Month: December 2016

Enough!

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

I have gone into full rebellion mode. Yesterday afternoon I hadn’t gotten anywhere near my daily word count and that upset me, as I am very serious about my writing. But I couldn’t write. Actually, I was doing pretty good to breathe and sit upright. All I could do was sit at the computer, staring fixedly at the screen and moving around the puzzle pieces on my favorite jigsaw site. Usually I restrict myself to one jigsaw a day, two if The Husband is watching something on TV in which I have absolutely no interest. (For reasons I won’t go into right now my work computer is in the family room…)

Yesterday, though, I went from one puzzle to another, mindlessly putting the pieces together, all the while telling myself I’d get to work right after I finished this one… I lied. Finally I knew if I didn’t lie down I’d fall over, so I left the computer and laid down on the couch and watched a little mindless TV until it was time to get up and fix supper.

And had an epiphany. I was exhausted, pure and simple. Between the holidays, getting ready for the holidays, cleaning up for the holidays, shopping for the holidays, wrapping gifts for the holidays, baking for the holidays, holiday parties, plus some family issues, and writing my regular group blogs, starting a newsletter for the first time, doing a couple of promotional appearances and arrange more, and – oh, yes – working on my new book, all on top of regular life, including cooking, cleaning up, laundry, looking after our furbabies and keeping The Husband happy… I was forgetting something.

Me. In the rush to get everything done, I was forgetting that I am no longer a spring chicken with boundless energy and stamina. I was forgetting that if I go down, pretty much everything else goes down with me and probably won’t get done. I was forgetting that this is my life too, and while there are things that must be done, I deserve to have a little fun as well.

So – learn from my mistakes and don’t pummel yourself into the ground like I did. The things that are essential will get done. Learn to enjoy again. Take your time. Prioritize. I’m not going to freak out if the wreath doesn’t get hung or if we have sandwiches for supper two nights in a row. This selectiveness is not only good for your heart and your stamina, it is good for your soul. You will learn what is important – family, friends, the joy of the season, a good day’s work. You can’t do it all (at least for any length of time or with any quality of life) so enjoy what you can do.

Life is short – make the best of it. And, most importantly of all, be good to yourself, for you are the best gift you can give to yourself and your loved ones.

Merry Christmas! Or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, may you have the happiest of holiday seasons.

Cleaning out the cobwebs

~ sandyfairfax ~ 12 Comments

By Sally Carpenter

One of my at-home projects for long holiday weekends is to sweep and mop the floors. This may not sound like much, but to me it’s an ordeal. It involves chasing the cats outside and then picking everything off the floor and stacking them on either the bed or sofa, leaving me no place to sit down until the floors dry.

Of course the day after the mopping, rain came and my cats trod over the clean floor with little wet paws. All the work for nothing!

But this attitude toward mopping doesn’t mean I’m a slob. I’m actually a neatnick. Every object has its place and must be put there. My writing space is not strewn with papers or books. Papers are filed away and books are in neat piles or on shelves. When I need something, I know exactly where to find it.

 The down side is that I get cranky if things are misplaced. I love Christmas decorations, but I’m not happy until every item is hung or put out and the packing bins are put away.

My desk at the office is the same way; clear save for some framed cat photos and mementos. Papers are in the hanging folders in the drawer. Even the items on my bulletin board are hung in a methodical fashion.

What has this to do with writing? Some say house cleaning is a procrastination to keep from writing, but for me, I can’t concentrate when my house—or life—is a mess. Sometimes I’ll even stop working just to take care of the stack of dirty dishes in the sink.

I need a clear space so I can think clearly. If I’m distracted by financial or personal issues, I can’t be creative.

Two years I cut down on my writing obligations because I was getting distracted. My mind was in a jumble, hopping from one thing to do to the next and as a result accomplishing little—certainly not as far as writing the next book.

 Also, my mysteries are crafted in an orderly manner. The structure is solid and builds to a logical conclusion. My tidy house reflects my state of mind.

If I’m facing writer’s block or can’t get motivated to write, it’s often a sign that I need to slow down, rest and get focused. I need to put aside the other “to dos,” stop playing computer solitaire (the writer’s bane), sit down with my pen and clipboard, and start writing. That’s how this post was written.

And hanging up the colorful Christmas decorations helps as well.

What do you do to clear out the mental cobwebs?

 

Guest: Maggie King

~ patyjag ~ 10 Comments

Why Do I Write Mysteries? The short answer: I love reading them. The long answer is much, well, longer!

Like many young girls I was a huge fan of Nancy Drew and the Dana Girls. I’ll never forget the day my mother brought home The Hidden Staircase after a trip to the P.M. Bookshop in Plainfield, New Jersey. My friends and I started swapping tales of those intrepid girl detectives like mad. We loved the puzzles and the adventures. My parents were great role models for mystery reading with the stacks of Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner paperbacks atop their nightstands.

In sixth grade I started writing my own girl detective mystery and read installments to my friends while walking home from school. They enjoyed my creative efforts. I wish I still had those stories, for posterity.

By high school I had drifted away from writing and reading mysteries, finding an outlet for my considerable adolescent angst in poetry and journal entries. The journal entries (as well as the angst) continued throughout my life but it wasn’t until the nineties that I took up mystery writing again.

I joined my first mystery book group in Santa Clarita, California in 1993. I’d been devouring anything by Agatha Christie for years but there was a whole world of other mystery authors out there and I was ready to dive in. The women in the group were lovely—almost too lovely. I hadn’t yet started my writing career but I knew I was on my way when the what-if scenarios came to me unbidden—

What if these women weren’t really so nice?

What if this was all for show and they harbored secrets, agendas, hatreds?

But it wasn’t until 1996 when I moved to Virginia and took a creative writing course at the University of Virginia that I started writing in earnest. I didn’t forget those nice women—or were they?—from the Santa Clarita book group. I gave them backstories and they became the story prototypes for Murder at the Book Group.

Like many mystery writers, I have a strong need to see justice done and set the world right. Mysteries are the perfect vehicle for that. Mysteries are about relationships—relationships that have gone awry. I’m fascinated by family dynamics and how memories of my own family experiences have popped up throughout my life, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in disconcerting ways. Love and obsession intrigue me to no end, as does sin and how we’re impacted by it.

My short stories are morally ambiguous and I sometimes explore vigilante justice. I’m a law-abiding citizen, but sometimes I wonder if justice is better served outside the boundaries of the law. That’s why I write. It keeps me out of prison and my victim(s) safe. And I can create interesting characters I’d never want to know off the page.

It’s unlikely that I’ll ever solve a mystery—and I have no desire to—but my sleuths can do anything. Just like Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew was intrepid, talented, bright, and flawless (Okay, she was a bit uppity at times, especially in the early stories). My characters, like most modern day sleuths, are flawed but I get to pick and choose their flaws and their virtues.

To circle back to the original question, “Why Do I Write Mysteries?”

Because I love reading them.

And I love writing them.

Blurb for Murder at the Moonshine Inn:

murder-at-the-moonshine-inn-cover-lowWHEN HIGH-POWERED EXECUTIVE Roxanne Howard dies in a pool of blood outside the Moonshine Inn, Richmond, Virginia’s premiere redneck bar, the victim’s sister enlists Hazel Rose to ferret out the killer. At first Hazel balks—she’s a romance writer, not a detective. But Brad Jones, Rox’s husband, is the prime suspect. He’s also Hazel’s cousin, and Hazel believes in doing anything to help family. Never mind that Brad won’t give her the time of day—he’s still family.

Hazel recruits her book group members to help with the investigation. It’s not long before they discover any number of people who feel that a world without Rox Howard is just fine with them: Brad’s son believes that Rox and Brad were behind his mother’s death; Rox’s former young lover holds Rox responsible for a tragedy in his family; and one of Rox’s employees filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against her. The killer could be an angry regular from the Moonshine Inn—or just about anyone who ever crossed paths with the willful and manipulative Rox.

When a second murder ups the ante Hazel must find out who is behind the killings. And fast. Or she may be victim #3.

 Buy link: http://amzn.to/2dtozWa

maggie-king-author-photo-72Maggie King is the author of the Hazel Rose Book Group mysteries, including the recently-released Murder at the Moonshine Inn. She contributed the stories “A Not So Genteel Murder” and “Reunion at Shockoe Slip” to the Virginia is for Mysteries anthologies.

Maggie is a member of Sisters in Crime, James River Writers, and the American Association of University Women. She has worked as a software developer, retail sales manager, and customer service supervisor. Maggie graduated from Elizabeth Seton College and earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has called New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California home. These days she lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, Glen, and cats, Morris and Olive. She enjoys reading, walking, movies, traveling, theatre, and museums.

Website: http://www.maggieking.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaggieKingAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaggieKingAuthr

 

Everyone’s a Killer

~ jlsimpsonauthor ~ 4 Comments

By JL Simpson

IMG_1610A bit of a dramatic title. Of course it’s not true but you’d never guess it if you were currently living at my house. Nervous Ninnies have taken over the building.

As if life isn’t complicated enough we decided to flog our house and move to Cairns in the tropical part of Australia, 5 days drive away. (I’m excited, my mop of hair not so much)

Anyway, before you move such a huge distance it’s important to downsize as much as possible to minimize the cost of the removal. This would be simple for most people but I live with a hoarder. Mr S loves to keep stuff, ‘that might be useful one day’. So, having convinced him to part with some of his treasure trove, we advertised the items online.

Aussies have a website called Gumtree where you can buy and sell stuff and it is full of interesting people. You advertise something for $100 and someone will offer you $20 and want it delivered. The percentage of lowballers and oddballs is very high so you do need to be careful and keep your wits about you or you get ripped off. However, it could be worse than selling something for half of what it’s worth. Some people online are not what they appear to be. (Shocking revelation, I know!) After a week of emails, texts and calls from lots of people who appear to have no social skills at all Mr S got really spooked. It didn’t help that our neighbor told him a horror story about someone spraying graffiti on their house after they refused to sell something. Now he won’t give out our address. Instead he meets people in public places or in other streets.

He is worried about them coming back and doing bad things to us if they are not happy with their purchases. However, in his quest to protect us all he is in danger of making himself look very guilty.The whole thing reminds me of an adventure I had years ago where I sold a car and the man who bought it could only meet me at 2 Am in the main street of a small town. I drove up and parked. Mr S parked next to me. I got out and the purchaser gave me a wad of dollar bills, I handed over the keys. I sped off with Mr S in his car. The purchaser drove the car he’d bought off me in the opposite direction, closely followed by the friend who had driven him to the hand over point. Talk about things looking dodgy, even more so when you know the town had a reputation for drug deals.

Anyway, so what is with the title? I do wonder if being a mystery author, or being married to a mystery author, makes you see crimes and potential crimes where none exist.

Tell me, do mystery readers have the same problem?

www.jlsimpson.com