and they are endlessly fascinated with India, both past and present. With each book I want to explore a particular theme – for me, that’s the challenge. For instance, the Malabar House novels are crime novels, but they allow me to slip in details to correct omissions and misconceptions from the British time in India. In The Lost Man of Bombay, the third in the series, a white man is found murdered in the Himalayan foothills with only a notebook in his pocket containing cryptic clues. In the book I mention that Mount Everest was named after a Welsh surveyor who worked in India. But George Everest never went near the mountain, nor determined that it was the world’s highest peak. An Indian named Radhanath Sikdar did that. Alas, you won’t find Sikdar’s name on any map. We often hear that history is written by the winners. It gives me great satisfaction to redress the balance!

My latest novel (out in the UK on 8 Aug) is Death of a Lesser God and asks a simple question – can post-colonial societies treat their former colonisers justly? James Whitby is an Englishman born in India during the Raj, convicted in post-Independence India of murdering a prominent Indian lawyer. He claims he is innocent, the victim of a form of ‘reverse racism’. Persis and Archie have eleven days to find out if Whitby is innocent or guilty before he is hanged. The clock is ticking!  

Reader question: Do you enjoy learning about hidden history or facts you didn’t know when reading crime novels?  

About the Author

Vaseem Khan is the author of two award-winning crime series set in India. His debut, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, was a Sunday Times 40 best crime novels published 2015-2020 pick. In 2021, Midnight at Malabar House, the first in the Malabar House novels set in 1950s Bombay, won the Crime Writers Association Historical Dagger. In 2023, Vaseem was elected the Chair of the 70-year-old UK Crime Writers Association. Vaseem was born in England.

Website: http://vaseemkhan.com

Social media: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/VaseemKhanOfficial/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/VaseemKhanUK
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vaseemkhanwriter/

Buy links to Amazon:
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra
Midnight at Malabar House
The Lost Man of Bombay
Death of a Lesser God   (Available for UK pre-order)

Fountain of Youth

Jessie: In New Hampshire where the roses are blooming and the birds are chirping!

I think that everyone has at least one belief that helps guide their actions, like that cleanliness is next to godliness, or that one good turn deserves another. I am always curious about those types of operating systems others are employing as well as the ones running my own life. One of the best ways I have found to ferret out my own is to observe what I write about in my novels, which is how I discovered something I believe that delights me.

For the past several years I have written the Beryl and Edwina mysteries which feature two dear friends who move through the world in very different ways. Beryl”s adventurous nature sits in opposition to Edwina’s cautious approach to life. It would have to be said that in general my life far more resembles Edwina’s than it does Beryl’s. I live in a small village, I love to knit, to garden and to read. I am a decent cook. I tend to think things through and am not in any way addicted to speed in motorized vehicles.

That said, I think I share something with Beryl that is philosophical. Like her, I am comfortable with trying new things and being a beginner. I love to learn new information, to try my hand at unfamiliar skills and to admit that I am not accomplished yet at a pastime that interests me. For instance, in the last three or four years I have taken up painting and running. I am not particularly good at either one.

I set up an easel and an art cart filled with supplies in a corner of my kitchen that is in view of my cooking cockpit. From my stove or my sink I can look at whatever I have daubed onto a canvas and evaluate it. I am never satisfied with the results, but I am intrigued to see what I have done and how it could creep closer to my imaginings of what it might become. I pat myself mentally on the back for giving it a go.

As to the running, I am still a rank beginner. Despite having worn out a few pairs of shoes, I continue to be very slow. My milage is unimpressive and I am near the back of the pack whenever I participate in a race. I’m the sort of runner who people cheer loudly for because they can see I could use the encouragement.

While my results in these areas has not been earth-shattering, I truly believe that being willing to be a beginner is the real fountain of youth. Each new book that I write provides a me the opportunity to feel like a beginner too. Creating new characters, trying out different time periods and developing fresh plots gives me the chance to learn, to risk, and to reach and for that, I am truly grateful.

Readers, what is a philosophy you hold dear? In which ways would you consider yourself a beginner?