A Lesson From Sports (No, Really!)

I confess, I'm no longer much of a sports person.  I was a big football fan in high school and college, and I loved baseball as a young adult.  But those were a lifetime ago, and I never really got into basketball (except for the John Wooden years at UCLA).

So imagine my surprise when a few days ago I was listening to This American Life on Pandora, and found myself listening intently to a segment on basketball.  (Dangerous discovery, you can stream complete episodes.)  The overall topic was about making bad choices, and several of the segments were fascinating, and held lessons that could be applied to writing, and to life.  I highly recommend the entire episode,  "Choosing Wrong.", but there was one segment that had me running over to stop and start over so I could make notes ("Swish Miss."  featuring Malcolm Gladwell.  It's only 28 minutes, if you don't have time to listen to the entire episode).

The segment was about (in part) crowd behavior and a theory Gladwell references called the "threshold model of collective behavior."  The basic premise is that there is a threshold - different for each person - of the number of people who have to participate in a given behavior before an individual will join in.  Early adapters obviously have a very low threshold.  Same for individuals with a high anger level when the behavior is destructive.

Gladwell went on to talk about basketball, and free throw style.  And this was where my writer brain tuned in.  The subject was Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry.  Chamberlain wasn't great at free throws (he was great at everything else, just not free throws).  Barry had an excellent record.  He set several NBA records, and retired with a 90% free throw average.  (For comparison, a quick search shows Chamberlain's percentage hovering around the 50% mark every year, and current superstar LeBron James hits in the 70% range.) 

But Barry threw underhand; he looked like "a granny."  There's a You Tube video of Barry demonstrating his shot here. Chamberlain took Barry's advice and tried underhand throws. His scores improved.  A lot.  And then he went back to overhand throws and missing.  A lot.  In his autobiography Chamberlain admits point-blank, "I know I was wrong."  But he couldn't bring himself to continue using the underhand shot because it made him feel like "a sissy."

That was the underlying message.  Gladwell describes Rick Barry this way:  "His drive to be a better shooter is stronger than his worry about what others think of him," and draws these two conclusions: 

1.  He put mastery and perfection ahead of ALL social considerations.

2.  It takes courage to be good.  Social courage.

This is really just another way of saying what my writing mentors (Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch) say about not letting other people in your writing office.  As soon as you start to worry about what someone else will think or say about what you are doing, you risk putting social considerations ahead of your drive to be your best; you give up that successful underhand free throw for a more socially-acceptable form, EVEN IF IT MEANS BEING LESS SUCCESSFUL. 

 

And, man, is that a lesson I have to keep re-learning.

It doesn't just apply to writing, of course.  In all aspects of our lives we need to remember to be socially courageous.  Speak up for what you believe in.  Dare to write, or paint, or sing, or dance, or dress, or live, in a way that makes you successful - by whatever definition of success matters to you. 

Courage.  I wish courage for all of you, my friends.

The Sound of Breaking Glass; or, Engage Writer Brain

Somehow this post never got published.  Let me take care of this Right Now!!

There are times when it is extremely difficult not to indulge in the time-honored writer habit of Making Things Up.  It is, after all, what we are paid to do: sit alone in a room and Make Things Up.  I've talked about that before, but it's a part of an incident that happened last week.

L. to R. Barton Grover Howe, Christy Fifield, M.L. Buchman

I was in a friend's shop for a book signing of Murder Hooks a Mermaid.  It's a combination antique shop and bookstore, a delightful jumble of treasures from the last two centuries, collectibles (especially glass and apothecary items), and new and used books.

I was at one end of the shop when I heard a noise near the cash register.  The sound of breaking glass.  That's a scary sound in a shop full of breakables, but it got worse.  The noise didn't stop, and it was accompanied by the crash of something heavy falling over.

Before

Another customer, a woman with two bargain-table books in her hand, had jostled the owner who was walking behind her, knocked him over and in the process knocked over an entire display case.  She managed to topple thousands of dollars worth of antiques.  She knocked over one display case, thereby breaking out the glass front of a second case, and destroyed an entire case of antiques, including some unique and irreplaceable pieces.

And After

She asked the owner something like "Did I do that?" in a way that clearly implied that she didn't, and hurried out of the store, leaving her books on the counter.  Fortunately, the store is insured, and no one was injured, in spite of the piles of broken glass.  But the emotional impact of losing several irreplaceable pieces is a blow my friend will need time to recover from; and we don't know yet what the financial implications will be.

As my husband and I talked about it later, I had to keep from ascribing motives to the woman who knocked over the display.  It felt as though she high-tailed it out of the store without any attempt to take responsibility for the destruction she caused.  But maybe she truly believed she was innocent and left because she was embarrassed.  As I said, I was making things up.

I also realized that, given what I've been writing, this scenario (or something very much like it) will undoubtedly appear in a future book.

And this is where the Writer Brain comes in.

Writer Brain is a symptom all writers seem to manifest.  It is that moment when you detach from some awful event and start storing details to use later.  It's a way of dealing with painful or disturbing situations.

An example?  At the beginning of my summer medical odyssey I took an ambulance ride.  About ninety miles with lights and sirens, in the middle of the night, headed for a regional medical center and emergency surgery.  It should have been terrifying and stressful, and to some extent it was.  But Writer Brain took over.  It quickly occurred to me that this might be the only time I got a close-up look at the inside of an ambulance and I started looking around, trying to store up all the details I could, to use later.

So last week's disaster will show up in a book sometime, just as calls from our police scanner have formed the basis of certain scenes, and other painful - or joyous - personal experiences have informed other stories.

It's the curse (and the blessing) of Writer Brain.

Keyboard Tricks and Treats

So, I'm working like mad to finish the last couple chapters of MURDER SENDS A POSTCARD.  I am at the keyboard all day, typing and tweaking.  Trying not to freak out that this book has to get done.

Then I get an email from a friend of mine.  I have to admit, I have no idea where she got this picture, or who should get credit for the awesome that infuses it.  All I know is that it's a good thing I do not know the source, and don't have time to search for it.  Otherwise, I would be trying to figure out how to get my hands on one.  Right Now!!

I may have to go buy graham crackers and chocolate frosting, just to deal with the craving!!

Panhandling Part 3: Christy and husband Steve Discuss Murder and Mystery on the North Florida Coast

Christy and husband J. Steven York  continue discussing their respective mystery series, both set in the Florida panhandle:

CHRISTY:  When I mentioned colorful characters, I immediately thought about Big Bass, the chief of police in your Panorama Beach stories.  Is he based on anyone you knew, growing up in the South?  I know I've heard stories about a lot of the people that lived around you when you were a kid, but I don't remember any law enforcement people specifically.

STEVE: In Alabama (about 15 miles from the Florida line) we were so far out in the country that we didn't see the law much.  State troopers would cruise through once in a while, and being a fan of cops on TV (re-runs of the old series "Highway Patrol" were a special favorite) I always paid special attention to the cop-cars and motorcycles around city hall.  But as for actually having much to do with actual officers, I don't much remember it.

No, Big Bass is more based on an idea than a person.  Thinking back about the south in that part of the 60s, the legality of segregation in every aspect of society had been broken, but it was still deeply ingrained in the culture.  It struck me that for anyone with visibility to be at all fair-handed with blacks, you had to be something of an outlaw.  Somebody like Big Bass could only survive if he hid his true nature, played the good-old-boy game, and kept enough political dirty tricks up his sleeve to keep himself on top.  So in some ways Bass is that hoariest of southern cliches, the crooked Sheriff.  But he turns that cliche on its head in that he is (sometimes, anyway) a force for good.  Certainly he sees himself as the hero of his story, and he does try to help people and keep his beloved beach from being despoiled.  But his methods are questionable, and he stumbles over to the dark side if there isn't somebody there to turn him back.  Fortunately, there are people to do that, and one of them is Deputy Mustang Sawtell.

Mustang is based on a lot of people I knew, and on some level, he's based on me a little, too.  And I think there's some of my late uncle Wayne in him.  But there's a little of every good-hearted southern boy I've ever met in him.  That's his core.  I just feel that at the core, the character of southern people is kind and generous and hospitable.  But it's also got this strong tradition of intolerance that, to my mind, seems completely incompatible with that.  That dichotomy isn't a southern thing, it's a human thing, and that's a big theme of the Panorama Beach stories.  It's about doing the right thing the best you can when there's nobody to show you the right way, and everything is trying to steer you wrong.  And it's about how good people sometimes do things that are unspeakably evil.

That's really the biggest difference between our two series I think.  In some ways, 1967 and 2012, they might was well be different planets, even through we're talking only a few miles apart.

CHRISTY:  And yet some of the themes you're working with are so universal that they fit any time, and any place.  In writing murder mysteries, we're dealing with characters who do things that are unspeakably evil, who violate the biggest taboo: the taking of a human life.  It doesn't get much worse than that. 

But if we are to create a believable bad guy, he has to have an understandable motive.  He has to think he is doing the only possible thing to achieve his goal, whatever that goal is.  The path that the character takes to  the point where he (or she) commits murder has to make sense to the reader.  Similarly, a character like Big Bass has to make sense within the context of his world, within his definition of necessary actions.

In my books, the victims are killed for a reason.  It might not be what you would call a good reason, but nevertheless the killer must come to a point where killing another person seemed like the only logical path.  And unlike Big Bass, there isn't anyone to pull them back from that murderous impulse.

As you said, however, the South of the 60s and the South of today are definitely different.  Race certainly continues to be an issue within our society, but it does not dominate our social interactions the way it did fifty years ago.  In the Haunted Gift Shop series, I barely touch on the issue, except in occasional historical context.  In fact, I have an interracial couple as secondary characters, and their race is hardly an issue.  The fact that they're gay, well, that may occasionally create problems.

I've noticed something else about your characters, something that certainly reflects the time in which your stories are set.  Many of your characters are military veterans.  What drew you to that background, and why do you think you've made that a central part of so many characters?

STEVE: You know, sometimes you sit down and say, "this is a theme I'm going to write about," and sometimes theme just develops out of story and character.  That's what happened here.

Early on I had the idea that Mustang Sawtell's best childhood friend would have been killed or be MIA in Vietnam, that he would have left him with this Mustang convertible that he drives, that Mustang had never served in the military, and that this would be a source of guilt and conflict for the character.  But as I started writing, it kept coming up again in different ways.

First of all, the military was really pervasive in that part of Florida in those days (and still is).  Panama City had Tyndall Air Force Base, and Eglin Air Force Base near Ft. Walton takes up a huge part of the panhandle with its bombing ranges and satellite airfields.  Then there's the huge Naval Air Station in Pensacola.  It's a very important place for the military, especially military aviation, and it was really buzzing in the 60s, what with Vietnam and the cold-war both in full-swing.  There were military planes in the skies all the time, and you saw military personnel everywhere.

But it's also a matter of history.  In 1967, the WWII generation was in charge of the world, but they were graying, and the world was starting slip from their grasp.  Sheriff Bass is an example of that generation.  We're going to learn that he was a great hero in the Pacific in WWII, saved a lot of lives, and has a lot of friends who remain very loyal to him because of it.  But he also did a lot of bad things in the service of good, and it damaged him in many ways.  He's a danger junkie, and in many ways ruthless.  He's killed many times, and he won't hesitate to kill again if he thinks there's just cause.

Then there's Korea, "the forgotten war," dismissed by many of the WWII generation as "not a real war," and the veterans often treated poorly in a way that echoes the later experiences of Vietnam vets.  My next Panorama Beach Mystery, "The Beat of Angels Wings," delves deeply into this.  It's about a tight group of helicopter pilots who flew air-ambulance missions in Korea, a secret they all share, and how the war has changed them all.  We're also going to reveal that one of our established characters is a Korean vet, someone people might not expect, and their experiences there play a big part in their life.

And of course, Vietnam is looming, not just in Mustang's lost friend, but in the growing unrest in the country that will figure into future installments.

Goofy Golf, Panama City Beach, 1960s

Hmm.  This is getting a little dark and serious.  Let's shift gears and talk about something that I know drew both of us to write about North Florida: the strange, wacky, and wonderful sights and landmarks, both natural and man-made, that dot  (or in some cases, used to dot) the area.  Like some of the things that inspired aspects of Keyhole Bay in your books, and the strange attractions in Panorama Beach.

CHRISTY:  Keyhole Bay is a modern-day tourist town, with all the plusses and minuses that go with an economy based on a constant flow of strangers. In that sense, it has a lot in common with tourist towns across the country; only the geography changes.

The first time I visited Florida, and traveled through the Panhandle, I was astonished.  I'd grown up near the beaches of Southern California, and thought I knew what a beach was all about.  Boy, was I wrong!  The sand was whiter than anything I had seen on the West Coast.  It looked like snow!

All along the coast there were touristy places; restaurants and lodging, of course, but also go-karts, mini golf, souvenir shops, T-shirt shops (LOTS of T-shirt shops), and assorted other attractions.  The wacky, kitschy, slightly tattered tourist attractions had not yet given way to high-rise condos, and I felt like I was a teenager again, at some of the places I'd known in Southern California in the 60s.

In Keyhole Bay, geography has shaped the history and personality of the town.  The small harbor supports both commercial and recreational fishing, and the proximity of the Gulf provides amazing scuba diving opportunities.  So, while it shares much with other tourist towns, it has its own unique attractions.  In Florida, it's all about the water.

One of the places that intrigued me most was DeFuniak Springs, not only for the Chautauqua connection, or the beautiful houses, but for the almost perfectly-round lake.

STEVE:  I loved that lake the first time we saw it.  I'd been driving by it several times every summer, but until a few years ago while visiting with you, I'd never gotten off the main road to see it.  It's like stumbling into some kind of fantasy: the placid, round lake, the historic building, the quaint little small-town main street, the railroad station, and then there's the library.

You go into this tiny little library, and every available wall and shelf that isn't full of books is full of medieval weapons!  It's right out of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer!"  The place demands to be written about, to have some thin layer of fantasy or imagination.  It's a hell-mouth.  It's a star gate.  It's a time-window.  It's the lair of a sea-monster.  It's a bay on a magical fairy ocean in another universe.  It's a place where true love lasts forever.  It's the small town that just happens to be the center of the universe.  It's a town where time moves in circles and loops back on itself in infinite combination.

Sometimes it's that way.  There's a place that's already so special, it just requires just a little twist to turn it into something really special.  I think we both found that in the Florida panhandle...

NEXT: Christy and Steve talk about how writing about fictional towns is still about "keeping it real."

For an important announcement about upcoming "Panorama Beach Mysteries" titles, see HERE!

Panhandling: Murder and Mayhem On the North Florida Coast

PART 1 - Southern Roots

Christy's Husband and Number 1 fan, Steve York here.  You know that Christy writes mystery, of course (thus the name of the site, duh!), but I've been writing professionally even longer than she has.  Even though my roots are in fantasy and science fiction, I've always enjoyed mystery.  Recently I've also taken to writing the stuff, with my Panorama Beach mystery series, and discovered to my surprise that I like it quite a lot.  Which brings me to today's subject...

I'd like to share with you one of those things that can only happen in a two-writer household.  Christy and I are not at all secretive about our work.  We talk about what we're doing all the time, have collaborated on several short stories and science fiction books, and even on our solo projects we often brainstorm together.  But that doesn't mean we always think about what the other person is doing in the context of what we're doing.  We just each write what we want to write, and stuff like this happens.

What this?  Well, Christy and I are now going to kind of interview each other and let you listen in...

STEVE: Seriously, I had no idea it was going on, and I can't even tell you for sure which one of us started first, but I can very distinctly remember the moment, and it was probably after I'd finished my first Panorama Beach installment and you'd finished "Murder Buys a T-Shirt," when I looked up and realized, "hey, both of us are writing mystery series set in the Florida panhandle, in fictional towns on the Gulf Coast."

In fact, if you tried to place our fictional places on a map, they'd probably only be about thirty miles apart, with Keyhole Bay being west of Panorama Beach.  Who did go first, and do you have an idea how this happened?

CHRISTY: Well, since I sold the Haunted Gift Shop series back in 2010, I think I actually started the North Florida mysteries, but it goes back a lot farther than that for both of us. I fell in love with the area the first time we went there, more than 25 years ago.

From that first time I visited North Florida I wanted to write about it.  You took me to see DeFuniak Springs, an incredibly photogenic small town which was an important part of the Chautauqua movement in Florida.  Situated on a perfectly-round lake, it is a beautiful small town, steeped in history.  I could imagine turn-of-the-century ladies in ornate hats and walking suits, being courted by gentlemen in starched collars and spats.

And you've got some deep roots in North Florida, correct?

STEVE: Well, I've always had a nostalgic connection to the place.  When I was a kid, Panama City Beach was the place to go in the summer.  It was a little bit of Disneyland, Oz, and paradise all rolled into one.  In retrospect it was all a bit tacky and cheap, but the beaches were breathtakingly beautiful, the water was warm, and I'll never forget the fun I had with my family there.

Now, I always knew there was some kind of family connection to the inland part of the Florida panhandle.  When I was young we visited a graveyard where some family was buried, extended relatives who lived back in the woods there, and an abandoned cabin where family once lived.  But none of it really sank in, and I didn't realize On a more recent visit we hit some of those places again, but the significance of it still escaped me.

It's only recently, as I've been researching the Panorama Beach Mysteries, that I've discovered how deep that connection was.  Turns out my mom's side of the family comes from Scottish settlers who arrived in the area in the 1820s.  But I've got even older roots than that.  One of the men in my line married a woman of the local Euchee (Yuchi) native tribe, who had befriended the Scots, and that area north of Panama City, along the banks of the Choctawhatchee, had been their home since well back into the 1700s.  So it's ironic that, well before figuring this out, I'd decided that my fictional Panorama Beach deputy would be from a place in the piney woods inspired by those childhood visits, and decided that he was going to have roots there going back into the 1700s.

Speaking of Florida history, you mentioned the Chautauqua circuit.  Most people probably don't know what it is.  Even being from the area, I'd never heard of it until we prowled around DeFuniak Springs together.  Care to explain?

CHRISTY: Chautauqua was an adult educational movement that started shortly after the Civil War.  They brought speakers, musicians, entertainers, and educators to rural communities across the country.  The first Chautauqua was located in New York, on the shores of Chautauqua Lake.  "Daughter" locations grew up around the country, following the pattern established in New York, and Florida was the first of those.

I was aware of the movement, though I didn't know a lot about it.  And now that you ask that question, I went searching for more information.  There's an overview of DeFuniak history at SouthernTravelNews, which includes information on the Chautauqua, and pictures of DeFuniak(such as this one of the Chautauqua Hall of Brotherhood).

You have to remember, this was at a time when many small, rural towns didn't have much in the way of entertainment - unless you count a saloon or pool hall - and there were no movie theaters, no radio, no television, no telephones.  The chance to hear a popular speaker (like William Jennings Bryan or "Fighting Bob" La Follette), see an opera singer, or listen to a traveling orchestra, was a real treat in these communities.

And DeFuniak was a popular tourist destination at the time.  It retains a lot of that 19th century charm.

But there are a lot of other places in North Florida.  You mentioned Panama City Beach, which shares a lot in common with your fictional Panorama Beach.  Care to elaborate?

STEVE: So Chautauqua was like the proto-internet, trying to bring information, education, culture to every part of the country?  Cool.

Anyway, there are a lot of reasons that what we're writing is similar, but there are just as many in which it is different.  One of the biggest differences is that what your Haunted Souvenir Shop mysteries are contemporary, and my Panorama Beach mysteries are historical (though I die a little inside every time I call something that happened in my lifetime "historical!").

They're currently set in 1967, which is the golden-age of my childhood, and pretty much the golden-age for Panama City Beach and that whole part of the coast.  The beaches were still beautiful and accessible, and the beach was experiencing a boom in the building of wild and colorful attractions to bring tourist families to town.  The first major roller-coaster in Florida was in PCB.  There were amazing miniature golf courses with folk-art concrete dragons, monsters, and dinosaurs, there was a Swiss sky-ride, there were two-different trains leading back to two-different old-west towns hidden back in the inland scrub-brush, there was a gigantic fake volcano that spit fire at night, and a knock-off of Seattle's Space Needle   To my memory, it was a shining age, and it was brief, probably only about ten years.

You go to Panama City Beach now, and almost all those attractions are gone, and so is the Gulf, screened off by a near-continuous wall of high-rise condos that blot out the view, and even the sun.  The other side of the beach road is shopping malls and tattoo parlors.  The family-vacation trade has largely been pushed out by a hard-drinking, hard partying, "Girls Gone Wild," spring-break culture.

So while Panorama Beach is a series of murder mystery stories, on the larger scale, it's my attempt to tell a mythological version of that transition on the Gulf Coast.  If you've ever read the work of Carl Hiaasen, he writes in the landscape of a corrupted and despoiled Florida.  I'm telling the story of how that corruption came to be.  It's fictional, but it's the essence of a lot of things that really happened, or at least, could have.  More than once already I've made something up out of whole cloth, and somebody, often my mom, will come along and say, "I've heard that's a lot closer to truth than you think."

NEXT: Christy and Steve talk about writing in real places vs. fictional towns.


Panorama Beach Mysteries: The Best Devil Money Can Buy
AMAZON - NOOK - SMASHWORDS (Also available through all major ebook outlets)
Panorama Beach Mysteries: A Breath Away From Dying
AMAZON - NOOK - SMASHWORDS (Also available through all major ebook outlets)
Panorama Beach Mysteries: Two Bad Days of Summer
(Print collection of both of the above, coming soon)
Panorama Beach Mysteries: The Beat of Angel's Wings
(Ebook coming soon)

Sunday Morning Musing

Number One Fan, AKA husband J. Steven York,  has been on my case to get back on here and talk to y'all.  Being MIA is understandable and all, but at some point you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to the business at hand.


To quote Morgan Freeman, "Get busy living, or get  busy dying."  I choose living.


So I'm going to try and be here more often.


For starters, I want to share some good books with you.  One thing I have discovered is that I tend to read more nonfiction when I'm writing, and I just finished a really interesting book, THE WAVE, by Susan Casey.


I live close enough to the ocean to fall asleep to the sound of the surf.  I love being near the beach.  More than that, I need to be near the ocean.  The flat Midwestern plains?  They make me jumpy-there's no water nearby.  My West Coast roots go deep, I grew up in Southern California is the surfer-60s, and I now live in a tsunami evacuation zone.  (We watched - from a safe distance at the top of our hill - the surge from the Japanese earthquake last year.)  Of course I read this book!


My husband read it first and recommended it to me, and I'm passing along that recommendation.  Here's what he had to say about it:



"As it happens, I just recently finished reading an excellent book about big waves, dealing alternately with big-wave science, big-wave surfers, and the history of giant waves and their impact on people and ships. Amazingly little is known about the huge waves our planet is capable or producing. We don't even know how big they can get, and in fact, scientists are having trouble explaining the biggest waves that have already been reliably been observed. Waves seem simple, but it may actually require quantum physics to decode the mysterious behaviors and energies of giant waves."



And if you're a mystery fan (if you're here, you probably are!) and you haven't yet read any of Julie Hyzy's books, you should.  Her latest White House chef book, AFFAIRS OF STEAK, recently hit the NY Times list.  It's book 5 in the series, and she just keeps getting better!  But start with #1-STATE OF THE ONION.  You won't want to miss a single adventure in our nation's capital.


That's it for now.  I still have some books to write, and some cooking to do, you know.  I'll try to be back more often with bits and pieces from the life of a crazy writer!

STORYTELLERS

Maggie Sefton is a fabulous writer, and a thorough professional.  Here she explores what makes us tick.  Thank you so much, Maggie!!


Christy and I actually met this last spring at Malice Domestic mystery conference. We first met online when we joined a cozy mystery writers group. Since we both needed a roommate to make the conference more affordable, we joined forces and shared a hotel room.


What fun! As mystery authors, we were both already storytellers. But as we started talking—immediately, I might add—we found all sorts of other connections. One of them was a lifelong love of STAR TREK. Yep. We’re both Trekkies. The original was the one that hooked us, but most of us Trekkies went on to be faithful fans of all Star Trek productions---The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and the others as well as the myriad movies.

We also discovered that we’ve each written many other types of novels and stories under other names. Some published, some not. When you’re a born storyteller, you simply HAVE to tell the stories that come to you, capture those fascinating characters that show up in your mind and translate them onto the page. Sometimes the novels sell, sometimes they don’t. Whatever happens. . .you keep telling your stories. And, telling other people about them.

I’m in the midst of touring this month with the newest release in my New York Times bestselling Knitting Mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime. The 8th in the series, SKEIN OF THE CRIME, came out June 1st. Personally, I love to travel around and meet readers and other book people. But then, I’m a “people” person and am certainly not shy. You can ask Christy. I love talking about my sleuth, corporate refugee Kelly Flynn, and her friends who gather at that great yarn shop in Colorado. That’s where they kick back and knit and juggle their fast-paced 30-something lives. Of course, a murder always intrudes, and CPA Kelly cannot resist poking her nose into the investigations.

If you’d like to learn more about Kelly and the gang and the other mysteries, you can check out my website at http://www.maggiesefton.com/. I also blog with six other cozy mystery authors on http://www.cozychicksblog.com/. And---Christy and I are letting our characters blog on KILLER CHARACTERS with a bunch of other mystery authors. Please check it out. http://www.killercharacters.com/.

Life Is Full of Mystery

Guest blogger Paty Jager finds a little bit of mystery in everyday life.  As an honest-to-god ranch wife in the modern West, she writes fascinating tales of the Old West, including a forthcoming paranormal series.

Wife, mother, grandmother, and the one who cleans pens and delivers the hay; award winning author Paty Jager has not only brought her husband of thirty years to maturity, but four children and over a hundred head of cattle and swine. She not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

Every day of our lives has a bit of mystery or intrigue in it. The gas light is blinking in your car. Will you make it to the gas station or have to call someone to either pick you up or bring you gas? You're on your way home from work. What's for dinner? Did you put meat out that morning or will it be something leftover from the night before? Or You've been called to the boss' office. Are you getting a raise or are you getting the boot?

For a writer each unique person we see becomes a puzzle or mystery. We wonder about their occupation, their background, their family life. We invent lives for them and eventually use them in a story.

It is these mysteries and our inquiring minds that bring forth books.
My first published book was inspired by thoughts of—what if an accident prone woman pretending to be a young man was made Marshal of a small town? While the story is a historical western romance there is mystery woven throughout the book. Is the Mayor really what he seems; is the hero a hero or an outlaw? What happened in the hero's past? Will the heroine keep her identity a secret when it matters most?
The first contemporary western I wrote started after I heard on the radio about a youngster who ordered items over the internet with their parent's credit cards and the parents didn’t know until the items arrived at their home. A mystery. My book started with a nanny showing up to start a job and the ranch owner not having a clue why she was there because his preteen daughter and a neighbor ordered the nanny over the internet. Mystery- Does he let her stay or send her packing? Why did she pick a remote ranch to be a nanny? Why does he not want anything to do with a woman? Why does he need a nanny? All these mysteries are solved in the book.
I enjoy reading mysteries and I enjoy incorporating mystery into the stories I write. What was a book you read that wasn't categorized as a mystery but it had elements of mystery within the pages?


Paty has four historical western romance novels available through The Wild Rose Press and one contemporary western, which won the 2008 Best Contemporary Romance EPPIE. In June her fifth historical western, Doctor in Petticoats, will be released and her first book of a historical paranormal trilogy, Spirit of the Mountain, will be released in August. To learn more about Paty, her books, and to enter her website contest go to http://www.patyjager.net/ or visit her blog at http://www.patyjager.blogspot.com/



Christy, thank you for having me here today. I enjoy Georgiana Neverall and the interesting characters that keep her company.

A Winning Proposal!

Jenn Mc Kinlay is today's guest blogger.  Jenn's new series, The Cupcake Bakery Mysteries, just launched with SPRINKLE WITH MURDER, and she graciously shares the query that landed her a three-book deal with Berkley Prime Crime.  In its starred review, Publishers Weekly says, "Readers will look forward to more of McKinlay’s tasty concoctions. "

I don't know about the rest of you, but after reading this proposal, I have to read this book!!

Thanks, Chris for inviting me to blog! I'm normally found blogging Wednesdays on Mystery Lover's Kitchen http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/, but it's always nice to branch out to another location!

When I was trying to get published, I listened to what everyone said.

They all said, "Write what you want to read and you'll get published".

Well, I did and I didn't.

Then everyone said. "Write what you know and you'll get published."

Well I did and I didn't..

Honestly, I was beginning to believe that there was some secret handshake and if I just knew where to work n the high five and the back hand slap, I'd get in the published club. Yeah, well, there isn't. (Believe me, I checked).

What there is, however, is luck, timing and presentation. For once in my day late, dollar short life, I think I got lucky and my timing was spot on, but it really helped that I presented well. After not selling a bazillion
ideas, I wrote a simple proposal with no chapters, sent it in, expecting nada, and sold it in a three book deal in five days.

I can't help you with luck and timing, but I can share with you the proposal that launched my cupcake bakery mystery series, which debuted on March 2 with the first title: SPRINKLE WITH MURDER.

SPRINKLE WITH MURDER: A Fairy Tale Cupcake Mystery

by Jenn McKinlay

Melanie Cooper: 34, born and raised in Scottsdale , AZ.  Chubby as a kid because of her sweet tooth, Mel attends college in Los Angeles , loses all the weight, gets a degree in marketing, gives up sweets and is miserable.

Finding solace from her unhappiness in a nearby bakery makes her realize she wants to pursue her interest in cooking.  She moves back to Arizona , finishes studying at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute and goes to study in Paris for one year where she learns how to have her cake and keep the weight off.

When she moves back to AZ, she decides to open up her own business, Fairy Tale Cupcakes, with seed money from her two childhood friends, Angela DeLaura and Tate Harper.  The shop specializes in catering weddings and parties, but it also has several flavors of the day for drop ins, and Mel teaches cupcake baking and decorating classes.

Unfortunately a rival bakery owner, Olivia Puckett, would like nothing better than to see Mel fail.
Mel lives in a studio apartment situated above her cupcake shop in Old Town Scottsdale, a big tourist venue with a small town flair.  She loves her view of the town green and her proximity to the art museums, but she is less thrilled that her mother has a key to her place and likes to use it.

Joyce Cooper has never given up hope that Melanie will marry her childhood sweetheart, Tate Harper, even though Melanie keeps telling her that they’re just friends.

Angela DeLaura: 33, Mel’s best friend since the 6th grade, when Angie moved to Scottsdale from Queens , NY .  Angie is the youngest of eight children, all seven older siblings are brothers who would prefer she lived in a convent and have ruined every relationship she’s ever had with their overprotective ways. 

Angie leaves teaching at the school where her oldest brother is principal to go and work at Fairy Tale Cupcakes with Melanie.  None of the brothers are happy about this decision and frequently show up at the shop to check on her. Several of the brothers are married with children and their wives think Angie is doing the right thing and her nieces and nephews love the cupcake store. 

Angie is determined to gain her independence. Mostly, because she’s been in love with Tate Harper since they were kids and she knows this is her last chance to get him to notice her.  No one knows about Angie’s feelings for Tate and it comes as a shock to Mel when she figures it out, especially since Tate is about to marry someone else.

Tate Harper, 35, a childhood friend of Mel and Angie’s. He’s always been their protector and confidant.  A complete nerd in school, Tate befriended Mel and Angie because of their shared love of sweets and old movies and the three of them spent much of their teen years gorging on junk food and watching classic movies in Tate’s childhood home, which was a mansion. Even now, they quote classic movie lines to one another and get together for popcorn and movies.

An economics major, Tate has a true gift for numbers and makes oodles of money for his father’s investment company, but he has no sense of people and is frequently taken in by con artists and scammers.  Aside from being very wealthy, he’s also become very handsome. Women have been chasing him for years, but he has always been oblivious. That is, until Christie Stevens comes along. In a few short weeks, she steamrolls him into an engagement.

Since Mel is just starting up her business, Tate thinks his wedding would make a fine showcase for her shop and asks her to make a three hundred cupcake tier for the wedding. Mel doesn’t like Christie but Tate is her friend and investor, so she agrees. Angie balks, but Mel thinks she’s just sore because Tate is getting married first.

Other Characters:

Olivia Puckett: Owner of a rival bakery, Confections, is very unhappy with Mel’s arrival and would like nothing better than to se her fail and slink out of town. Olivia is not above a little sabotage to make it happen. In fact, she frequently does drive-bys in her delivery truck to see how Mel’s business is doing.

Joyce Cooper: Mel’s mother. A widow of ten years , who refuses to date, she really wants to see Mel settled down with a husband and children, preferably with Tate and she tries to throw them together at any opportunity.

The DeLaura Brothers: All seven of Angie’s interfering brothers, including Joe (whom Mel has had a crush on since they were kids), like to keep an eye on their baby sister and frequently arrive at the shop unannounced, unhappy with their sister’s life choices, and not afraid to say so.

Joe DeLaura: A lawyer, working for the district attorney, Joe is handsome, smart, funny and politically ambitious. He has his eye on the mayor’s seat and is working very hard to get himself in the running. Although, he’s always been fond of his kid sister’s friend, Mel, he never really noticed her until she feeds him one of her cupcakes. Now he finds he can’t stop popping into Fairy Tale Cupcakes, even when Mel is suspected of murder and it is political suicide to be anywhere near her.

Christie Stevens: Tate’s fiancé. Christie is the spoiled daughter of a dog food magnate. She is big, blonde and brash and has a pathological need to be noticed. Currently, she has her own clothing design business but rumor has it she’s about to be sued for stealing other people’s designs and calling them her own. She is not well-liked in the community, but her father’s money has bought her a lot of friends.

Old Town Scottsdale : A hive of old western kitsch stores, exclusive art galleries, exotic eateries and more, Old Town is the place to see and be seen. Events like the Parada Del Sol, the only exclusive horse drawn parade in the country, keep the town’s cowboy roots alive and well. The park, in the heart of Old Town , hosts concerts, art shows and cooking events. There is always something happening in Old Town , and yet, most of the residents of this small urban community have lived here all their lives. It retains its small town feel. Everyone knows everyone else and no one minds their own business. Having grown up here, and lived temporarily in Los Angeles and Paris , Melanie can’t imagine any other place she’d rather be.


BOOK 1: SPRINKLE WITH MURDER

Melanie Cooper is happily back in Scottsdale in her brand new business venture Fairy Tale Cupcakes. Business is good, but if she’s going to show a return on her investor’s money, she needs to bring in the bucks. Her investors are her two best friends Tate Harper and Angie DeLaura and while she knows they’ll happily wait for their profits, she feels an obligation to them to succeed as swiftly as possible.

When Tate asks her to make a tier of 300 cupcakes for his wedding, she can’t refuse, even though she is not overly fond of his bride to be, fashion designer Christie Stevens. Because it is an excellent showcase for the business and because he’s her chief investor, she agrees.

Christie is in full bridezilla mode when they meet up to discuss the flavors of the wedding cupcakes. She wants signature cupcakes in her wedding colors in flavors that have never been created before and she wants Mel to sign a contract stating that she will never replicate the cupcakes again. Mel feels torn between wanting to do whatever it takes to make Tate’s bride happy and pushing her face into a bowl full of icing.

Angie talks Mel into taking Christie’s contract to her brother Joe. Mel needs legal counsel and he comes at the best price – free. Joe reads the contract and is disturbed that Christie is demanding to have ownership of the cupcakes. He thinks it’s a little over the top and they wonder if she is doing this to all of her wedding vendors. He advises Mel not to sign it and to talk to Tate about it, but she is reluctant, not wanting to ruin his wedding. She brings Joe some cupcakes as a thank you, and she manages to talk to him for the first time in her life without stammering or turning red. Joe sees his little sister’s friend in a whole new way.

When Christie is found dead in her design studio with a half eaten Fairy Tale Cupcake still in her hand, everyone (including Mel’s own mother) assumes Mel poisoned Christie because she loves Tate. This is very bad for business.

Neither Tate nor Angie believes it, both knowing that she loves Tate as a friend. But as the police seem reluctant to let go of her as suspect number one, Mel realizes she is going to have to solve the murder to save her business and her life.

Mel’s uncle, Stan Cooper, is one of the investigating officers and he seems to think that Tate is the likeliest suspect. He thinks Tate got cold feet and murdered Christie instead of just canceling. Mel wonders if it could be Olivia Puckett, in an effort to have her carted off to jail and squash her competition.

As they begin to investigate, it quickly becomes apparent that Tate didn’t know his bride-to-be very well, and in fact is unclear how they even became engaged. He woke up one morning and she had a ring on her finger, so he just assumed he must have proposed. Angie seems awfully happy about this news, and Mel realizes that Angie has feelings for Tate. She worries what will happen to her if her two friends hook up, or worse if one of them gets heartbroken, but she says nothing.

Mel wonders if it is one of the other wedding vendors, who signed a contract they didn’t want to uphold. She starts to investigate the local wedding businesses. While there are several who are not sorry that Christie is no longer their client, none of them seem to be murderers.

Thinking it must be one of her clothing designers, Mel starts to investigate the design house by using Angie as would be buyer for a clothing manufacturer. It goes well until Angie’s brothers catch on to the plan and botch the whole operation. One of the designers does stand out, however, a young woman by the name of Phoebe. Mel is certain that she knows her but she can’t think where or how.

Christie’s father blames Tate and Mel. He is convinced by the salacious reports in the newspaper that they planned this together. He is applying pressure on the DA’s office to make and arrest, and Angie’s brother Joe has been stalling as long as he can but time is running out. Mel realizes that they have to catch the killer. She and Angie, Tate and Joe stay up watching old murder mystery movies, trying to figure it out. They fail.

*****Paragraph removed to keep from spoiling the mystery ;-)******

Mel, Tate and Angie celebrate the good news. Joe joins them. He is very relieved that Mel is no longer a suspect but admits that he would have asked her out anyway. Tate and Angie seem happy and Mel notices that neither of them is acting any differently than they did before, but every now and then she catches Angie looking at Tate and she knows that her friend is smitten.

The only problem Mel has now is keeping Joe away from her mother. Joyce has given up on foisting her off on Tate, but Mel thinks a lawyer would really make her mother happy. Too happy.

Recipes for cupcakes and tips on decorating to be included.


Future Titles:

Butter Cream Bump Off: Olivia Puckett is once again trying to steal Mel’s customers. This time by dressing up as a giant cupcake and giving away free cupcakes to the first fifty customers in her store every day. Mel knows the challenge can not be ignored and she and Angie cook up their own crazy marketing scheme for Fairy Tale Cupcakes. They offer themselves up in a raffle as the winner’s own Fairy Godmothers for twenty-four hours. Now while Mel is trying to appease their cantankerous contest winner, a crotchety old man who wants real magic, she is once again drawn into intrigue when her widowed mother Joyce is found unconscious at the scene of a murder. Joyce’s first attempt at online dating does not go well when the real estate mogul she is dating is found dead in one of his palatial estates and Joyce is found there with him, unconscious and clutching the murder weapon. While Mel and Joe’s relationship gets stronger, he’s trying to help her mother as much as he can, Angie is beginning to give up on Tate ever noticing her. When she accepts a date with the slain mogul’s son, who is also a suspect, Tate finally realizes that his feelings for Angie are more than friendship. But if the murderer has his way neither Mel nor Angie will be dating anyone ever again.

Death by the Dozen: Fairy Tale Cupcakes is gearing up for its first year of participation in the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. Melanie has entered the Challenge to the Chefs, pastry division, and her main competition is her rival Olivia Puckett. Participants receive a basket of mystery ingredients and have one hour to prepare a scintillating dessert. But when one of the judges is found dead in his car from an apparent suicide, the competition is postponed until the end of the week. The judge, Vic Mazotta, was a cooking school professor of Mel's and she can't accept the verdict of suicide when she knows his estranged son has been trying to get his hands on Vic's estate for years. But her investigation turns risky when Vic's murderer appears to be coming after her. Joe is unhappy with the risks Mel is taking and it strains their relationship. Meanwhile Tate finally screws up the courage to make a play for Angie, but is it too late?



I hope this helps future authors to get published.

The best advice I can give is don't give up -- ever.

For anyone interested in being written into the sequel BUTTERCREAM BUMP OFF as a character, check out my pre-order contest: http://www.jennmckinlay.com/bio.htm

Thanks again for the invite!
Jenn

The Passing of a Hero

I was all set to spend some time today catching up on things that got backed up while I was traveling (Note to self: Better preparation next trip!), but instead I have to take time out to mourn the passing of one of my favorite writers, Dick Francis.

A three-time Edgar Best Novel winner, and an MWA Grand Master, Mr. Francis started puiblishing mysteries in 1962, and has one book yet to be published - a career that spanned an incredible 48 years. I started reading Mr. Francis's racing mysteries in the mid-60s, and loved them from the beginning. I fell in love with Sid Haley, and was overjoyed when he came to the small screen in the short-run ITV series, The Racing Game.

Mr. Francis provided me with many, many hours of reading enjoyment over the years, and he will be missed. Tomorrow I'll work on that whole "catching up" thing, but for today I am going to go to the bookshelf and find my old paperbacks of "Odds Against" and "Whip Hand" and fall in love again, just for a little while.

Farewell, Dick Francis, and thank you for sharing your stories with the world. And with me.

What Is a First Reader?

Finding a good first reader can be a real tightrope act. You want someone who is an avid reader, who reads the kind of books you write, who can be honest with you when something doesn't work, who doesn't try to rewrite the book their way, and who is willing to read in fits and starts when necessary. And those are just the general qualities!

Each writer has specific issues and idiosyncrasies that they bring to the mix. For me, I cannot listen to any comment or discussion while I am writing. So if I have already given part of the manuscript to the first reader they cannot speak of it (sort of like Fight Club) until I finish the manuscript. The obvious solution is to wait until I'm done and hand over a full manuscript, but when I have a tight deadline I need to allow my first reader the opportunity to get started while I finish up.

On several projects I worked without a first reader, or I acted as my own first reader, because there wasn't anyone to ask. My writer friends were busy with their own projects, or they were far away, or they didn't read the kind of work I was writing.

Many writing couples act as readers for each other, but Steve and I quickly found that was not a good idea for us. That whole rewriting-the-book-his-way problem? Yep! I love him to death, but he can't turn off the creative brain enough to be a good first reader for me.

Then, a few years back, Colleen started working as a contractor at the hotel where I work. She was clearly a voracious reader, always carrying a book at lunchtime, and we struck up several conversations about what we were reading. She found out I was a writer, and we talked some about the kind of things I wrote. We compared favorite authors, and genres we loved, finding similar tastes

One day I suggested she read one of my favorite cozy mystery authors, Anne George. Her response was, "I love Anne George!" Sadly, Ms. George has passed away, but we both pull her books off the shelf and re-read them from time to time. (If you haven't read them, may I suggest you do so at once? Charming, laugh out loud funny, and characters you will fall in love with. I promise!)

So, when I got the offer to write the Georgie books, I excitedly shared the news with Colleen. When she confessed she had always wanted to "have my name in the front of a book," I decided to take a chance, and offered to let her read my manuscript.

We talked for a long time about how we would work, what I expected, what she felt qualified to do, and the mechanics of passing a manuscript back and forth. Then I gave her the manuscript for the first book and crossed my fingers.

The results were truly amazing! She completely understood what I needed, and gave me good feedback on the places where I slipped up - including one character who changed names partway through. But besides that, she had a good grasp of spelling and grammar, and was able to do a thorough copy-edit as well.

Over the course of three books, I have come to really appreciate her support. First readers don't get paid - except for the occasional lunch. They get an acknowledgement (sometimes) and they get to read the book months before it ever goes on sale. But that's about it. Mostly, it's a labor of love, and I'm very fortunate to have found a first reader who loves Georgie.

Thanks, Colleen!!

On Thursday, first reader Colleen Kuehne has a guest blog about her process and why she likes her volunteer job.

Guest Blogger Irene Radford:Blurring the Lines Between Mystery and Magic

Irene Radford has been writing stories ever since she figured out what a pencil was for. A member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian who lives in Oregon, she and her husband make their home in Welches, Oregon where deer, bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers feed regularly on their back deck.

A museum trained historian, Irene has spent many hours prowling pioneer cemeteries deepening her connections to the past. Raised in a military family she grew up all over the US and learned early on that books are friends that don’t get left behind with a move. Her interests and reading range from ancient history, to spiritual meditations, to space stations, and a whole lot in between.

Her signal corps brother has launched several communications satellites on the shuttle. Watching those launches got her hooked on the ideal of humans reaching out into the universe.





Reading Science Fiction or fantasy is work – part of my day job as a novelist who deals with dragons¸ magicians, demons, space ships, and ray guns. For fun I read cozy mysteries.

A mystery lies at the core of almost every story. What secret does the romantic hero hide that keeps him from committing to the heroine? Which magician has the power to use the elusive talisman hidden deep in the dragon’s hoard? Who murdered the very wealthy diamond merchant on the 4th floor of a flea bag hotel?
Through the course of writing 22 fantasy and science fiction novels I delved into many mysteries. But I always wanted to write a straightforward cozy, the kind of story I love to read.

Instead of a straight, mundane, mystery, I plotted a murder into the 2nd book of my urban fantasy series: “Moon In The Mirror, a Tess Noncoiré Adventure” by P.R. Frost. (one of my 3 pen names) Magic and paranormal beings abound in this series. Tess and her cohorts discover the truth by use of magic. But this is an urban fantasy set in our modern world. Magic is not evidence in our courts. So other means must be used to prove guilt.

I had other problems in organizing this book as well. One of my first readers informed me that he knew who had done the dirty deed as soon as they found the body. There was only one disposable character in the entire cast. A cast that grew with every draft. In fantasy this wouldn’t be a problem. The protagonist can kill a bad guy in order to save the planet. Or one of the regulars can do prison time for manslaughter and show up in the next book emotionally scarred. Not so much in cozies.

How to divert attention away from the culprit while dropping clues at the same time?

I’d entered an entirely new world of writing and had to add a new layer of thinking. Time to read more cozies. Research. Honestly. I read 7 books in 2 weeks for research. Research. Honestly.

Among those I read were several paranormal mysteries where magic, witchcraft, and ghosts featured heavily, including “Hex Marks The Spot” by Madelyn Alt, “The Remains Of The Dead” by Wendy Roberts, and “Ghost of a Chance” by Kate Marsh (Katie Macalister). In every one, the paranormal aspects had to remain hidden, and if the evidence gained by paranormal means could not be presented in a way mundane courts could accept, then a different justice had to be sought. That justice had to look like an accident. Always the mundane explanation had to rule. But we, the readers know a different truth.

Oh, yeah I could deal with that.

I’m not going to go into specifics, because I don’t want to spoil the stories for you if you haven’t read them yet. But I learned a lot about how to write a mystery.

But most of all I learned that if a mystery writer is going to introduce paranormal elements, they have to figure in the problem, the solution, or both. Otherwise, they are just a gimmick. One of the first lessons I learned when I decided to take my writing seriously was that a gimmick had to earn its keep. The rescued Great Dane with retinopathy who wears goofy sunglasses has to be instrumental in bringing the hero and heroine together in the romance (I honestly read this story 20+ years ago). He can’t just prove the heroine is kind to animals. The same goes for the ghosts and telepathy I tried putting into some of my earliest novel efforts that never saw print.

So I dove back into “Mirror” with new enthusiasm and insight to the structure of a cozy mystery. I hope I succeeded.

Chris has arranged a free autographed copy in a contest.

In between other projects I worked on a cozy mystery of my own. I developed a setting and a cast that I could love: a spooky old hotel with as much character as any of the people that try to run it, a spunky heroine with a passion for the creaky building, a love interest who has secrets, and wacky friends with off-kilter views of the world. I fell in love with Whistling River Lodge and wish I could prowl the back hallways, secret rooms, and hints of ghostly guests in this fictional place. Yeah, I had to get something paranormal in there somehow. But it’s only hints and questions, nothing overt.

“Lacing Up For Murder” by Irene Radford is currently serialized for free on the Book View Café, http://www.bookviewcafe.com. A new chapter every Thursday¸ or if you don’t want to wait 32 weeks to find out who done it, you can download the full novel for $4.99 in a variety of e-­book formats.
Paranormal romances and mysteries are plentiful on bookshelves these days, as are urban fantasies and paranormal historicals, but the structure of the story, the rules if you want, remains the same. The extra elements have to be woven into the story and become an integral part of it. You cannot separate one from the other or you lose the essence of the story.

That’s what we read the book for, the story; the story of the characters, the story of the spooky old hotel, the story of the mystery, the magic of well crafted fiction.

Phyllis Irene Radford
aka Irene Radford
aka P.R. Frost
aka C.F. Bentley


Don't forget, Irene has promised a signed copy of "Moon In the Mirror," so leave a comment and get in the drawing for your very own copy!