Guest Blogger ~ Susie Black

September 19, 2026August 23, 2026 ~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

The Philatelist

Since the publication of my debut humorous cozy mystery, Death by Sample Size, I have been asked by many readers how events, interests, and people in my life have influenced my writing. Since my stories all take place in the Los Angeles garment center, my career as a sales exec in the ladies’ apparel industry certainly had a significant influence on my writing. Customers, colleagues, bosses, family, and friends have all played a part. But the question deserved a look beneath the surface to the collateral events, interests, and people that came into and out of my life but played a much bigger role in defining who I am and how I write than one would ever think.

I have been an avid philatelist since I was twelve years old. What, you may ask, is a philatelist? It’s a fancy word for a stamp collector. My introduction to stamp collecting came with a birthday gift of an album filled with stamps from one of my mother’s cousins. The pictures, colors, and shapes of the stamps fascinated me, but other than licking one and attaching it to an envelope to mail, I didn’t know much else about stamps. There was a coin-and-stamp store next to the take-out pizza place my mother frequented, a few miles from our house. I took the album to that shop to see if the proprietor could teach me what stamp collecting was all about. The first time I walked into that store, a magical world opened up to me, one that would impact my life in more ways than I could ever have imagined.

I credit my lifelong love affair with stamps and the influence it has had on how I write to Mr. Milton Albin. Generous, knowledgeable, and patient, Mr. Albin was a bespectacled, wiry, balding, wonderful middle-aged man who was the proprietor of that stamp and coin shop. Every Friday after school, I went home to collect my weekly allowance and my stamp album and then rode my bicycle to Mr. Albin’s store.

Always wearing a jeweler’s loupe and a magnifying glass on a lanyard around his neck, Mr. Albin was so willing to answer all your questions, teach you everything you wanted to learn, and exuded so much enthusiasm about his chosen field that even the most skeptical customer couldn’t help but become a fan. He was a wonderful teacher who taught me the proper way to handle the stamps and evaluate their quality. Mr. Albin suggested that for a novice collector like me, the best way to start learning about stamps was to buy canceled ones instead of more expensive mint-condition copies. Good thing too; canceled stamps were all a pre-teen’s allowance could afford. That said, my visits to Mr. Albin’s store always began at the huge wall on the right behind the entry, which was covered with envelopes containing canceled stamps clipped onto it.

After making my selections, I’d bring my envelopes to Mr. Albin to ring up. He would open the envelopes and carefully take the stamps out with a pair of tongs, and that’s when the magic began. He had a story for every stamp, and his vivid descriptions brought the stamps to life. With one commemorating the casualties of our Civil War, his eyes filled as he whispered, as though praying in a Chapel. With another commemorative that celebrated the end of slavery, his eyes lit, and he spoke with the fervor of a preacher. No matter what the Stamp’s story was, he told it like a novel with a beginning, a middle, an ending, and a point of view. He told each story his special way, taking his time, slowly building up to the cliffhanger, and dramatically pausing right before the climax. Talk about pacing and how to build tension up to the finale. Mr. Albin had it down pat. He was my tour director on weekly adventures around the world and through every era of history, with stamps in every color and shape imaginable serving as the tickets for the ride.

How I look at the world, and the people in it, plays a major role in the writing style I learned with help from a diminutive, unassuming, marvelous man every Friday afternoon, who led me by the hand on the continuing adventure of a lifetime through stamps. I honored Mr. Albin in the most appropriate way that an author can by including him as a character in Death by Jelly Beans, my award-winning cozy mystery.

Mr. Albin is long gone to that great celestial collectors’ corner up above, but if I piqued your interest in stamp collecting, check out the website of the American Philatelic Society to learn more about this fascinating hobby that can take you everywhere and anywhere, while never leaving your living room.

Death by Jelly Beans

Mermaid Swimwear President Holly Schlivnik discovers the Bainbridge Department Store Easter Bunny slumped over dead, and obnoxious swimwear buyer Sue Ellen Magee is arrested for the crime. Despite her differences with the nasty buyer, Holly is convinced the Queen of Mean didn’t do it. The wise-cracking, irreverent amateur sleuth jumps into action to nail the real killer. But the trail has more twists than a pretzel and more turns than a rollercoaster. And nothing turns out the way Holly thinks it will as she tangles with a clever killer hellbent on revenge.

Buy Links:

https://books2read.com/u/bWx9jY

Amazon.com : Death by Jelly Beans

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-by-jelly-beans-susie-black/1145804565

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212700868-death-by-jelly-beans

https://www.bookbub.com/books/death-by-jelly-beans-holly-swimsuit-mystery-book-5-by-susie-black

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries.

She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector and ardent sailor. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect.

Looking for more? Contact Susie at:

E-mail: mysteries.authorsusieblack@gmail.com

Blue Sky: @hollysusiewrites.bsky.social

Facebook: Susie Black, author of The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series | Facebook

Facebook: https://facebook.com/TheHollySwimsuitMysterySeries

Instagram: Susie Black (@hollyswimsuit) • Instagram photos and videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/authorsusieblack-61941011

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hollysusie1/

Substack: Substack Home -Susie Black

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@author_susie_black_

X: Susie Black (@hollyswimsuit) / X

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/susieblackwritescozies

Susie Black Books – BookBub

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21437641.Susie_Black

Website: Susie Black | Substack

Finding or Making Time To Write

September 14, 2026September 10, 2026 ~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

As we head into the busy time of year, meaning the holidays and shorter days, I am feeling a bit frazzled. My goal was to have one more book out before the end of the year. Preferably in November where, it being a story set around Christmas, would be in demand.

At this time I have only 13k words written in said book, and feeling the pinch to get it done having just spent 6 days on the road selling books at the State Fair, came home with a cold, then headed 2 hours away to attend an event for research that will be in my next Gabriel Hawke book, then home for two days and I’m headed to another book selling event 7 hours away for 6 days.

When am I going to find time to write?

After talking to half a dozen writers at the last event I attended, I’m glad I am a persistent person who likes to hit my goals. Those writers either can’t find the time to write, or have written but weren’t sure of the next step, or they have ideas and don’t know what to do with them.

Finding time to write: I took my laptop with me with my WIP on it. I managed to write 5000+ words on it while sitting in the Fair Building waiting for the doors to open and people to arrive every morning. I plan to take it with me when I go to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest, and when there are enough authors in the booth, I’ll leave and go write. I don’t believe it’s about finding time to write, it’s about making time to write.

If a writer truly wants to write, they will sit down and do it, if it means getting up at 4 a.m. or staying up past midnight, if they have day jobs or a family to attend. It’s kind of like the people who say, I do like to read but I don’t have the time. I read when I’m eating my lunch and right before I go to bed. I read paperback books, so the screen doesn’t keep my brain racing. If they truly wanted to read, they would make the time to relax and read.

Those writers I spoke to who have books, poems, or stories written that don’t know what to do next, I suggested they connect with a couple of writer’s organizations that I am a part of in Oregon. I told them to reach out to me if they have any questions. There were people, writers and authors, along the way who helped me out with writing, publishing, and promoting. I’m all about paying it forward.

And the people who had ideas. I told them to get a notebook and write down their ideas for when they do have time to explore them and begin writing. I have ideas hit me a couple times a day. If it’s something that keeps coming back and won’t leave me alone then, I take it seriously and figure out how to work it into a book, or in the case of the Cuddle Farm Mysteries, a new series, I didn’t really need to start.

Which segues me into, book 2 in the Cuddle Farm Mysteries is now on pre-order with a release date of 10/10/26.

Monologued To Death

When Andi Clark and her therapy dogs are invited to audition for a play at the historic Auburn Opera House, she expects a fun evening of helping local children build confidence. Instead, she meets a director whose razor-sharp tongue leaves a trail of hurt feelings wherever she goes.

Then, during a rehearsal, the director plunges from the theater’s balcony.

While Sheriff Skala follows the evidence, Andi and her best friend, Betty, trust Cocoa’s instincts. The gentle therapy dog had witnessed someone on the theater balcony before the fatal fall and caught the scent of something behind a locked door no one else thinks to question.

Between therapy animal visits to the local retirement home and hospital, Andi, Betty, and Cocoa discover a second body, proving the killer isn’t finished yet. As the suspects multiply and the danger grows, Andi realizes someone is determined to silence anyone who gets too close to the truth.

Can Cocoa sniff out the truth before the final curtain falls on another victim?

Pre-order Link: https://books2read.com/u/49zJyJ

The Great Grammar Experiment

September 12, 2026September 10, 2026 ~ Margaret Lucke ~ 4 Comments

By Margaret Lucke

It’s September (already!), and as I watch the neighborhood kids head back to school I find myself thinking about the lessons I learned early on that led to my becoming a writer. Specifically, grammar lessons.

Writers love words—their sound, their rhythm, their layers of straightforward and subtle meanings. Words are our paint and brushes. We use them not just to tell stories, but to give our ideas color, shape, substance, and texture. Words are the magic wands we wave to bring characters to life, to set a plot into motion.

We adore words.

But grammar? Not so much.

The problem is that people tend to think of grammar as rules that seem arbitrary and arcane terms that they can’t remember. Participle, subjunctive case, subordinate clause—arrgh! Who cares?

Do I reveal myself as a hopeless nerd if I confess that I find grammar fun? No, I can’t define subjunctive case without looking it up. But that’s not the point. Grammar isn’t really about rules and labels. It’s the anatomy of the language, the essential connective tissue that binds our wonderful words into coherent and meaningful patterns. Without grammar, what we write makes no sense.

One of the most useful things I learned in school was how to diagram a sentence. Seriously! It was like I’d finally cracked a code. Gertrude Stein probably was exaggerating when she said, “I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences,” but not by much.

When I tell people this, they laugh at me or groan. Or else they look at me blankly, especially the young ones. Apparently this valuable skill isn’t taught much in English classes these days.

I haven’t actually diagrammed a sentence in years, but I’m glad I learned how. It made me understand of how the parts of a sentence fit together—how the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone. It taught me where to put the commas, how to keep my modifiers from dangling, and how to arrange my words so that a sentence means what I intend it to.

Other than that one lesson, formal grammar instruction is pretty useless. I have scientific proof. In ninth grade I was part of the Great Grammar Experiment.

My school district developed, at great expense, a language skills curriculum using a fancy instructional methodology called programmed learning. The theory, based on the experiments of the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, was that presenting the material in lessons with small, sequential steps and rewarding correct responses quickly would reinforce the mastery of the material.

For the pilot test, two English classes at my school were selected to be the guinea pigs. For twenty minutes every day, kids in the first class trudged through the special set of grammar drills.

The second class was the control group. Its students weren’t taught grammar at all. Instead they read lots of stories and essays and turned in weekly writing assignments.

In September, January, and June, both classes took standardized tests that measured their ability to use grammar correctly. You can guess the result: To the dismay of school officials, all of that drilling made no discernible difference for the hapless class upon which it had been inflicted. But the readers and writers had developed a strong sense of how language works. Their scores improved by leaps and bounds.

The expensive program was scrapped.

I’m grateful to this day that I was in the second class.

Some Angels Have Beards

September 10, 2026September 9, 2026 ~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 2 Comments

by Janis Patterson

This post has nothing to do with writing… just with life.

To be honest, I dislike facial hair. I really do dislike facial hair.

There are, however, exceptions.

Not long ago The Husband and I were driving home from a conference in Kentucky. The scenery was beautiful – trees like carpet, charming farms on the rolling hills, the highway itself was – for a change – free of construction and blessedly clearly marked.

The Husband was napping as usual, and I was tootling along at my usual 90-95 mph when suddenly a terse message appeared on the navigation screen saying that we were dangerously low on oil and we should add more or the engine might freeze.

Gulp.

We were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight but trees, trees and more trees.

Immediately I slowed to a turtlesque 50 and hugged the right hand shoulder as if we were lovers. The deity of motorists was in a good mood, though, and in a very few miles a Love’s gas stop appeared. Normally, being a Texan, I prefer Buc-ee’s, but at the moment I was delighted.

Now they had people who knew 18 wheelers, but were totally adrift when it comes to a 13 year old BMW. Neither The Husband nor I are car people… though in my misspent youth I did indulge in some racing. Now if it had been a 1955 Ford I could have broken it down to the smallest part and rebuilt it in the dark…

The sad thing is that we had had the car in the dealership for a sticker and checkover before leaving for Kentucky. Once home we complained, and they admitted that they had dropped the ball and gave us a couple of free oil changes.

Back to Love’s… we were standing there with the hood open staring blankly at the great complicated lump of engine trying to figure out where the oil would go – if we knew what kind of oil it took (I did know it was special oil) – when a man came out of the store. Early middle age, shorts, nice haircut, casual shirt… and a beard. A hirsute Mr. Suburbia. The Husband and I are, unfortunately, both very obviously however reluctantly, classified as Senior Citizens.

He knew what to do. He went into the store and found the type of oil we needed, he unscrewed the cap where it should go, and poured it in. I started the engine and the terse note went away. He did advise us to get to the closest dealership and let them take a professional look (which we did – there is a BMW dealership in Memphis who took great care of us). Once he was sure the car was okay for covering the fairly short distance to Memphis he said good bye and left. He wouldn’t even let us buy him a cold drink.

Sometimes angels do have beards.

Bots and Me by Heather Haven

September 7, 2026September 1, 2026 ~ Heather Haven ~ 10 Comments

Recently, the latest book in the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Cleopatra almost Slept Here, debuted. Following my glory hallelujahs, emails started coming out of the woodwork written by allegedly important and famous people. To hear them tell it, I’m not only a wunderkind, but so taken were they, they ignored whatever else was on their agenda to sit right down, read my book, and then write me a lengthy email extoling the book’s virtues. Even my mother rarely went that far. Every day I receive two or three of these classics. These emails come from far and wide, but manage to say virtually the same thing. I’ve pulled out two as an example:

A Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of a major publishing house said, “The combination of a private-investigator family, animal characters, lighthearted banter, and real investigative stakes gives the novel a strong identity within the cozy mystery space. The archaeological setting also provides an especially appealing backdrop for readers who enjoy mysteries built around history, ancient treasures, and unusual locations.” He then offered I know not what, because all this bot really wanted to do was start an exchange of emails that resulted in extracting my hard-earned moola. I never responded.

I was particularly surprised to hear from Terry Gross of Fresh Air fame, who wrote “It was a genuine pleasure to discover your novel Cleopatra almost Slept Here and to immerse myself in the delightfully witty, wonderfully entertaining, and utterly captivating world you have created. I am reaching out to you personally because I believe your voice and your gift for blending classic mystery with modern humor would make for a truly compelling conversation on Fresh Air, broadcast on Wider Horizons for You and Yours (WHYY).” At the end of the email, she sent her warmest regards while misspelling her last name. Even my two cats laughed at that one.

Here is my response to a particularly insistent bot: “If you are a real human being I apologize. However, I still suspect you are a bot who has learned the ways of charming money out of egotistical writers. I am sorry we have come to this. If you showed up at my house for dinner, I would be more inclined to believe in you. Bring a bottle of wine.”

I think what is more galling than the unmitigated chutzpa of these emails is the idea that the receiver is so dumb —or has such a large ego — they don’t know a scam when it comes marching at them complete with ticker tape parade.

Sadly, there has to be a naive writer out there buying into this routine, losing their money and a piece of their heart along the way. Let’s face it, if this scam didn’t work, these emails would cease to exist, and the bots would move on to greener pastures. By the way, I have put a pox on the billionaires who own these bots. Like the parents of a spoiled brat, they are really the bad guys.

To muddy the waters, a few years back I received an email from a legitimate producer which led to the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries being optioned for streaming the series on television. It’s still under option. As only one in every thousand make it to the final stage, I don’t hold my breath. But I’m in the game and it’s a lot of fun.

Given all these scams, would I have even paid attention to that email today? Probably not. I probably would have trashed it like the dozens of others. That thought gives me pause, but not much of one. Such is the climate of internet thievery. Snake oil is alive and well. I can only hope that given the scamming climate, if a legit producer is interested in an artist’s work, they will go the extra hundred miles or so to make it happen. Even though I keep the faith, I can’t help but admit this issue has taken some of the joy out of the debut of my 20^th novel.