Last year three writer friends and I wrote an anthology called THE JULY FOURTH MURDERS. Four murders, each on July Fourth, but during different wars – Revolutionary War, WWI, WWII and Viet Nam. With a timely release and a lot of publicity last year it sold fairly well. So – we thought we’d do it again!
This year we held a signing at a local bookstore on July fifth. Let’s face it – on the Fourth itself the majority of people will be partying and visiting and not going to bookstores, so we set up on the fifth, thinking there would be more traffic. And we were right… sort of. The bookstore had fairly good traffic all afternoon, and most of them were buying books. Just not ours. Oh, we sold a fair amount, but not anywhere near what we had expected/hoped. We each also sold some of our individual books.
We had good traffic, and met some lovely people. As always, there were those who were fascinated to meet Real Authors (almost as if we were some sort of exotic zoo exhibit!) and others who wanted to know how to become authors and still others who liked to read. Some were just bored and looking for a new experience. Pretty much as normal.
There were darling babies who cooed and grinned… and slept. I don’t remember a single one who cried – unlike a four-ish little boy who must have been auditioning for an Imp from Hell. There was an amazing assortment of dogs (this bookstore is very advanced, thank you) from one no bigger than a powder puff to a mastiff who looked like he could wear a saddle with no trouble at all. He also liked to put his sizeable head in my lap while I scritched between his ears. No small feat, considering his head was just about the same size – and much heavier – than a basketball.
But sales… nope. Just a few – and I mean a VERY few. I handed out a lot of business cards and my book list. Maybe that will mean sales down the road, but I doubt it. I guess my style of writing is just not popular this week. Or maybe I just don’t look like the general idea of An Author, swathed in diamonds and pink feathers and drinking champagne. While I do have a diamond or two, I don’t have a pink feather to my name. I do love good champagne, though.
Still, it was a pleasant day. I like talking to people, and got to have a nice long chat with my co-writers. We’ve known each other literally for decades, but don’t get to spend enough time just being friends together. Usually when we do it’s in a writing group or teaching a class. I’m grateful for the sales we all got, but if I may sound a bit heretical, it’s about much more than sales.
It’s connecting with your tribe.
It’s about meeting people other than in writing groups.
It’s about being a human being instead of just A Writer.
Okay, I was trying to be provocative. There isn’t a perfect anything, not even a perfect mystery. Although Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express comes awfully close. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca does, too. And there are more modern reads like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. But I digress. Back to me writing a perfect whodunit. It’s a worthy goal.
I am heartened by the fact that writing a good mystery is a practiced art. If I play tennis five hours every day, which I don’t but let’s just say I do, I’m going to get pretty good at it. Same with writing a mystery. I keep in mind that a mystery is a well-written novel that happens to center around a dead body done in by person or persons unknown.
There are some who believe there is a definite separation between the genres of mystery, suspense, and thriller, although many of us combine the three elements when writing our novels. I certainly do. Regardless, I like to keep the definitions straight in my head in case one of our two cats ask what’s the dif. Daphne and Niles are an inquisitive pair (Niles is the one with his belly hanging out).
Mystery – A puzzle of person, place or thing, a ‘whodunit.’ The reader is given clues but has no idea, along with the protagonist, what the outcome will be. If the protagonist is in danger, it’s only when s/he is getting closer to the truth. Mysteries are more of the mind than anything else. Will the protagonist solve the mystery?
Suspense – A ticking time bomb that must be resolved. It has danger but not necessarily action. The reader is often aware of the clues sooner than the protagonist, who must work against time. Suspense plays more on the readers’ emotions. Will the protagonist stop the culprit in time?
Thriller – From the onset, the protagonist is in jeopardy and knows it. The protagonist and reader share the same information at the same time. The thriller has lots of action and keeps the reader on the edge of the seat. No time for thinking or feeling. Will the protagonist survive?
The Cozy Mystery is usually solved by an amateur, often someone who just ‘happens’ to be around at the moment or ‘happens’ to become involved no matter how many books there are in the series. This person does something else for a living but is always bright and committed. The plus side for this type of mystery is the writer ‘merely’ needs to come up with a good story and run with it. No special knowledge is necessary. The protagonist often doesn’t know much more than the reader from the onset of the story. The protagonist learns as s/he goes along, often helped out by a loved one or friend, who tends to have ‘insider info’ that’s missing from our hero. Well, someone has to help advance the plot!
The Detective Mystery revolves around a professional private investigator or law officer, someone who does this for a living. The plus side of this kind of mystery is the writer can dig deeper, go into more detail, reveal maximum facts to the reader, often getting into scenes and places otherwise not available to the average Joe Schmoe. This protagonist is usually more committed to the cause than anyone else, for whatever reason. When I find that reason I’ve got the heart of my story.
Speaking of protagonists, it is essential to have an interesting protagonist, not necessarily likeable, but one with redeeming characteristics. This protagonist should be intelligent and different, someone who knows the rules, but breaks them. S/he has something personal to overcome such as yearning to be a better person or feeling guilty because s/he can’t be. They should also want something, even if it’s a glass of water. Nothing propels a character forward more than wanting something.
When I read mysteries containing successful protagonists, from Miss Marple to Nero Wolf, Sam Spade to Hamish Macbeth, Sherlock Holmes to V.I. Warshawski, I find they all have one thing in common: they are unique. It is essential the protagonist is someone I would want to spend time with at a dinner party, even if once I get home I say, “Wow! What an oddball. I’m glad I don’t have to live with her/him.” Being normal and ordinary just isn’t part of the package. I tend to save that for my youthful love interests.
After I’ve created my protagonist, I occasionally do an essay or interview with her/him in order to flesh the character out. I ask questions, such as: How do they react under pressure? What do they cherish? What do they abhor? Do they believe in justice above all else? Where is their point of mercy? Would they, themselves, take a life? If so, how do they live with that? Then of course, I have to ask what is their favorite color? Not only does that make them feel more ‘real’ to me, but sometimes the mundane can be very revealing.
Now I’ve got the protagonist who’s going to solve the crime(s). Good for me. But where’s my plot? It’s murderous, of course, but I’ve got 175 plus pages to fill out. When I have no idea what kind of plot to wrap around my victim(s), I pick up a magazine, newspaper, listen to a newscast, or search the internet. Sometimes people in my own life have weird stories they love to talk about. So, I listen, absorb, and delve.
The 2nd novel of the Alvarez Family Murder Mystery Series, A Wedding to Die For, started with an article from National Geographic. It was about an extended family of Egyptian grave robbers, who discovered an ancient royal burial chamber containing precious artifacts. They kept the knowledge to themselves and pilfered from the tomb taking one piece at a time. They did this for generations. They took just enough to feed, clothe, and educate themselves. After decades of careful use of the money, this family came into positions of power within their community and Egypt. Unfortunately, one of them got greedy. Their chicanery was revealed, but it took 60 years to do so. I was entranced. I knew I wanted to take this situation, transfer it to Mexico, and create a powerful family to become the nemesis of the Alvarez clan.
The sub-plot of A Wedding to Die For was a mythical search engine start-up company, Bingo-Bango, and its inhabitants. I felt the sub-plot added a lot of fun and depth to the story, even though it had little to do with the main plot. I did manage, however, to have a situation arise from the sub-plot that gave the protagonist, Lee, an answer to a big problem in the main plot. That was yummy. The finale was the wedding, of course. When I tied everything together, I had the skeleton of my book.
Finally, I go on to the dastardly deed of the murder itself. When my imagination is doing the victim in, the sky’s the limit. What I need to keep in mind, though, is the type of mystery I’m writing. Soft and sweet? Hard-boiled and gritty? Having a disabled little old lady, raped, mutilated and dismembered on page 5 of a story sets up a dark flavor, no matter how many doilies and kittens I throw in.
I have discovered with the cozy it’s best to have the murder victim go in a way that’s more palatable to the reader and off-scene, if possible. But that doesn’t stop me from trying to make it inventive. Drowned in a vat of cabernet sauvignon comes to mind. Someday I may try that. I live in wine country, so forgive me.
If I’m writing a hard-boiled detective story where the protagonist eats rusty nails, drinks rotgut, spits on people’s shoes, and hasn’t talked to his mother since he was eight, dismemberment might not be a bad way to go. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.
After choosing the protagonist and victim, I try to provide a myriad of suspects with access to the victim(s) at the time of demise. Or just the opposite – no one at all. Right away tension is created. Who, who, who? How, how, how? I ratchet it up whenever I can because I have a pretty fertile imagination. Some say demented. Whatever. You say potato, I say potahto.
Whatever method I choose, I try to do something unusual with it. The method of death, the way the body is discovered, the person discovering it, etc., might have an unusual bend. If I go for the disabled little old lady, for instance, I might have my protagonist find out she was a scam artist on the side, bilking widows and orphans. If I have my victim drown in a vat of 1997 Mouton-Rothschild Bordeaux Blend, maybe I’ll have him be a tea-totaler.
Now that I have some sort of murder going, I start popping in characters that might work with the story. Sometimes I have a chat with these characters as I drive to the supermarket. Maybe when I stop for a light or while standing in the checkout line I’ll go through a scene in my head, acting out certain things. Thank God for cell phones. Nowadays, those nearby assume I’m having an animated conversation on my phone and not demented. Ah! There’s that word again.
When the plot and characters come together, and I’ve eliminated things that don’t work but glom on like crazy to things that do, I sit down and start writing. This is usually the time when the first draft almost writes itself. I just try to keep up.
Hanging over my head all the while is the fervent prayer that this novel will get as near as possible to the proverbial perfect mystery. Wish me luck.
One of the great joys of writing my Sydney Lockhart Hotel Mysteries is stepping back into the early 1950s—a world balanced between postwar recovery and renewed optimism. The American dream felt tangible then, within reach. For Sydney, that dream meant breaking free from the prescribed role of wife and mother and forging her own path in a man’s world—first as a newspaper reporter, then as a private detective. The only complication was the man she met along the way. But that’s another story.
Back to the hotels.
While the murder plots are born entirely from my imagination, the settings are not. Each mystery unfolds within an actual historic hotel. For me, these grand dames are more than elegant backdrops—they have stories of their own. Their architecture, guest registers, and whispered legends carry me into a true-to-life past, lending each novel an authentic texture.
Beyond the hotels, I explore the surrounding businesses that thrived in their heyday—speakeasies, illegal casinos, and especially roadside attractions. These quirky landmarks still dot America’s highways and byways. Many sprang up between the 1940s and 1960s, when newly built interstates rerouted traffic away from small towns, threatening local economies. The solution? Create something so unforgettable that travelers would have to pull off the road. Curiosity would do the rest.
During my husband’s and my retirement adventure—our two-year, 47,000-mile journey we call “The Big Trip”—we encountered more than a few of these curiosities. In West Texas, the half-buried, graffiti-splashed cars of Cadillac Ranch rose from the prairie like a modern Stonehenge. In South Texas, we searched for the mysterious glow of the Marfa Lights. In Houston, we wandered through the aluminum-clad marvel of the Beer Can House.
Then there were the corn-themed delights: South Dakota’s Corn Palace; Iowa’s Field of Dreams baseball field carved from a cornfield (I entered—and thankfully found my way out); and the humble memorial marking Buddy Holly’s crash site outside Clear Lake, Iowa, hidden among rustling stalks. It was too much fun not to weave these Americana treasures into my stories.
corn Field of Dreams
In Murder at the Arlington, set at the historic Arlington Hotel and Spa, Bathhouse Row plays a key role. I also mention the Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo and Tiny Town, both of which still delight visitors today.
In Murder at the Galvez, Sydney finds herself stranded on Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pierwhen a blinding fog rolls in—and a bullet slices through the mist.
For Murder at the Menger, research took me deep into Louisiana’s swamps with Cajun Encounters Tour Company at Honey Island Swamp, home to the legendary Whiskey Tree and the ghostly moonshiner said to guard it still.
But my favorite roadside attraction lies just outside New Braunfels, Texas: Aquarena Springs. My parents took my sisters and me there when I was young. The crystal-clear lake featured glass-bottom boats and the world’s only submarine theater, where aquamaids—women dressed as mermaids—performed underwater ballet. There was even an underwater wedding, with lead weights sewn into the bride’s gown to keep it from drifting upward.
In Murder at the Faust, Sydney tracks suspects to Aquarena Springs, where an aquamaid makes a startling discovery that helps her solve the case.
Aquarena Springs closed in 1996 and is now the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment—but in the 1950s, it was pure magic. And as any mystery writer knows, magic often hides something darker beneath the surface.
Welcome to Sydney’s world. Check in. Settle in. And watch closely as Sydney brings every secret to light.
Giveaway
Kathleen is giving away an autographed copy of Murder at the Faust to the person who can tell her where this photo was taken.
Murder at the Faust
Welcome to the historic Faust Hotel, where the year is 1953, the carpet is plush, and the crime scenes are unfortunately plentiful. A bloody hotel room, a dead body on the bank of the Guadalupe River, and a suspiciously well-informed police chief land Sydney in the interrogation hot seat.
With Dixon still recovering from a gunshot wound, help arrives—whether Sydney wants it or not—in the form of plucky Lydia LaBeau and the irrepressible Cousin Ruth Echland. Lydia promptly delves into birdwatching escapades with a mysterious new friend, while Ruth, disguised as a Miss Texas contestant, seems more focused on evening gowns than evidence.
Then another dead body turns up in Sydney’s apartment. Lydia disappears. And the case takes a turn for the bizarre with the arrival of a mermaid and a Bible-thumping zealot—just the sort of chaos Sydney has come to expect.
In a whirlwind of duplicity, deception, and pageant drama, one question looms: Will the real Sydney Lockhart please stand up?
Look for Murder at the Faust in bookstores and on Amazon on September 8, 2026.
Kathleen Kaska writes the award-winning Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series, the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series, and the Mystery Trivia series, which includes The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book, published by Lyons Press. Her Holmes short story, “The Adventure at Old Basingstoke,” appears in Sherlock Holmes of BAKING Street, a Belanger Books anthology. She founded The Dogs in the Nighttime Sherlock Holmes Society, a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars. Her latest Sydney Lockhart mystery, Murder at the Pontchartrain, winner of the PenCraft Award for best mystery series, is set in New Orleans at the Pontchartrain Hotel. Kathleen is the winner of the Amity Literary Award for her novel, Death Without Dignity, scheduled for release in January 2027. A Texan at heart, she remains a Texan, even though she now lives in a small coastal town in the Pacific Northwest, where it’s cooler, and there is no traffic.
I’m a setting thief. Lots of writers are, but I always set books where I can see what’s happening which probably isn’t true of all writers. I also steal dialogue, people, and events. What that means right now is book seven in my PIP Inc. Mysteries series isn’t the one I expected to be writing. Originally, I had a great idea about using AI to facilitate a murder, and I will get around to that book, but as number eight, not number seven. What changed the story order was what happened at a two-day Christmas faire last year where I was selling my books when opportunities for theft of setting, dialogue, characters, and of course murder, presented themselves and I decided to steal all of them.
The faire was held at the fire station in spaces normally reserved for huge engines and in the other rooms reserved for meetings, food prep, overnight sleeping, and storage of all sorts of equipment and supplies the firefighters use. The engines were discretely relocated outside for the event and I was lucky enough to be assigned a booth in the part of the fire station where they normally were housed.
Fire engines are incredibly tall vehicles so the garage part of the firehouse had ceilings high enough to accommodate them. Lighting was supplied by banks of lights built into the ceiling. As we vendors began setting up our booths on Saturday morning, one of the lights over where I was started strobing, flashing on and off with bright bursts of light. It was disturbing and likely to cause headaches or worse if we had to try and work under such conditions.
The firefighters, as firefighters do, rushed to help. They took a tall ladder off one of the engines and placed it under the offending light. A brave young firefighter climbed it and decided which florescent lightbulb was the trouble maker. He shouted down to us that he thought it would be an easy fix, but when he removed the bulb, the whole bank went dark. A search for a replacement bulb was started, but it seemed the fire station with its vast stores of equipment was out of lights of that length. He replaced the bulb, towels were collected, and an attempt was made to wrap them around the offending bulb. It didn’t work. The only way to stop the light from causing us all to lose our sanity was to cover the entire bank of lights.
The strobing stopped, but some of us were plunged into late-afternoon-post-time-change darkness. We needed light to show off our wares. Many vendors were distraught. We tried to help one another with some booth occupiers switching places, but there were still problems. Lamps, hurriedly gathered from other rooms in the fire station satisfied some of our needs, but there were many unhappy people and one vendor remained outraged at how dark his space was and caused a scene. At that moment, I decided to kill him.
The light situation presented a great opportunity to do so. No stabbings or poisonings for him. No gunshots. He was going to die by electrocution. My creative, or should I say warped, mind immediately came up with some ideas for how his murder would take place and a clever twist about who his killer was. All I was missing was a motive for his murder since it didn’t seem reasonable to kill him for being annoying. By the time the faire was over on Sunday afternoon, I had watched how other vendors moved around the faire, who covered for whom for food runs and bathroom visits, and where firefighters slipped off to for breaks. I had many red herring suspects with opportunity…but still no motive.
Writers know that sometimes you just have to stop pondering and sleep on it; which was exactly what I did. The motive came to me in the middle of the night, not exactly in a dream, but in a moment of sleepless restlessness.
“A Faire to Remember” will be out later this year. A cover reveal and more about the book in next month’s post.
It can be done but straighten your lederhosen, it will be tough. When I started my latest book of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Cleopatra Almost Slept Here (set to debut mid-August), I thought it would be an easy write. Here was my reasoning: A – it would be my 19th novel, the 11th of the Alvarez series. By now I should know what I’m doing. Pardon my naivete. B – It takes place in Egypt. I love Egypt. It is a country chockful of history, hope, and filled with wonderful people. I even met a sweetheart of a camel named KFC who so captivated me, he became a central part of the novel. So, wouldn’t you think this would be an easy book to write? Pardon my belly-laugh.
Here was my problem: Book 9 of the series is called The Drop-Dead Temple of Doom. It takes place in the jungles of Guatemala and is about, among other things, ancient Mayans, their temples, and their pyramids. Book 11, Cleopatra almost Slept Here, takes place in the deserts of Egypt and is about, among other things, ancient Egyptians, their temples, and their pyramids. These minor similarities got by me until I finished writing the first chapter of Cleo blah-blah. Then something seemed eerily familiar. Sure enough, it was almost word for word as chapter one of Drop-Dead.
After realization clobbered me over the head, I buried my face in the warm, furry belly of one of our two cats, Niles, sleeping on his back next to the monitor with all four paws in the air. Niles has gained a few pounds as of late and his belly was soooo comforting and soft. But his ‘tude was not.
Said feline is on a diet, as is his twin sister, Daphne, who has to lose a pound or two herself. Like any hungry being whose food supply has been rationed, he was not in a good mood. Instead of lying there purring and patting my head with a paw in a ‘there, there’ fashion, he got up, jumped off my desk, and ran to his cereal bowl. A bowl, which as far as he was concerned, was seeing too much light of day and not enough action. He began caterwauling. I’m sure if he could have gotten to any pots and pans, he would have started banging on them with a spoon. He was joined at the cereal bowls by Daphne who is never one to let a good time go on without her. She began yowling in harmony. My not-so-little love buckets.
After giving them a limited amount of treats, for which there was no thanks, I went back to my problem: how to keep Cleo from bearing any resemblance to Drop-Dead, especially with me being my own worst enemy. That meant I had to throw away any preconceived notions of the novel. How can I make a story different when it takes place in a foreign country as exotic and magical as Egypt? Then I had it. While in Egypt, my protagonist, Lee Alvarez, was not going to see one single sight. She would be too busy solving ‘the mystery.’ Imagine the frustration? While the family visits such places as the Valley of the Kings, she tackles thieves, hides in closets, and files reports at Egyptian police stations, which are, as she says, surprisingly similar to American ones.
That meant there wouldn’t be a lot of travelogue. But still there would be KFC who likes to bury his face in Lee’s neck while making a sound somewhere between a hum and a purr. To the left is KFC and me in Giza. When I met him, he did that to me. Of course, I initiated it by wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him. When he began to hum/purr, I knew I had to have him in my story. My great big love-bucket.
There are also no heavy-duty descriptions of well-known tourist destinations, either. Well, I did throw in the pyramids. One has to. When seen in person, the pyramids are astonishing. And then there’s the Nile River. But Lee gets to know the Nile a little better than she wants. She has to jump in to save … hmmm. Too much info?
Cleopatra almost Slept Here is a mystery about a family on the vacation of a lifetime that seems to be out to kill them. Menacing notes, car chases, Egyptian cobras, crumbling temples, passenger ships that go nowhere, and a drug lord with an appetite for murder are only part of the daily routine. The final draft came back from the editors and the beta readers seem to like this story. They are calling it another winner. Yay! And it’s nothing like Drop-Dead.
On to Daphne and Niles’ success rate. Or, rather, lack of it. After a weigh in, neither of them lost or gained an ounce! As that didn’t seem possible, I reflected. The vet told me to give them ¼ cup of food each, but I was thinking about Cleo blah-blah at the time and neglected to ask how many times a day I should do this. Was it three? Six? Hmmm. I may have another ‘realization’ moment ahead of me. Where’s that warm, fat, furry belly?
Below is what I hope is the final version of the cover. I just love it, but the CA may still have a tweak or two.
Ladies of Mystery 
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