Those of us of a certain age were often reminded while growing up, wearing skirts to school, and forced into home economics classes that our reputation was favorably or unfavorably based on the company we kept. If that is the case, then I am one lucky lady.

Recently, I embarked on a project for Ladies of Mystery … its first-ever catalog. The Ladies of Mystery Cavalcade of Books will be online from November 15 to December 31 and feature hand selected offerings from all ten of the Ladies of Mystery bloggers. But that’s not the point. Well, it is, sort of …

In gathering the information for the catalog, I discovered how truly talented the Ladies are. Boy, am I in good company! Did you know there is a Lady in Nova Scotia, one in Texas, and our Lead Lady lives in Oregon? The Ladies live in big cities, in the mountains, and on alfalfa farms. They write about animals, runners, Native Americans, women sleuths, private investigators, families of investigators, small towns, historical fiction and mysteries, romantic suspense and cozies. The gamut of mystery writing – well, not hardcore or noir, but a few that brush the edge.

In her introduction to the Cavalcade, Paty Jager, Lead Lady, writes that she founded the site “to bring mystery writers and readers together to learn about new authors and to get an idea of what it is like to write a mystery book.”

And what a group she lassoed– award winners to newcomers. Am I humbled, yes. Writers tend to be a solitary lot, well, at least, in my case. Yes, we meet at conferences and share our victories and conundrums with each other. Sometimes we do this during online calls, in small groups. We read each other’s books to support our fellow authors, leave reviews, and sharpen our skills.

But, in the end, we sit in a room, at a computer or a typewriter and write, poking our heads out of our holes to take care of the mundanities of life, like bills, food, husbands, cat and dogs, and children.  Not necessarily in that order. Sometimes, we just stare into space or tap our toes at the breakfast table, our brains on the single-minded railroad pulling into Plot-town.

There is always a challenge. Are the clues just so? Are the characters behaving as they should? Are they true to themselves, or have they taken off on some wild bent, dragging the plot behind them like a used tissue? It happens.

So, it was while mulling a rather horrifying historical error in a book I was writing that the idea for the Cavalcade of Books was born. Because, sometimes, the only way out of a hole as deep as the one I dug myself is to redirect your creative energies. Now, I admit, I had no idea how much fun the project would be. And I thank all the other Ladies for their advice, help, and wonderful books chosen for the first-ever Cavalcade of Books.

When the Ladies of Mystery Cavalcade of Books goes live on November 15, you’ll find a bit about each Lady, followed by books categorized by genre. I admit to having fun naming the categories, with able help from another Lady whose fantasy helped me break loose from the humdrum genres. The categories are:

• The Ladies Save the Day – Mysteries featuring a woman or amateur sleuth
• Past Perfect (Way back when) – Historical, psychic and ghost-filled mysteries.
• Cozy by the Fire – For lovers of cozy mysteries
• Thrills, Chills & Skills – Detectives, private investigators, people caught in webs of lies, deceit and thrills.
• Made for Each Other (Romance and Mystery) – romantic suspense
• Written Communications – advice on communications resides here.

The Ladies of Mystery Cavalcade of Books is the perfect opportunity to discover a new favorite author, or new genre, or a new book by an old favorite. As I did. And they are gems.

In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out all the Ladies’ blogs, you should. Talent, diversity, and wonderful tales await you. Like they did me.

Find me at https://dzchurch.com or on Amazon

Have you ever had one of those days when writing anything much less a mystery is beyond your ken?

That’s me. My inner workings are consumed by the loss of a massive, centuries old pine tree and my cat Blue’s determination to regain cat-dom.

A month ago, Blue had a stroke and went all bobble headed. He could not stand up, much less walk. I had to feed him at intervals throughout the day and night, holding his bowl so that he could eat. But he ate. Not enough, still … that was then, and this is now. I bought him a bowl that required him to stand up to eat hoping to get him on his feet. He stood. He eats like a pig, snuffling as he snarfs. I took him out each day, steading his body between my legs then, with my hands, showed him where his front feet went, hoping his back legs would follow. They did. I urged him to keep his head up as he walked. He does. Now.

He’s sixteen years old. A glorious, big Russian Blue and he has the heart of twelve others. Today was a big day, I moved the donut where he resides away from his food bowl and litter. The plan being he would have to walk and exercise his balance. His first outing to his food dish went well, though he had a hard time finding his way back to his newly moved donut. Still, he did.

After the stroke, I thought we would have to let him go. I thought wrong. He is a gamer. Sometimes, I wonder about his memory. He doesn’t seem to recognize his name. Hard to tell with a cat though. My husband and I kid about renaming him Roomba because he always returns to his donut. Still, he’s with us and progressing. I don’t think he will ever be the cat named Do-Do, left at the SPCA at a year-old, unadopted for two years until he saw my husband and wouldn’t let him go. Boys!

Speaking of whom, husband that is. He spent a full year trying to save the 112-foot Jack pine that dominated the view out our back slider. The wind blew in the pine bore beetles. The tree took the first onslaught and shook it off. Then a second wave hit it. The top died, though the lower branches clung to life. An arborist recommended fertilizer, my husband fertilized, watered, babied, talked to, prayed for, and fought for that tree. When Pacific Gas and Electric wanted to cut it down, claiming it could fall on wires over sixty feet away and uphill, he stood his ground. In the end, we negotiated with them to top it. They took 32-feet off it, and it still clung to its needles, sheltering crows, squirrels, woodpeckers, and even vultures.

Today it is gone, a skeleton lying down our hillside so far that the woodcutters had to take twelve feet off the top to pull its brittle bones onto our property. They can’t cut it up right now because the rest of their team and the truck they need are working a fire burning in the High Sierra. Meaning, until the National Fire Service releases the team from duty, we have the shattered remains of a once mighty tree to mourn.

About now you’re asking yourself, what does any of this have to do with reading or writing mysteries. This, I am struggling with the fifth book in my Wanee series. And all I can think of is them, a cat named Blue, and tree named Frank. Yes, Frank. And my husband.

Two fought to the end to overcome the ravages of climate change, the other perseveres, step by step, falls, then gets back up and takes another step. So, get with it, girl, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, you will have a book. It is so hard, it’s easy.

One Horse Too Many, the third book in the Wanee Mysteries is now available. According to a couple of other Ladies of Mystery it is a “really strong entry into the series” and “another winner in a great series.”

For more information, to sign up for my newsletter, or buy a book, go to https://dzchurch.com.

The QWERTY keyboard? Who in the right mind would organize letters that way? And yet, we all use it. Our fingers know exactly where to find the letters. Well, mostly. If you’re like me and your right index finger occasionally misses the tiny dimple on the j, a trip to Bletchley Hall may be required to decode your deathless prose. So, who put the A there and the M where it is?

In my newest book, One Horse Too Many, Cora’s boarders are gathered for dinner in Countryman House’s dining room where Dr. Shaw speaks of the Centennial Exposition of 1876, where the QWERTY type-writer, the Bell telephone, and giant boilers able to heat whole buildings were introduced. Yet, while people traveled to Philadelphia to see the wonders, General Custer fatefully met the Sioux in Montana, and the James-Dalton Gang robbed the Northfield Minnesota bank. The years 1876-77 were like that, colored by the past and roaring toward the future.

Telegraph operators tapped out the news of the massacre and the robbery on QWERTY keyboards. So, how did the board’s odd array of letters come to be? In October 1867, Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, filed a patent application for an early writing machine developed with the assistance of two friends (Glidden and Soulé). 

Sholes worked five more years to perfect his invention, rearranging the alphabetical keys, until 1873, when the QWERTY keyboard came to be. If you spend some time with your keyboard, you will notice that the letters are arranged in diagonally slanting columns. This was done purportedly to accommodate the mechanical linkages, as slanted columns prevented the levers from tangling. Yes, you pushed on a key, and a lever slammed the letter onto a ribbon of ink, leaving an imprint on your actual paper.

Now, researchers into the evolution of the keyboard conclude that the typewriter’s mechanics did not influence keyboard design. Instead, QWERTY resulted from how and by whom typewriters were first used – namely, telegraph operators, whose need to quickly transcribe messages informed the letter arrangement. Also, some cite educator Amos Densmore’s study of bigram (letter-pair) frequency as influential in the design.

In 1873, Sholes & Glidden sold the manufacturing rights to their Type-Writer to E. Remington and Sons. Remington made several adjustments after purchase that resulted in the modern QWERTY layout. These adjustments included moving the R key to the place previously allotted to the period key. With the new arrangement, the last vestiges of the actual alphabet appeared only in the home row sequence DFGHJKL. It makes you want to kiss them, doesn’t it?

And how about this nugget? The QWERTY arrangement allows thousands of English words to be spelled with only the left hand but only a couple hundred with the right hand, even though using alternating hands with the first hand striking as the second readies aids speed and accuracy. Does that make any sense?

Well, this makes sense – business sense. In addition to typewriters, Remington offered training courses (for a small fee), ensuring typists learned on their proprietary system. This forced companies that hired trained typists to buy Remington typewriters. By 1890, more than 100,000 QWERTY-based Remington typewriters were in use nationwide.

When the five largest typewriter manufacturers merged in 1893 to form the Union Typewriter Company, they agreed to adopt QWERTY as the de facto standard, and it still is. Though there have been attempts to make an easier to use keyboard, the QWERTY board is so prevalent that the cost to make a worldwide change is prohibitive.

And really, why change something that has produced so many enjoyable books, like One Horse Too Many, available September 15 (pre-order starting September 1)? Here’s a teaser: Sales are up at Cora’s dress shop, and she is making headway on her debt. Her new cook scares everyone and her domestic is a mess. Things have just settled when much-needed drugs are stolen from the hospital, and the newspaper office is tossed. If you like a rip-snorting yarn and appealing, strong-willed characters, you’ll get a kick out of this old-fashioned mystery.

Check out my books at https://dzchurch.com.

It’s summer, the heart of it; fireworks have filled the sky, and the heat has set in like a hot pad on high. The grass has turned lion’s mane bronze punctuated by the yellow of blossoming mule ears. It all makes me long for a trip to my husband’s family’s cabin on an island in a lake in Ontario, Canada. It is a magical place, saved from dereliction by my husband’s mother. She paid the taxes due in the early days of the prior century.

I once charted 19 species of trees and bushes on the three-acre island a buzz with bees and even the stray firefly. I have long believed it is like no other place on earth. As an island, it is of endless curiosity to those boating on the lake. What, then, does one do to ensure the random visitors who climb the island respect it.

In a stroke of brilliance, the door to the cabin was left open, and a Red Chief pad was set out on the dining room table for those who visited to write their names or leave a note. There have been a few incidents, but very few over the nearly hundred years my husband’s family has shepherded the place.  

And, yes, visitors left notes, years of them, whole histories of those who picnicked with their children, who returned as teens, announced their marriages, and returned to picnic with their children. A history left in pencil on foolscap.

Then there are the Canadians who have property on the same bay. Friends who look out for the place. I’m thinking of one group who, upon availing themselves of the island for a bit of the Canadian pastime of beer drinking, saw that a tree had fallen across the cabin’s roof. They returned, removed the tree, fixed the roof and left a note dubbing themselves The Green Bay Boys. I met them when alone on what appeared to be a deserted island, the guys had taken the boat to go into the nearby town (about 20 miles) for lumber. They trooped up with cases of beer to sit on the deck overlooking the lake. Spying me, they grinned, introduced themselves, and offered me a Labatts, which I did not decline.

The family across the bay, whom my husband knew from childhood, lived in the original stage stop, farmed, and managed a herd of spring kittens. They also allowed our family to dock and keep the boat and the engine in a shed over the winter. They are all gone now, and we truly mourn their passing. Such good friends and times.

And if you aren’t aware, Canadians are lovely, filled with fun, and a bit understated, eh? Our neighbors created a whole mythology about the island added to with wild abandon. A dentist who buried a body on the island. A mobster who flew in on a waterplane and held secret planning meetings. Sprinkled with tales of the horse-eating fishers, just to liven up the lies.

Then it happened. A few years ago, I sat down to write a thriller and out popped a tale of the island. Booth Island was a blast to write, rampaging out of my head chapters at a time. When I was done, it had been nine years since Boothe Treader summered at her family’s island. Twelve since her brother died on its rocky shore. She never forgave him for abandoning her, her parents for divorcing, or the dark-eyed boy who watched him drown.

Then her mother deeded her the island. And old friends lined up to welcome her back —Mike, Meg, and Penny, who all affectionately called Boothe “Boo”— or were they? She sensed she was being watched from the moment she stepped foot on the island, even before the shirt her brother died in appeared on the porch railing.

Or he came — her brother’s killer.

The lake neighbors like it, it’s about them and the lake and the nearby town. They buy copies for the bookshelves in their rentals and, every now and again, replace those taken by visitors. It even got good reviews: Masterful, suspenseful, and engaging; Church crafts a mystery rich with unease and an exhilarating climax while also offering a bold portrait of Canadian lake life; Mystery readers will be hooked by the unresolved death and quiet intrigue of this lakeside thriller.

And it’s about summer — romances, jealousies and lake friends. I’ve had a few. How about you? I suspect that’s why writing about this one magic island in Canada was such a gas. Sometimes, I guess, it is best to just sit down and let the joy flow.

Booth Island is available at https://www.amazon.com/Booth-Island-D-Z-Church-ebook/dp/B08VFCRL16/. For more information on it and my other books, go to my website at https://dzchurch.com

Ever one to try something new, I leaped on the AI-generated illustration wagon. I chose an ethical provider, one who has asked permission from those owning the rights to their photographs and one who pays when those photos are used in a mashup (Note: I licensed all of the pictures used in this blog). As you may or may not know, depending on your relationship with your covers, finding the perfect illustration or photograph can take endless hours of wandering through providers and then sometimes settling or buying rights to multiple photos and cobbling them together to create the cover you envisioned if you can. Sometimes, close is as good as you get.

So why not try AI?

I’m not only a trier; I’m a plunger in that I just plunge in without a thought and see where it takes me. As a consequence, there are now an alarming number of AI-generated illustrations of tipped-over horses and three armed men on the service I used. The provider says that images created will be offered to others. Oh, my!

This is what I learned while plunging — mind your clauses:

1. Don’t ask this: In 1870s a young woman dressed in men’s clothing galloping a horse with three men through a snowstorm at a distance. What I got was a woman in a skirt galloping a horse followed by three men in a snowstorm. (abandoned)
2. Or this: Three armed cowboys on horseback side by side in a snowstorm. Some good illustrations, except for those with the three-armed cowboys, you know what I mean. Perhaps one should say armed with rifles or guns. (abandoned)
3. Or this: A team of four horses hauling a freightwagon at a gallop in a blizzard. What I asked for in the world of AI is a galloping freight wagon hauled by a team of horses hauling four horses in a blizzard. (abandoned – see picture)
4. Or this: A freight wagon with a broken wheel behind a team of four horses tipped over in an icy snowy stream. What I got, and rightly so, was tipped over horses under a freight wagon in an icy stream. Too gruesome to share. (abandoned)
5. Close, but no cigar. Learning, I requested:  A 1870s brown-haired, clean-shaven man in a derby hat on a horse with a doctor’s bag in a snowstorm. A wonderful illustration came up. The man even had a distressed look on his face, which was perfect. I thought I had a live one until I realized the doctor’s bag was sitting unattached at the back of the horse.
6. So, here is the evolution of prompts that led to two illustrations that met my needs. This isn’t to say there weren’t others that were good, just not right. Notice the order and precision of the description that resulted in my final choices (** indicates the two I kept for possible use).
   • An 1870s man reaching for black cowboy hat floating in nearly dry stream
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt reaching for black cowboy hat floating in nearly dry stream (picture 1 **).
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt reaching for black cowboy hat stuck in bushes on the banks of a stream
   • An 1870s man in a white shirt pulling a black cowboy hat from bushes on the banks of a stream (picture 2). Note weird dent in the crown of the hat.
   • A 1870s man in his twenties wearing a cowboy hat and a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up retrieving a Stetson caught in the brush along a slow flowing stream. Serious beefcake. Also, there is no hat on his head, and I’m not sure what he is retrieving. But he sure is pretty! (picture 3)
   • A 1870s man in his twenties wearing a white shirt with rolled up sleeves retrieving a Stetson by the brim caught in the brush along a slow flowing stream (picture 4 **).

Summary

In the final analysis, I was pleased with the results and glad I had chosen an ethical AI service for my plunge. As my character Cora Countryman (Unbecoming a Lady, A Confluence of Enemies, and the upcoming One Horse Too Many) would say, I do not truck with pirating the work of authors and illustrators without their knowledge or reward.

Find my books at https://dzchurch.com or on Amazon.