Alec Peche's Blog, page 2

Finally an upgrade to my website!

I recently updated my website www.AlecPeche.com. I have to say it was a pretty magical experience. The above picture is my homepage image. My prior website was written in the HTML coding language, which is to say I had to have other people make changes to the website. I played with a few out-of-the-box website design software packages and settled on one of them that had specific designs for authors. Now, if you go to www.alecpeche.com, you’ll find new content and “buy now” links that will take you straight to Amazon for purchase. I feel like quite a techie for designing and uploading my own website, then going a step farther to optimize it for mobile!

I debated selling books directly from my website, but I wanted my readers to be secure in their payment transactions and I trust Amazon. Also Amazon formats my books so that they appear nice in e-reader apps or on Kindle. If I did the download, I think the reader might be stuck with a Word document to read; which is not the best way to read a mystery story.

   My blog will appear on my own website (an improvement) as well as in its current location - Goodreads. Pictures that are posted on Facebook will appear on my own website. I’ll add excerpts of my works in progress over time. If you see a mistake that I’ve made or want some content added, please let me know at author@AlecPeche.com, a new email address.

Happy spring!

New series = new beginning!

As I announced last week on my Facebook page, I’ve put aside book 7 of the Jill Quint, MD, mystery series and begun an entirely new murder series. The title of the first book will be RED ROCK ISLAND, set in San Francisco, California on an actual island in the bay. The series will be led by male protagonist Damien Green, and his female sidekick Natalie Severino, a retired detective from the San Jose Police Department.

I had about 20% of Jill Quint book 7, Castle Killing, written and I was struggling to put in four hundred words a day to the story line. After six books it’s hard to think of new reasons for the four main characters of that series to be together and to solve a crime in under a week or two. I do believe I’ll go back and finish that book in the future but in the meanwhile I’m enjoying shaping my new characters and their back story.

When I started to think about a new series, I knew I wanted a complete change of characters. In the Jill Quint series, Jill traveled the United States and Europe solving cases. In the Damien Green series, he’s a loner that rarely leaves his rock of an island. He has good reason to feel that way as seven years before the story begins, his wife and two daughters were murdered by an escaped convict. The first book fills in his story and his reasons for clinging to the island. At the same time, he has been and continues to be, a brilliant inventor and engineer; two skills that make living on the island possible and make him an asset to retired detective Severino when she occasionally calls upon him for help. She was the detective that informed him of his family’s murder, found the perpetrator, and shot him dead. In his isolated life, she’s the closest human to Damien. Natalie in retirement, works as both a private investigator and sporadically as a consultant to her old department.

As the island is small and rocky, his pets through this new series will be two cats. While I’d love to have a dog in the story, the island’s shores are too rocky and steep for a dog to be safe. My muse for the setting of this new mystery series actually exists in San Francisco Bay, I’ve just taken the liberty of fantasizing what it would be like to build and live in such a location. Red Rock Island will introduce you to the new series as Damien and Natalie solve a cold case.

I expect the book to be published this summer. It’s such fun embarking on the adventure of creating a new series! I’m also looking forward to creating a new book cover that brands this series different from the Jill Quint series.

Cheers,
A. Peche

Art imitates life….or at least it does with book series characters…

I just finished the fourth Harry Potter book and I’m presently listening to the book #42 of the JD Robb In Death series - Brotherhood in Death and as a reader I’m very happy to see the revolving characters grow in each story. A good book series is like a friendship, as you know your friend for a longer period you know them better - they think and act as you expect them to. Predictability is not boring in a book series; rather it’s the hallmark of great writing. When you have fictional characters, how do you show more of each character’s personality in every story yet also keep the characters’ actions consistent and true. I think as both a reader and a writer, I look forward to learning how a master does that with a long running series.

In Harry Potter, Harry fought with his best friend Ron. Not fisticuffs, but rather it was a fight of emotions and that allowed the reader to learn more about Harry and Ron and in the end deepened their relationship. I haven’t finished book 42, but already Eve and Roarke fought over a sentimental piece of furniture from the first or second book in the series. As a reader I was at first offended by the fight as it seemed shallow and therefore out of character; but as the emotional fight continued, I understood it was entirely within character for these two to fight.

As I look at my own series and work on book seven - CASTLE KILLING, I find myself looking for ways to show more nuances of my repeating characters’ personalities. Certainly the four women that comprise the investigative team haven’t fought with each other like the teenagers of Harry Potter, or the married couple of the In Death series. Jill and Nathan have had a few minor clashes, but nothing explosive. I’m looking for ways in the storyline to show more of each character to the reader and so book seven will have a pivotal moment that exposes more of Angela, Jo, Marie, and Jill’s personality to the reader.

As a reader, I like book series. When I fail to finish a book, it’s because I don’t like the book’s characters or I don’t care what happens to them. This usually happens when I’m reading a new author for the first time. Whenever I write and look at my story’s progression, I ask myself, is there enough there for the reader to care about the women in my series? I hope so as it’s my duty as a writer to make my reader care about my characters.

The last adult to read Harry Potter

Recently I listened to the first book of the Harry Potter series. I feel like I’m the last adult on earth to have not read a Harry Potter book, or watched a movie or otherwise have been touched by the series. I’ve read and loved all three of JK Rowling’s mystery writer (penname -Robert Galbraith’s) books. I like the detective she created Cormoran Strike as a character. He has many layers and oddities, but yet is still believable and the mysteries are good.

I also add that I don’t as a rule read fantasy, vampires, or young adult books. There are so many good mystery, thriller, and frankly romance books, that I haven’t run out of the genre yet. I purchased the Sorcerer’s Stone as an audiobook and sat back awaiting to be amazed by a master storyteller. After listening to the first line and the first page, I wasn’t gripped by the story. It’s wasn’t bad, just mildly entertaining for me. In the mystery genre there is great pressure to open with an amazing first sentence and page.

Perhaps an hour into the seven hour audiobook, Harry arrived at the Hogwarts School, and then I begin to appreciate the foundation of the story. An eleven year old boy attending a magic school that sounded like one of those stiff upper lip British preparatory schools. The material the author had to create a rich story and indeed a series that could carry on exploded into my imagination. The icing on the cake for me was the game of Quidditch. I so admired the literary talent that it took to create that game and know that the story needed the game. To think that they would play a different game than mere mortals, but to then make it similar enough that you could grasp the game was brilliant on the part of Rowling. I want to see the movie just to watch that game come to life. In fact I’ve already watched a film clip on You Tube.

In an age of Disney and other children’s roles wherein children are separated from their parents, then reunited with family toward the end of the story, this was a story less about the traditional family and more about coming of age with one friends while being mentored by a larger family of witches and warlocks. The story gives Harry and his immediate friends a moral code from the start. They don’t use the invisible coat and the broomstick for greed, rather in Harry’s case at the end of this first story, he now had a means to fairly fight his bully cousin - not to beat him with magic, but rather to contain the damage the kid had done in the past.

I’ve never used my blog to review a book and that is not what this post is about. Rather I am admiring JK Rowling’s imagination and writing skills as the force behind what has now become the Harry Potter Empire. I know she discussed on Twitter in recent days the naming of Harry Potter’s child, so I’m looking forward to reading the next installation to enjoy the journey as Harry transforms from an eleven year old to a father and what adventures he’ll have along the way.

I know I have seven or eight more books to read to get to the end of the series and I’m looking forward to examining how Rowling expands her characters with the next book and perhaps have a glimpse as to why she ended the series. In my current series Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist, one of the things I’m thinking about is when is it time to end a series. I have six books complete and another in my head, so maybe Rowling as the Master writer, will help me understand when it’s time for a series to end.

The joys of traveling by satellite

Currently I am about two-thirds of the way through book 6 set in Dallas, Texas. It’s different from my previous five books in that I’ve visited Dallas for four days and El Paso, Texas for two days. Other than those two trips, I’ve not stepped foot in the state of Texas except to change planes. Nearly a year ago when visited my niece and her husband in that state I did with a mindset that I would be setting a future book in the city. In my other books, I’ve had more extensive knowledge of the story’s setting.

I visited major tourist sites and the most expensive mall trying to absorb a flavor for the city and the region with a mind toward murder. The story was complicated by the fact that I had promised a friend I would write her into the story. And of course the icing on top is that I am a pantser. I never know where my writing takes me or who the bad person is going to be. I’ve changed the murderer twice in this story as I’ve gone on. What I’ve also learned with this book is it didn’t make sense for the story to stay in Dallas so my scanty knowledge of Texas was further in trouble by the story moving to a city I have never been to west of Texas.

For authors that can outline their story, it must be strange and unnerving to hear a pantser talk about how they write. How could I not know at the start of the story that it would have to move to another city? The answer is somewhat in that as an American I associate Texas with the petroleum industry. What I found in working on this story is that there is a lot of the petroleum industry that happens outside the city of Dallas. In fact much of it does. It has led me to study those cities and the industry obsessively so I can get my descriptions right.

I’ve found some areas of Texas that will never be on my bucket list to visit in my study of the state. But someday, I would love to motor down the Rio Grande River that separates the United States from Mexico. It looks beautiful from the satellite view. What I can’t discern is the current of the river or the hardships of the people trying to cross it seeking a better life in the United States. It looks very wide in some places and I am amazed at the lack of houses enjoying that view. In the end I decided it was likely a little too desolate. There would be expenses related to getting food and other resources to the isolated location and there might be danger if the drug cartel decided that your piece of that scenic river was the new narcotics route for them.

Someday I’ll travel to that part of the world and learn more about the land and people than I can view by simply ‘beaming down to the area’. Meanwhile, my next book is set in the UK, a place I have visited five to seven times. I’ll still due loads of research, but I think I’ll have a better feel for the land and its people.

Poisons!

My present work in progress, Murder at the Podium, is a story about a woman who dies while giving a presentation at a hospital convention. Poison is the weapon. Before I started writing this book , I did a fair amount of research on poison as I like to get my facts straight as nothing make the reader madder than an author writing about something that isn’t possible to the average scientific mind. I had a few favorite poisons that I kept notes on for when that became an important part of the story.

When picking a poison, the writer has to consider how the victims dies and the qualities of a particular poison. For example, generic pipe cleaners like liquid plummer destroy the human digestive track and trachea when ingested but it’s not like you can sneak that substance into your victim’s food or drink.

Prescription drugs in excess make good poisons, but then there has to be a way in your story for the murderer to obtain the particular prescription drug. Since many medicines are plant based, a killer could try making them from scratch. For example Digitalis is a heart medicine that causes the heart to fail when overdosed. It is from the plant digitalis or foxglove. There are twenty species of digitalis and so you have to pick the right plant and grind it up to make it pure for treatment. As the drug was first discovered in 1785, a time when today’s pharmaceutical production techniques were not yet discovered, it makes sense that this plant had the potential to poison with relative ease of preparation.

Another source of poison is radioactive isotopes like polonium. Less than three ounces of polonium are produced each year. A very tiny amount when inhaled or injected can kill. While it is a rare metal found in uranium ore, it can be purchased outside of the purview of the nuclear regulatory agency in small quantities and is used in manufacturing related to static electricity. It doesn’t damage a human through skin, but it’s hard to work with and would require a significant scientific background on the part of the murderer.

Gelsemium is an interesting poison and all three species of the flower are poisonous. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Homes, experimented with this plant in the late 1800s and recorded his findings in an article in the British Medical Journal. He couldn’t stand the side effects of the drug after he reached a quantity of 9ml of the flower. Talk about sacrifice for the craft of writing! In the last decade Gelsemium is linked to the deaths of two men - a Chinese and a Russian political figure.

Agatha Christie preferred poison as her weapon of choice in most of her stories. She gained knowledge while being trained as a nurse in World War I. To pass the nurses’ exam she spent time with a chemist understanding the medications he compounded and the distinction between a substance being helpful or harmful. Throughout her long writing career, she contacted experts with chemicals to test out her theories. She did make up a few poisons in some of her books, but the vast majority of substances used in her stories were real poisons.

Poisons continue to be used in modern day as an instrument in homicide. Modern forensic pathology exams have made it increasingly difficult to hide the detention of poisons in the body at the time of autopsy and certainly that discovery of a poison becomes a part of a story line. Two of my Jill Quint series used poison as the murder weapon - “A Breck Death” and my future release “Murder at the Podium.”

Alec Peche

Literary experts say that there are only seven plots in fiction. Hmmm

The seven plots are: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. The plots can be used for any genre - romance, mysteries, fantasy, children’s stories, and science fiction. Despite just seven plots, over a million new books are published each year worldwide.

At the beginning of my writing journey, I came across this comment about limited plots. I worried about my works being unique. I googled character names so that even my choice of characters could not be compared to another author’s works. Now occasionally a reader will ask who my works compare to and I am often at a loss. Kathy Reichs comes to mind, but my forensic pathologist is different from her forensic anthropologist and vastly different from Patricia Cornwell’s. In the end, I describe my books as soft-boiled mysteries. When I look at my book on Amazon and see what Amazon’s recommendations are, Kathy Reichs name comes up and do a host of what appears to be Cozy mystery authors. My present series is not considered a cozy as the stories are not set in small towns and my main protagonist is not an amateur sleuth.

Who you compare to in the world of fiction is both important yet irrelevant. My four favorite mystery authors have vastly different styles. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch is nothing like Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, nor JD Robb’s Eve Dallas. Yet with these authors, I’ll buy their latest release without reading the back cover as I know I’ll enjoy the story. I like the series characters, but they are nothing alike.

How do writers continue to create new stories despite having just the choice of seven plots? The uniqueness of any book is created by the endless combinations of characters, settings, outcomes, and the author’s voice. Added to that, the writer can create a story that is a combination of two plot themes - a Tragic Comedy, or say Overcoming the Monster and Rebirth.

Looking back on my own books, I often use the plot of Overcoming the Monster. It’s hard to create a murder mystery story without the murderer having some sort of monster within. However, I’ve added Humor where appropriate and hints of The Quest as a motive for murder. As an author, I see the characters acting out in my head and so getting their thoughts, behaviors, and actions down on paper is easier. With the exception of my murderers, nearly all of my characters are modeled after someone I know in real life. So when you get right down to it, that variation in the human race is often what makes each story unique.

A Tribute to Libraries

Today, June 29, 2015, I worked the Sisters in Crime booth in the exhibit hall at the American Library Association Annual Meeting. While there I spoke to many people involved with libraries across the country and I also signed my books for readers. Entering the inner world of librarians has given me cause to reflect upon the role of libraries in my life.

As a second grade child, we moved to California and one of the first things I remember searching for, was a library in my new town. Likely I have continuously had a library card for decades since that moment. The library of my childhood is the Google of today. The building represented more knowledge than I could ever hope to absorb in a lifetime, and in the pre-computer and google era, you had to go to a library to look things up. They were the holders of facts.

As a child, I have no memories of going to a book store, my one and only source of books was my local library. Later when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley I spent a lot of time at the libraries on campus. This was pre-computer days and so if you were looking for scientific papers on a topic, you had to search catalog books to find articles. It took hours to find the right article, and then days for a paper copy to arrive by snail mail at the librarian's desk. The Moffitt library at Berkeley had four floors of stacks of book shelves, and loads of hidden desks where students could study in a quiet environment. Each evening I had a few locations that were my favorites and I had the adventure of seeking them out. This was pre-MP3 era and so when searching for the perfect desk, you had to listen to the other people already in the vicinity to make sure they had no annoying habits like a tapping pen or sniffling. There was also a unique smell to the stacks. It was a combination of decades of students and dusty books.
The UC Berkeley library stacks was also where I had my first caffeine reaction. I didn't like the taste of coffee and my fellow students spoke about the energy and alertness they got from coffee. So I went to the local coffee shop and ordered an espresso thinking it might taste better than coffee. It didn't, and once I got to the library stacks, I was sweating and my heart was pounding so loud I couldn't read. I was so affected by the caffeine that in the end I couldn't study.

I left the University mad about a charge for a missing book levied by the library. I took a librarian to the shelf where the book was shelved. Instead of exoneration for an overdue book, the librarian pulled the book out and looked at the date stamp of the check-out and return and noted there was no return stamp. She assumed I had just book the book back on the shelf to avoid the penalty. I swore that I would never contribute money to the University after I graduated due to the book penalty, but time heals all wounds and the University has been a recipient of my charitable contributions.

Next I moved to New York City for graduate school at Columbia University, got a library card and patronized the two public libraries off of 5th Avenue. I loved the fearsome lion statues that guarded the main library, but for fiction I would scan the shelves across the street at the mid-Manhattan library. I don't recall any adventures other than the subway rides to get there with these two libraries. I was a starving graduate student and the library was free entertainment.

From there I moved to Pasadena, California. For the first 9 months there, I was working on my Master's Essay and divided my time between the UCLA Public Health Library and the Los Angeles Library. The L.A. library was in a crowded downtown area with little free public parking. I received a ticket by the city for parking in a reserved space on a Sunday. The sign said that the spot was not reserved on Sundays so I went to court to contest the $35 ticket. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of parking in a fast food restaurant's parking lot and so while I won my court case, my car was towed away and it cost me $85 to get it back.

Next I moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin and got a library card. I discovered audiobooks at this library and eventually, Overdrive. I have probably consumed 700-1,000 books on tape. I like to listen to books while I do chores, garden, drive, and run. I prefer a book to music.

Now I have a library card for the Santa Clara Library district. My discovery at this library has been Friends of the Library, a national with local library affiliates that provides funding and community supporters for a local library. Their book sales are wonderful - they sell used books of all genres for 50 cents to one dollar. My bookshelves are filled with books to read from there.

Libraries are simply wonderful places and they have evolved with the times. They provide free computer access to millions that can't afford the computer and/or the connection costs. In the recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri they demonstrated their value as a safe haven for children whose schools were closed. They're respected and supported by their communities. Let me end with a thank-you for a life of learning that these libraries have provided me.

When life gets in the way of writing…

Most authors speak to a need to write - they see something in the world that inspires them to want to capture that something with words. I am new to the writing world, and haven't felt pressure to write all my life. I began writing a little less than three years ago and have been goal driven to get books written, edited, and published. The first book - Vials, took a year to publish. My second book - Chocolate Diamonds took nine months and books 3 to 5 have needed four months to be completed. As I was closing in on the end of book 5 - A Taxing Death, I decided to take a break from writing to go back and edit a few of the books and spend some time gaining a deeper understanding of marketing options. Then life interfered with those plans.

Like many people across the world, I have a senior parent that needs my help. My mother wants to stay in her own home and live independently. She has been a lifelong introvert and the social activities of senior housing options completely turn her off. She has increasingly become fragile as one would expect at 85. I've taken over various aspects of her life as she has lost abilities - she stopped driving 8 years ago, needed help with her weekly pill boxes about 5 years ago, then I began helping with banking, investments, taxes and meals about three years ago. Then she needed reminders three times a day to take her medicine in the last year and a walker on occasion for balance. Up to three weeks ago, she was able to live alone with frequent visits from me or my brother during the day. Then like many seniors, she took that one bad fall and fractured her 12th thoracic vertebrae. As there are all kinds of nerves in this area of the body, this injury is very painful. Unlike broken bones elsewhere, you can't put the back in a cast. The person has to go on moving with pain. The injury will heal in 6-12 weeks, but you can't put someone on bedrest for that period of time. There are subtle hints that the bone is healing - burping, sneezing, and coughing have become more tolerable.

During this injury period for mom, I have spent hours at mom's bedside first in a local hospital and then in a rehab center before bring her home with live-in help now. Hospitals are terrible environments for seniors - they are confusing places with dumb rules. Mom was admitted with high blood pressure due to the pain, once the pain calmed a bit, her blood pressure returned to normal, but she was left with a low salt diet. I feel that if salt hasn't killed you by 85, then it is not going to. Regardless she is continuing to make very slow progress each day, most of all she is happy to be back on her schedule rather than anyone else's.

During this time period I had a few deadlines on books that I handled while she was asleep. I didn't explore marketing opportunities as planned and I wrote the first 500 words of book 6. Unlike books 1 through 5, I don't have a title yet for this book. It's very strange to save the file as book 6 rather than Death by Convention, or A Dallas Death, or some other title that I have been mulling over in my mind. I've even lost the sticky note I had written on potential book titles. As I have flown by the seat of my pants these past 3 weeks, book 6 is lining up to be my best pantser effort yet as I have no title, no cover, and no outline even as I work on Chapter One.

When life gets in the way of writing, I know how to do the bare minimum to keep my author enterprise afloat while saving my time and energy to handle the lemons thrown in my mother's or my way.

Cheers,

Alec PecheAlec Peche

Taking stock of my journey as a writer…..

Having finished writing book 5 (A Taxing Death) in the Jill Quint mystery series, I'm taking a break from the daily goal of writing a set number of words each day. I feel like I have reached a junction point in my writing endeavor. There are comments from the experts that you don't really have an evaluation of your writing until you produce five to seven books. I've climbed the mountain and I'm looking back down the trail at where I came from with a view of choices to determine where I am going. There are some twenty paths in front of me to take to the next peak, or I could end my journey and return home, never to produce another book again.

For the most part and indeed like most authors I have been on this writing journey alone. I have a few close friends that have helped me shape and edit the books, but every brilliant and lousy decision has for the most part been my sole responsibility.

What started out as a question of 'I wonder if I could write a better mystery?' than the disappointing book that I just put down; has turned into a love of creating stories and solving imaginary crimes. My greatest strength is my imagination, but it is also my greatest weakness. I see words in sentences in my imagination that simply AREN'T there on the printed page. When you have a book the length of 85,000 words, there are a lot of opportunities for those imaginary words to play havoc with a manuscript. I have also broken the cardinal rule of indie publishing - use an editor. I had an editor for my first book and felt that I learned what my bad writing habits were and how to correct them. I was wrong; I'm probably incapable of correcting them. So I am now revising them with a professional editor to improve the experience for the reader. I also listened to a wonderful series of college lectures from the University of Iowa geared to improving my creative writing and I hope readers will notice the difference in A Taxing Death.

I just read the recent newsletters of Louise Penny, a favorite author of mine. She has such a way with words that it feels like poetry. She mentioned that she writes 250 words a day at the start of a novel and eventually advances to 1,000 words a day. That is such a different goal then what you hear from nearly any other writer. Many male crime writers blog about writing 7,000 to 10,000 words a day including the famous Erle Stanley Garner who wrote in the pre-computer era, a remarkable 66,000 words a week. As you may know from previous posts, I try to achieve 2,000 words a day when I am focused on finishing a book. There is no denying the quality of Louise’s 250 words and maybe I have mistaken quantity for quality. Certainly, I think my most productive day has been about 3,500 words. Having a words-per-day goal is a method to moderate my production, but perhaps it's in the way. It's something to think about as I stand atop the hill trying to choose that next right path.

Writers speak to a need to write. On occasion, I’ll feel like sitting down and writing, but the feeling doesn’t beat a drum in my head nagging until I satisfy the urge. Instead, during this no writing period, I miss being a storyteller, observing people’s behaviors or mannerisms for inclusion in a future book.

I guess the other reason I am sitting at a writing crossroads is for the first time, I don't have a book title and cover designed before I begin writing. I know what is bothering me there – should I use the word ‘death’ in the title as I have in the previous three books or do I move on to a different name. Book six is supposed to have a murder take place at a nursing convention in Dallas, and it's likely poison, but nothing is springing to mind in regards to title and cover. I’m sort of tired of using the word 'death' in my titles and I feel like I need to walk away from the “branding” of that word with this book or not at all.

I also have plans to update my website. For an indie author, a website may not get much traffic, but I have seen recent improvements from 7 visitors a week to 150. I’ve got my fair share of Russian and Brazilian spammers visiting, but the increase is also coming from the U.S. according to Google Analytics. I studied several other author websites and have some good changes to incorporate with mine.

Two and a half years ago when I began the journey of being a mystery writer, I thought my only hurdle was figuring out how to tell a big enough story that it would take me 80,000 words to get there. But being an author is so much richer than that – it’s an entire industry itself, undergoing explosive change. I'm always learning about the mechanics of good storytelling, professional organizations and meetings, and just plain good English. And Marketing - how do you make your book discoverable? The answer to that question hounds me from sunrise to sunset simply because there is no easy answer. Furthermore as other writers state and I agree with, there is a certain matter of luck sometimes involved in a bestseller. Finally, reader taste is involved which is very complicated. I listen to 1-3 audiobooks a week - they are my background noise. Each book gets 30 to 60 minutes to engage me and there are things I look for to avoid selecting the wrong book. I have a long list of what I don't like in a book and much of it is popular in today's book world. Discovering new authors is difficult as generally only the most popular writers have audiobook versions.

So where am I one-thousand words later with this blog?

Still standing on that first peak, looking out in the distance, considering my options…

I am a mystery writer after all.