December 2022 – Page 3 – Ladies of Mystery

It’s the end of November as I write this, and I had hoped to have my fifth and final book in the Crystal Coast Case Series complete and ready to publish next month, but my muse had different ideas. The fifth book is outlined and even started, but I had another, different project, begun a few years ago clamoring for my attention. Rather than force myself to write the book I needed to write, I chose to let the stories inside to make that decision for me.

This other, more insistent book, a historical mystery, started as eleven pages that were written over a period of maybe three days — without an outline, without character studies, without research — and then stuck in a drawer for a while. How very unlike me!

I went on to complete book four of the Crystal Coast Case Series, “Sunsets, Scripts, and Murder,” and released it in September of last year. Outlined, researched, edited, formatted, published. Done and dusted.

Then in October, I went to Italy for a much-anticipated writing retreat. A week in the rolling hills of Tuscany at a villa with four-course, chef-cooked meals. I couldn’t be further from the beaches of the Crystal Coast of North Carolina, so I chose to pick up that eleven-page historical mystery and see where it led. By the end of the week, my fellow writers were hooked on my story, and I was bewildered. How was I doing this?

When I returned home to the realities of everyday life, that bewilderment combined with my very real responsibilities and turned into a period of burnout. I couldn’t write anything. This had happened to me once before, and I recognized that I just needed time. It was uncomfortable, I was unhappy, but I wasn’t going to add more stress to the situation by creating arbitrary goals to get back to my work.

With some outside help and coaching, I gradually returned to my story, and continued to write intuitively. No one was more surprised than me. My entire process was different, but the story was appearing before me on the blank page. I only had to follow its lead and put it into words.

Now my draft is done, and my critique partners, my beloved writing circle, tell me it’s the best book I’ve written. And it isn’t even near its final form yet.

In April, I go to Germany, in part to do some on-the-ground research for this historical mystery, and I know it may be some months before this book is complete. But I’m truly excited about it, and I can’t wait to share it with the world.

In the meantime, I’ll get back to the series finale my readers have been eagerly anticipating. If you’d like to get caught up on this series, so that you’ll be ready for book five when it comes out, please click on the accompanying links.

A dead actress. A big secret. And Allie Fox is on the case.

Tired of couch-surfing with friends, PI Allie Fox heads to the beach on an overcast, off-season day to do some house hunting.

But when she stumbles onto a dead body in an empty rental, she’s plunged straight into another case of foul play.

Up and coming actor Aisha Carter’s stay in Emerald Isle had been a secret, and only a select few knew she was here. When her agent hires Allie to investigate, she finds the actor was keeping everyone in the dark, and hiding much more than her whereabouts.

As she digs deeper into Aisha’s past, nothing seems to add up. Then Allie uncovers a shocking clue that puts everyone she loves on the killer’s list.

Sunsets, Scripts, and Murder continues the story of the Crystal Coast Case series. If you like Melinda Leigh, Lisa Gray, or Claire McGowan, you’ll love A. M. Ialacci’s gripping story of bright lights, big secrets, and murder.

Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09H5JMS84

Growing up on a steady diet of Murder She Wrote and Nancy Drew, it wasn’t until Anna left her twenty-year teaching career that she realized she might be able to write her own mystery. Single mom to a young man on the autism spectrum, and living in a multigenerational household, she loves the beach, reading Scandinavian crime fiction, and binging on Netflix. Anna is the winner of the Occasions, Just Write Writing Contest 2018, and a runner up in the Writer’s Domain One Sentence Story Contest 2018.

Website: https://www.amialacci.com

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

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amialacciauthor

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AMIalacci

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18931413.A_M_Ialacci

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/A-M-Ialacci/e/B07P7J1RWV

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/a-m-ialacci

Google states a “Literary Device is a writing technique that writers use to express ideas, convey meaning, and highlight important themes in a piece of text. A metaphor, for instance, is a famous example of a literary device. These devices serve a wide range of purposes in literature.”

And that’s probably as good of an explanation of a literary device as any other. It changes hues from one genre to another. Probably not that much, but enough to separate the people who know what they’re doing from the attempters. I was an attempter in the field of romance. Once. At about chapter 8, I was bored out of my mind. Where’d the dead body go, I asked? So, I added one. Instantly, there was a lot more zip to everything, including my step. But it was no longer a romance story. Let’s face it, if there’s no dead body in my novel, I’m not interested in writing it.

According to song and legend, Edgar Allen Poe was one of the first to qualify as a mystery writer. One of his short stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from 1841, paved the way for a lot of us. Arguably, there are 10 device steps that are needed in order to write a good mystery: a hook, atmosphere, a crime, a sleuth, a villain, narrative momentum, a trail of clues, foreshadowing, red herrings, and, of course, a satisfying ending. It sounds a lot easier to do than it is.

But other genres have latched on to their own devices. I don’t always know what they are or recognize them when they’re hurled out at me. But when I do catch on, I try to learn from them, even if they aren’t applicable to what I do.

Recently we went to see the national tour of Ain’t Too Proud the Life and Times of the Temptations, the Broadway musical. The musical is based on the book “Temptations” by the group’s founder, Otis Williams. For those of you arriving from another planet or born after the year 2010, they were the biggest singing group to come out of Motown, rivals to Diana Ross and the Supremes. And if you’re going to ask who Diana Ross and the Supremes are, please don’t do it in my presence. Or allow me to get a strong scotch first.

Ain’t Too Proud was one of the best productions of any show I’ve seen in a long, long time. Each performer was of star quality, from the leads to people playing multiple roles. The acting, singing, dancing, costumes, lighting, and sets went to a level of perfection seldom achieved in live theater. I have a background in theater and worked backstage on Broadway for 10 years, so naturally, I think I know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t mean I do, but try telling me that.

Anyway, the writer of the musical’s book, Dominique Morrisseau, is first-class. The storyline was clear, well-paced, entertaining, emotionally moving, and all the stuff a really fine book to a musical ought to be but seldom is. And the writer applied a device using verb tenses that astonished me. I will try to explain it. There would be a scene where one character would initially say they were going to do a specific thing. Then after a small amount of dialog, that same character would repeat the same line, but state they were doing that specific thing. Further on in the scene, the same character would use the same sentence, but this time announcing the long-term result or outcome of what they’d done. So we would go future, present, past, in one fell swoop. Whether it was a few months or years, the plot advanced solely due to these tense changes. I did note that the same words had to be used each time in the sentence and said by the same character for clarity, but this device worked.

It would be great to know if any of you have either seen this device used before or have used it yourself. It was a first for me. And I loved learning about it! But whatever you do, try going to see Ain’t Too Proud. It will make you and your heart sing.