If anyone had said to me six-months ago a large part of being an author in today’s world would be virtual, I would have laughed in his or her face. So much for reading the future. Before the pandemic, I did my share of in-the-flesh panel discussions, book signings, writers’ meetings, board meetings i.e., the basic tools of the trade. They were enough of a trial. Back in the day, the Bay Area traffic was so bad it would take hours to travel anywhere that wasn’t your local filling station. But here I am, forced into the unlikely reality of Zoom.

First off, I had no idea how to Zoom. What do you mean, I need a camera? And a mic? Am I going to have to push a bunch of buttons? But soon I realized it was time to come kicking and screaming into 2020. This old Poodle needed to learn a few new tricks. Bow-wow.

So I took a free Zoom online class offered to those like me to learn the rudiments. For the next forty minutes, we rushed through everything that makes Zoom a gift to the virtual world. I watched the clicking of the teacher’s mouse going from here to there and back again while trying to remember what went where. After my class, I asked my heart sister to let me practice on her with a Zoom meeting. She was the ideal person because whatever I did or didn’t do, she would be all-forgiving. I managed to set up the Zoom meeting and it went great. Was this one-on-one Zoom stuff really this easy to do?

Not quite.

To attain a more professional look, I needed an interesting backdrop behind me instead of the basket of laundry sitting on the dining room table waiting to be folded. Or hubby walking by in nothing but his boxers, grateful as I was for him at least wearing those. Then I remembered my class. The look of a real background could be solved by using a virtual one. Virtuality saves the day?

Not quite.

Unfortunately, one has to have a fairly new computer to support this enhancement. I don’t. But wait! I could buy a green screen plus its stand to place behind me. Then a multitude of backgrounds could be superimposed on the green screen.  Once I got that, they said, I could virtually be wherever I wanted to be: the Roman Coliseum, Waikiki beach, or even outer space (which seemed pretty good at the time). Problem solved?

Not quite.

The lighting has to be just so, they warned, or you will look like Bela Lugosi. Or in my case, his mom. And the virtual background on its little green backdrop won’t work so well, either. It shouldn’t have too much or too little light, but something just right. Goldilocks aside, now I’m a lighting director?

Not on your tintype.

This all seemed a little too sophisticated for me, so I axed the virtual background thing. But after a bit more research, I did buy a ring light on a mini-tripod that sits behind the laptop. I have to admit, the lighting does smooth out some of the wrinkles in my face…ah…dress.

I’m still looking for that perfect writerly background. I’ve been prowling around the house, laptop and ring light in tow. The only acceptable background I’ve found so far is the bookcase in the bedroom directly across from the bed.  So I set the laptop and ring light on a box on top of the bed because I’ve learned the camera needs to be elevated. This is so my double chins don’t show as much. One hopes. Then I brought in a chair and sat down between the bed and the bookcase trying to look writerly. Not so comfortable and the cat was totally confused. Just who did I think I was dumping all this junk on her bed and interrupting her mid-afternoon nap?

Okay, so I’m still trying to work out the bugs of this new media stuff. I am beginning to appreciate the idea of the green screen. But I am really beginning to appreciate the idea of radio.

They say A Day Without Writing is Like a Day Without Sunshine. Unless ‘they’ don’t. Maybe nobody else says that but me. I know I’ve been paraphrasing something or other for so long, I can’t even remember what the original phrase is. A Day Without Wine is a Day Too Sober?

Hmmm. Maybe not.

In any event, for the past few days, I have done very little writing. July 1st saw the preorder status for Casting Call for a Corpse, which debuts August 1st, and I am at loose ends. I know I want to start another book as soon as possible, but which series do I choose?  I am at a loss as to what that book should be. I was thinking to start Spring Thaw, Book 2 of the Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Novels. But then, Percy Cole is calling me to write The Mother’s Day Murders, Book 4 of the Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries.  Then, of course, I could write Book 3, Divorce Can Be Murder of the Love Can Be Murder Mystery Novellas. And let’s not forget….wait. I just forgot.

Oh, yes! I could start Book 8 of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, titleless at the moment. But let’s face it, Book 7, Casting Call blah blah, hasn’t even gotten off the assembly line yet. What to write? What to do?

So here’s what I’ve done. Or am doing. I’m sending out a survey in my next newsletter asking my readers which series they like the best, from which series they’d like to have the next book. On a lot of levels, the question is presumptuous. I am assuming that these people will take the time to respond, care enough to respond, or even read my work in the first place. Then I add to the presumption by asking if they will be reading more of my work.

But what they hey. This is my 14th novel and sometimes I wish I had my nerve in my teeth. If you can’t throw out a little presumption at my age, when can you?

You know what this all stems from? Or rather, from which all this stems? Loose ends. This is the most useless time to be a writer that I know. That’s because, as I’ve stated, A Day Without Writing is Like a Day Without Sunshine.

Several nights ago I finished Casting Call for a Corpse, Book 7 of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, labeled a fun detective cozy. Fun or not, I actually didn’t finish it. My little pea-brain just likes to think I did.  What really is finished is the initial creative stage. I immediately emailed this ha-ha magnificent work of literature off to the content editor. She will return it several weeks from now noting a bazillion errors, mistakes, misquotes, and/or things that made no sense or didn’t work for her. I will sob for a while, and then will make the corrections or clarifications. I will then send it off to the line editor, who will also find a bazillion things wrong, such as grammar, language, syntax, names, dates, you know, that sort of stuff.  Sobbing, I will do the corrections and pretend that I knew ‘whom’ went there instead of ‘who’ but I was so busy being creative, doncha know, it got by me. And Paris? So in France. Did I write Spain? Whoops. After that, the manuscript will go to the Beta readers. Repeat any and all of the above.

Meanwhile,  I will need to come up with an elevator pitch condensing an 86 thousand-word story into under 25 words. Then I will write several back cover blurbs in varying lengths. But whether the blub is 2 sentences, 2 paragraphs, or 10, it has to be so exciting and pithy, it just makes anyone who picks up that book want to buy it. What is saving my sanity is I no longer have to do the publicity for this little gem. I am paying someone else to do that. Which is good. Because I will be too busy sobbing and being fed up. I will have had it with the stupid story, the stupid book, the stupid series, not to mention the stupid writing process. But soon, as follows the night the day, it will be up and running. And so will I.

I will be running on to my next novel, Spring Thaw, Book 2 of the Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Novels. And I can’t wait to get started!

I have been self-publishing (or call me an independent publisher) for nearly a decade. It’s a lot of work, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am in control of me. I am my own destiny. But time marches on and what worked in 2011 doesn’t necessarily work in 2020. Destiny has taken a nosedive.

So I’m starting anew. My first book of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries was published out of Canada in 2011. I wound up having three books of the series published by their house before I left. I had no quarrel nor falling out with them. It’s just that they moved their attention and time on to the next author in line and my books seemed to just languish in the queue. So in late 2012 I took my books back and decided to self-publish exclusively on Amazon. I now have four series going, a stand-alone, and an anthology published. But the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries has always been my biggest seller and accounts for over 95% of my sales. In the beginning, I made good money just being on Amazon. I used to say that while I might not be able to buy a yacht, I could certainly buy a sailboat with my earnings. I can’t say that anymore. At this point, I don’t think I could even buy a dinghy. Used. That leaks.

My ebook numbers started falling in 2016. In 2017 I took everything out of Amazon’s KDP (where I also made about 1/3 of my monthly income lending the books out and being paid page by page) and published them on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc. They did even worse! A year later in 2018, I brought them back to Amazon where they did slightly better but never as well as they had from 2012 – 2016. It was a continual decrease in sales. I had to face it. Something was wrong. Or was it? Had my time come and gone? I was in a panic.

About four months ago a fellow author, who writes two mystery series, told me about a marketing person who helped her increase sales dramatically. This person only handles books of a very specific nature. It has to be a series of four books or more, only ebooks, and sold exclusively on Amazon. Sounded right up my alley.

I hired that person and she is currently doing a new marketing approach for the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries from top to bottom, including new book covers. It has not been cheap. But in order to make $$$, you have to spend $$$. Right? Right.

Revamping, redoing, rethinking, and reassessing has been my middle name for a couple of months. Everything is lined up, ready to go, and we will be starting a new marketing campaign exclusively on Amazon starting February 16th. The Alvarez Family is now a “fun detective cozy”  instead of a humorous mystery, with new keywords to draw in readers, hopefully. And the new covers are completely, COMPLETELY different than before, as are the blurbs. As, frankly, is everything.

So am I in a slump? Is this revitalization? Or am I a has-been? Stay tuned because I haven’t got a clue. Meanwhile, check out the new covers on my website at www.heatherhavenstories.com.

Judy Garland used to sing the song, “I Was Born In A Trunk At The Princess Theatre.” I often sing “I Was Born ON A Trunk At Ringling Brothers Circus.” My parents met and married at Ringling Brothers during the early forties. She started out as a First of May, he an elephant handler. Her professional name was Jerull Deane. His was Whitey Haven.

Within a couple of years, Mom worked her way up to a specialty act with the elephants. My father worked his way up to being an elephant trainer. They both loved working with these large but sweet-natured animals.

My mother used to say one of the reasons she fell in love with my father was because he didn’t use the eye hook, or let any of his men use them, either. He was kind and loving to his charges, and she adored the man all the more for it. Topsy was one of the elephants Mom worked with and she liked to tell stories about her beloved pachyderm.

As a married couple, they had a little more privacy than other people, and lived in a small trailer on the backlot next to the animals. One of her favorite stories was about the time she took up baking. She would bake a fruit pie – apple, peach, berry, depending on what you could get right after the war – and put them on the windowsill in front of a partially opened window to cool. But pies kept disappearing, not all the time but most of the time. She couldn’t figure out who was stealing them. Also, Mom was running out of pie tins. They cost a lot of money and there were only so many of them, as rationing was still ongoing.

So she set up a watch. She baked an apple pie, put it in the window to cool and waited out of sight. About half an hour later, a grey trunk slowly appeared in the window sniffing the air. Once it located the pie, it pushed the small window open entirely, reached in, and pulled out huge chunks of pie, disappearing out the window with them. After most of the pie was gone, the trunk sucked on the metal of the pie tin, and pulled it out of the window, too.

Mom appeared at the window and looked down at the thief. She recognized Topsy right away. Pie tin on the ground, Topsy was slurping on the remnants like she was a vacuum cleaner. When the elephant had finished the last crumb, she picked up the empty tin and turned to a nearby trashcan.  Mom had had enough.

“Topsy,” she yelled from inside the small window. “Don’t you dare throw that tin in the trash!”

The elephant froze in place then slowly turned around to face her performing partner in the ring, pie tin dangling from her trunk.

“You bring that here right now,” Mom demanded.

The elephant slowly crept toward the sound of her partner’s voice.

“Did you steal that pie?”

Topsy lowered her head.

“You did, didn’t you?”

Topsy nodded once, pie tin scraping on the ground.

“You give me that pie tin. You hear me? Right now.”

Mom reached her hand out the small window. Topsy raised the tin up for Mom to take.

“You’re a bad, girl,” Mom said eye level with Topsy’s face. Topsy reached her trunk into the window and stroked Mom’s cheek with the finger at the tip end of her trunk.

Mom laughed, took the grey trunk in her hand, and kissed it lightly on the tip, a tip that smelled of cinnamon and baked apples.

“No, you’re not,” she crooned. “You’re a very good girl and you’re my baby doll.”

Even though her ‘baby doll’ weighed in at 5.5 tons, every now and then Mom would bake an extra fruit pie for Topsy. Especially apple. Topsy loved apple. But Mom stopped cooling any of them on the windowsill after that.

I’ve always been taken with the stories of my mother’s life in the circus, especially during its golden age. As a mystery writer, her stories prompted me to write a noir mystery, Murder under the Big Top, using my perception of her during that time as my muse. I even used a photo of her on top of Topsy as the book cover. I lost Mom in 2014. I’m proud to say Murder under the Big Top won the IPPY Silver for Best Mystery/thriller that same year and right around Mother’s Day.

I like to think Mom was looking down on me then, smiling. Maybe Topsy was, too!

“The cheaper the crook the gaudier the patter.” This line was uttered by Humphrey Bogart, when he played Sam Spade in the movie Maltese Falcon. This classic was written by my hero, Dashiell Hammett. Even at seventeen years old, when I read that particular line in the book of the same title, I knew Hammett was a brilliant writer. It’s hard to miss something like that.

Mr. Hammett was a big influence on me becoming a crime writer, albeit not quite as hard-boiled. I’m more like a two-minute egg. But I recently learned that if there isn’t a dead body, I’m not interested in reading someone else’s book or writing one of my own.

My latest novel, Christmas Trifle, which came out a few days ago, started out as pure romance. Good golly, Miss Molly. What was I thinking? Ultimately, I found what the story needed was a good, old-fashioned murder, not more kisses. More foreboding, not more hugs. So it was only natural I turned Christmas Trifle into a romantic suspense novel.

And why not? Dashiell Hammett created the iconic Nick and Nora Charles. He put these two lovebirds in a novel called The Thin Man. Also made into a film, it was followed by a succession of sequels, all written by him. Not only were these murder mysteries wildly popular, they were wildly romantic. He may have even invented the modern day romantic suspense. So I felt him egging me on, no pun intended, to do what I do best.

Consequently, Christmas Trifle now contains a corpse or two. Actually, three. The story still has the same charming, but recently divorced chefs, but these two find their way back to each other over a dead body rather than a dead soufflé.

My kinda story.

Dashiell Hammett once wrote, “If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

My kinda guy.