Month: September 2023

Let It Go by Karen Shughart

~ kshughart47 ~ 6 Comments

There’s a certain amount of pressure for all authors, regardless of how they’re published, that’s self-imposed. We set out to write a book and determine the time frame for finishing it, and therefore must adhere to some sort of schedule. And for those of us who are with traditional publishers, there’s the added pressure of submitting our book at an agreed upon deadline,

When I started writing my Edmund DeCleryk cozy mystery series, I wrote every day. I didn’t set a specific number of hours but instead spent time at the computer until I was either so exhausted that I literally couldn’t see straight or was happy with the advancement of the plot. In the past this has worked well for me, but this summer it didn’t.

Let me explain.  We live in a resort village that is a bustling hive of activity during summer months. Our beautiful scenery, gorgeous waterways, pristine beaches, and a multitude of activities centered around what we call Summerfest results in visits from family and friends, picnics, cookouts, concerts, festivals, outdoor movies, yoga classes, boating excursions and, on cool nights, time spent with friends drinking wine around a blazing fire pit watching the stars.

This year in particular, I was also happily bombarded with invitations to do book talks and signings, sometimes more than one a week. In addition, we took three short trips: to visit family; for a couple’s getaway; and when I participated as a panelist at a  mystery lovers’ conference in another state.

I must admit, at first I felt anxious about my inability to carve out time to continue writing my fourth novel, Murder at Chimney Bluffs, after making good headway last winter and spring.  Then I took a deep breath and thought. ‘It will be done, and isn’t a big part of life enjoying experiences that could help make my writing be even better? Let it go.’

And I did. When my publisher emailed me to get a sense of when she could expect my next book, I responded that I thought I could submit it to her a year from this coming November or maybe even December, but not before. She thanked me and said no problem. When I gave talks and attended signings, which I really do enjoy, I wasn’t the least bit anxious about not writing.

At the entrance to a town a little west of us there’s a huge sign that announces “Where Life is Worth Living”.   And that’s certainly true about this place we call home.  I finally conceded to the pressure to write and allowed myself to enjoy every minute of every day and relax about not keeping to a schedule. I’ll get it done, I know. There’s something to be said for letting go.

Karen Shughart is the author of the Edmund DeCleryk cozy mystery series published by Cozy Cat Press. She lives on the south shore of Lake Ontario in a village in New York state that’s the prototype for Lighthouse Cove, the s fictional setting for her books.

Guest Blogger ~ Kathleen Kaska

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

Another Hotel, Another Murder, Another Sydney Lockhart Mystery

My idea for my Sydney Lockhart mystery settings came from historic hotels my husband and I have frequented. These old hotels are usually in the town center and are often community gathering places. Having cocktails in the lounges allowed us to meet the locals who would often share the most entertaining, unique, and unusual places to visit, which was excellent fodder for additional scenes in the books.

The series is set in the early 1950s. Sydney is a sassy, determined young woman trying to make it as a private detective in a man’s world. Her journey begins when she checks into the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, only to find a dead man in her bathroom. The man had been murdered, and she is the main suspect. I chose the Arlington as the first location because it is like my second home. Adding up all the nights we’ve stayed at the Arlington equals about four months. I’m familiar with all the nooks, crannies, and hidden places the average hotel guest is unaware of. Many local business I mentioned in the book have been in operation since the 1930s and are still open today. And with Hot Springs’ notorious history of gangsters running the city, it was easy to create a feasible plot. In fact, Al Capone once lived in the Arlington Hotel.

Since then, I’ve used the Luther Hotel in Palacios, Texas, the Galvez Hotel in Galveston, Texas, the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and the Menger Hotel in San Antonio. They all possess a unique history, which I weave into the stories.

My latest mystery, Murder at the Pontchartrain, which was release on June 28, occurs in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans. The Pontchartrain, located in the Garden District, was opened in 1927 as a luxury apartment building. In the early 1940s, it was turned into a hotel. This is where Tennessee Williams wrote his classic play, Streetcar Named Desire. This vibrant, exotic city begs to have a mystery set there. Just ask Anne Rice.

I brought Sydney to New Orleans because she and her fiancé/partner in crime, Ralph Dixon, had some unfinished business to attend to. But in less than twenty-four hours, someone is murdered in their hotel room, and Dixon is arrested. Sydney is in a race to solve the murder and free Dixon before she ends up in a cell next to him. When word back home in Austin gets out, Ruth, Sydney’s bubble-headed blonde cousin, and Sydney’s twelve-year-old charge, Lydia LaBeau, arrive to give Sydney a hand. Ruth is assigned to snoop around the hotel. At the same time, Lydia appoints herself as the investigator of the French Quarter, where she ends up helping out at the Voodoo Shop and making friends with Pat O’Brien’s head bartender. Yes, I know the girl is only twelve, but age has never influenced what Lydia does.

While wandering the streets in New Orleans, I envisioned Sydney darting down the back alleys of the French Quarter, tracking a suspect near Audubon Park, and almost meeting her demise in the Lower Ninth Ward.

If readers know of great hotels for my future setting, I love to hear about them. The requirement is that the hotel was in operation in the early 1950s and is still in business today.

I’m Sydney Lockhart. I solve murders, most of which I’m the primary suspect. My fiancée, Ralph Dixon, and I came to New Orleans to get married. Instead, he’s been arrested for a double murder, and I’m hunting for the real killer. Assisting me are a twelve-year-old voodoo queen, a ghost detective, and my crazy cousin Ruth. Wish me luck. I’ll need it.

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Pontchartrain-Sydney-Lockhart-Mystery/dp/1941237940

Kathleen Kaska is the author of the awarding-winning mystery series: the Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series set in the 1950s and the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series. She also writes mystery trivia. The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book was published by Rowman & Littlefield. Her Holmes short story, “The Adventure at Old Basingstoke,” appears in Sherlock Holmes of Baking Street, a Belanger Books anthology. She is the founder of The Dogs in the Nighttime, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Anacortes, Washington, a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars.

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A Tale of Time and Trials

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 4 Comments

by Janis Patterson

I’m sorry! Mea culpa! Last month… Well, I admit somewhat shamefacedly that I simply forgot. Life just got too complicated. If you’ve been following my newsletter or personal blog (on my website) you know the month of July was very busy – I had three releases instead of two in my republishing blitz and my husband and I were out of town for most of the month in four different trips. We were at a weeklong reunion at the historic Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas – and believe me, you can sometimes have too much ‘historic-ness,’ especially when you get stuck in an antique elevator… twice! After the reunion was over I taught two writers workshops (one in Murfreesboro, one in Fayetteville), we were kept from digging for diamonds (yes, diamonds in Arkansas) by a hurricane-like storm and I got to spend several days with my longtime friend – my sister-by-choice – whom I hadn’t seen in far too long. All of it wonderful, but so very tiring.
And I forgot the August blog entirely. Sorry.
Right now I’m working on my contribution to the Dreamstone Christmas anthology – and is it hard to concentrate on snow, and cold, and Christmas when outside it’s so high in the triple digits it feels as if the sky is on ‘broil.’
However, this too shall pass, and someday when there is snow on the ground and we are swaddled in multiple sweaters we’ll look back nostalgically on the warm days of summer.
One terrible thing, perhaps close to the worst thing that can happen to me, was I came home and immediately went to check the hot tub, planning to get in that night when the temperature dropped… Imagine my surprise when I opened the cover and instead of clear blue water I had a tub full of thick green… stuff. It was thick and gelatinous enough I could have scooped up handsful of it. In fact, I wouldn’t have been all too surprised to have it start pulsating and then slither out of the tub towards me.
Of course I immediately drained the water, which left a slimy mess in the tub that would have to be scrubbed… but not when it was triple-digit hot. It has stayed triple-digit hot and I refuse to go out and scrub in the dark in the wee hours of the morning – which is the only time the temperature outside is bearable – so … sigh. Just sigh.
So… all that is my rationale for missing the last blog. But – like most of life’s lessons – this can be applied to writing. Basically, it means that life happens. There are more things in life than writing. A member of one of my writer’s groups has a husband in the hospital. Her main concern? How taking care of him is cutting into her writing time. REALLY? And they have what most people would call a good marriage.
So I guess the lesson is – in both learning and in life – is don’t sweat the small stuff. Do the best you can, be honest, work hard and don’t cheat or lie. There aren’t any guarantees any way you go, but to me at least that seems the best way to go.
And I promise to be better!

For those of you following my republishing blitz, all is going just as planned. I think we’re all defeated by the heat, so both September’s releases are Christmastide Regency romances – yesterday’s was a called THE RESURRECTION OF REGINA and CHRISTMAS TANGLE comes out on September 27. Believe it or not, this blitz is almost over – next month is the end of it.

Random Ramblings

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

My summer has been busy! More so than usual. The only upside is I have been gone so much I didn’t have to help with as much hay harvesting. 😉 However that running around has drained me and made it take longer to get my next book out.

I told myself when I planned my 10 day trip to Hawaii that I would still work on my writing for half of the day. Well, I didn’t. And that put a book that I was already struggling with too much of a lag between starting and finishing it. Thank goodness my beta readers and editor found the places where I changed someone’s name or had a character looking at something they couldn’t have seen because the other character hadn’t been home to leave it. Little timeline things that I was sure I’d written but obviously only in my head.

Turtles on the rocks in Hawaii

As a writer, do you have instances like that? I have on several books known I’d written a scene that led up to something and neither I nor a beta reader can find it. It was a scene I’d played over in my mind while I was walking or driving and then when I sat down at the computer I started with the scene after it and was sure I’d written the one that was still in my brain. That’s frustrating. At least the scene is there, and usually, I can write it better than it played out in my mind.

In the book that is off to my final proofreader, I had many spots that I had to “fix” after the beta readers read it. I also had more scenes and paragraphs that I took out or manipulated to make my character more sympathetic to the victims in the story. I have never had so many saved documents of partial scenes that don’t make it in the book. I sure hope my readers like this one. It’s a true Hawke story but it does delve into something more controversial than his other books.

I spent Labor Day Weekend at a Flea Market where I and another writer friend usually have brisk sales. This year there were so few people who wandered by our trailer, it was kind of eerie. I only sold about a third of what I normally sell. Most of those were to my return readers.

This week, I’m headed to Mt. Angel, Oregon to sell my first in series books along with books by other NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) members. It should be a fun weekend.

As soon as I return from there, I’m diving into a Shandra Higheagle Christmas mystery. I’ve had a multitude of Shandra fans ask me for one more book. I’m writing a Christmas novella to hopefully give the readers closure. I hope I can get it out before Christmas!

Right now you can pre-order Damning Firefly. It will release on September 25th.

Book 11 in the Gabriel Hawke Series

A church fire.

An unconscious woman on Starvation Ridge.

Gabriel Hawke, fish and wildlife officer with the Oregon State Police, helps with a fire at The Lighted Path church before heading out to check turkey hunters. He discovers a car wedged between two trees and a woman with a head injury reeking of smoke. Is she the arsonist?

Hawke encounters the county midwife gloating over the burnt church and learns she and the victim in the car know one another.

Two seemingly separate events lead Hawke to a serial rapist and a county full of secrets. 

Universal Book Link to Pre-order: https://books2read.com/u/bQeBDZ

So Happy to Be Here

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 5 Comments

by Margaret Lucke

Hello, everyone! I’m thrilled and honored to be joining the ranks of the Ladies of Mystery. So let’s get acquainted. Allow me to introduce myself.

I fling words around as an author, editor, and teacher of writing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve always been fascinated by the power of stories and the magic of creativity.

My beginning as a writer came when I was four years old. For my dad’s birthday I decided to give him a book of my own creation, entitled We Are Going to a Birthday Party. I wrote the story—well, dictated it to my mom—and drew the illustrations. I cut a cover out of oilcloth and Mom helped me bind my book with yarn. I could not have been more excited. My first book! Nothing beats the thrill of holding your first book in your hands.

Okay, it was a bit short on plot and the character development left something to be desired. But a story had emerged from my imagination and been captured in this set of pages. And the most important literary critic in the world, my dad, said it was wonderful. I was hooked. I decided I was going to spend my life writing stories.

As a child I imagined myself sitting at a desk by a window that looked out on flowers and trees. I would sip tea as wonderful tales flowed effortlessly onto the paper. I would send them off to a publisher who’d send me fat checks, and eager fans would grab my novels off the bookstore shelves. I‘d do research in glamorous places. Dad, a stockbroker, had a client who spent three months of the year in some exotic locale—the Caribbean, southern France, a castle in Scotland—and the other nine months writing a novel that used that place as a setting and figuring out where to go next. That sounded like exactly the life I wanted to have.

The reality hasn’t quite turned out that way. But I do have a desk in front of a window, and I drink gallons of tea. And while the stories don’t flow effortlessly and the fat checks remain elusive, I can’t imagine anything I could do that would reward me more.

Beginning a new story is an adventure, an exciting and slightly scary journey into unknown territory. Fortunately I’m accompanied by my sidekick, the Muse. That is, sometimes the Muse comes with me. All too often, she’s reluctant or rebellious, and despite my urging, she refuses to pack up her duffel bag and set forth on the path. Instead she gives me a raspberry (not the edible kind), rolls over, and goes back to sleep. And I’m left by myself, staring at the blank page. Some sidekick. More like a kick in the pants. But eventually, between us we get the work done.

I write tales of love, ghosts, and murder, sometimes all three in one book. I’ve published four novels and more than 60 short stories, feature articles, book reviews, and scripts for mystery weekends. I’m the editor of Fault Lines, an anthology of short crime fiction published by the Northern California chapter of Sisters in Crime. I teach fiction writing classes and write nonfiction books on the craft of writing. As a writing coach and developmental editor, I enjoy helping writers move forward toward their writing goals.

All in all, I think the four-year-old aspiring author is pleased with how things have turned out.