I don’t think any one of us can deny the pure pleasure of writing. And when others read our work, it’s an added joy. Sometimes I forget that despite being a professional writer – in that readers spend money and time on my books – I really don’t write for them. True, I make a contract with the reader in the beginning of the story, usually within the first few paragraphs, that I am going to deliver a mystery of a certain style that will have an overall happy ending. I don’t tie up everything with a pert little bow, but satisfaction of a sort is guaranteed. That’s because I would like nothing better than to tie Life up with a pert little bow. In my writing world I can. Most of the time. Certainly, in my cozies.

My standalone, Murder under the Big Top, is not a cozy, but I’m still trying to figure out what it is. It’s definitely darker than my other novels. Everyone comes on scene with a secret, a secret that has brought on unhappiness. Through the years I have called it a mystery, a noir, a docu-drama, a docu-noir, and I’m still coming up with a term to fit. As this book made its debut in 2014, categorizing it doesn’t look good.

Murder under the Big Top (originally called Death of a Clown) is loosely based on my mother’s short time in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus of the early 40s. The story and plot are totally made up. But the day-to-day existence of life during the golden age of the “Greatest Show on Earth” was much documented and is the spot-on truth. It was a world unto itself, unique and colorful. If I haven’t mentioned it, my mother began her circus career as a First of May (a novice performer or worker in their first season), and my father was an elephant handler. They met in the circus and married. My mother worked her way up to specialty acts and my father became an elephant trainer. I was actually born during the yearly hiatus of the circus. So, I really felt obligated to give the story – fiction though it may be – full justice.

The novel took me six years to write and was a success of sorts. Despite winning a silver IPPY, it was never a big seller. Some readers think it’s my best work. Others couldn’t even get through it. It was a departure from my other books, and those used to my cozies weren’t happy about that. Maybe I should have called myself H. L. Haven on the cover instead of my usual moniker, as a warning. Maybe I should have turned it into a circus series, as a few fellow writers suggested. But here’s the truth: I couldn’t face writing another book feeling that level of obligation, even though no one put me there but me.

The other standalone, Christmas Trifle, started out as a romance novel. I was dancing around Hallmark, and it was suggested I write a romance novel for them. Come to discover, I don’t give good romance. I found that out at Chapter 8 when I would have preferred to clean out the dryer’s filter or even the county’s prison lavatories than sit down and write. Writing became a drudgery.

Rather than throw-up, I decided to throw in a murder. Wow! The story had a few heartbeats and then came to life. I added a few more deceased members of the human race and was off and away. It all came together. I was happy. Apparently, there’s nothing like a corpse to make my day. Forget romance. Forget writing what I know. Toss in a few dead bodies. That’s the ticket.

The Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries came about due to a challenge from an editor. Could I create an atypical female protagonist? It couldn’t have come at a better time because I had done tons of research for Murder under the Big Top,  very specifically the year 1942, and wanted to use that knowledge. Time to write a private dick of the 40s. Listening to my editor, I came up with Persephone ‘Percy’ Cole, a five-foot eleven-inch, overweight single mother, thirty-five-years old, with a wicked sense of humor and a right hook akin to that of a heavyweight boxer. A female counterpart to every male shamus of the era, but with an eight-year-old son who gives her life meaning.  

I was with a small publishing house and wrote two of the novels during that time, The Dagger Before Me and Iced Diamonds. I left, became independent, and wrote two more novels, The Chocolate Kiss-Off and Hotshot Shamus. The series was never a big seller, but just mad fun to write. Percy Cole makes her way in a man’s world of seventy-plus years ago during WWII and does it without apology. Who doesn’t like a no s–t lady?

The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries hit a stride soon after I began writing the series. It is by far my most popular and sells well. That’s “well” by my standards. I don’t think I could ever buy a yacht from the proceeds should the impulse strike me. Maybe a sailboat. Hmmm. No, not a sailboat. Those are pretty pricey. All that canvas, donchaknow. A rowboat. Probably a rowboat. With a hole in it. But I’m not whining, even though I live in wine country (bada-boom).

The truth is, as an adult I don’t do one-on-one with the ocean. Having been born and raised on the coastline of southern Florida, I know only too well what lives in and under all that sparkling salt water. As a kid, I’ve stepped on enough horseshoe crabs, who are not horseshoes nor crabs. Burrowing just under the sand, their spiny exoskeleton has ruined many a lovely day and naked foot. I’ve been stung by enough snarky jellyfish who loved the backseat of my bathing suit. And don’t get me started on sea urchins who seemed to have it out for me. As a youth, I remember splashing about in the Atlantic Ocean, minding my own business, only to be hauled out by lifeguards as a shiver of sharks swam by. They may have been well-fed from their stopover in Ft. Lauderdale, but it was hard to know their hunger deficit by the time they got to Miami, so out of the water we got and waved them on to the Bahamas.

But I digress. I love to write about Lee Alvarez’s escapades and her colorful family. Readers seem smitten with the series, as well, so this is the perfect combo. But keep this under your hat: Lee is not my favorite protagonist. That would be Corliss, from a short story of the same name, from Corliss and Other Award-Winning Stories, my one and only anthology. I love Corliss. I’m not even sure why. She’s my youngest protag, vulnerable and easily pushed around. But she has resilience, and learns life lessons fast and well. When I think of all of the characters I write about, she’s the one who makes the greatest changes in her life yet still remains who she is at her core. Wait a minute. I may have solved why I like her best. But she is done. Completely done. And there’s no reason to go back and write more about a character I am totally satisfied with.

Another of my favorite protagonists is a dog. I wrote Jemma and the Shoe, another short story included in Corliss and Other Award-Winning Stories, as a gift for my dearest heart-sister who lost her beloved Bulldog to old age. I have to say it was more than a labor of love. It became a testament as to why I like to bring people and animals alive again through writing. In this way, my beliefs are similar to that of the ancient Egyptians who carved names of pharaohs and others on the walls of temples, tombs, and pyramids. Say the name, think of the individual, love them, revere them, and they are alive again, if only for that moment. I did this with my own cats, Tugger and then Baba, now characters in the Alvarez Family. This passion is not unique to me, for sure, but I try to practice this ritual every day. The older I get, the more loved ones I have to remember, revere, and miss.

Oh, jeesh. Now I’ve not only digressed, I’ve become maudlin. But we’re back to the truth of things for me. I love to write, whether it’s short stories, articles, posts, plays, ad copy, newspaper columns, or novels. I’m grateful to the readers who enjoy my work, because that is the wondrous byproduct of what I do.

But I write for me. It gets me through the day. It makes me feel alive. It keeps me sane. Okay, saner. And for a time, a fleeting moment, I sometimes feel the touch of a hand or paw from those no longer with me but always in my heart.

Friends and readers ask me where I find my characters, especially the women. I can’t buy them from Walmart, although I did purchase a nifty shower cap there the other day. Even Amazon doesn’t have such a product. I suspect I could buy a new husband on Amazon, should mine start acting up. But characters? Unfortunately, no. So, I tend to draw traits from women around me.

A lot of people suspect the protagonist in the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Lee Alvarez, is based on me. Nope. Many of Lee’s character facets are actually lifted from my mother. Even her name. While Mom wasn’t christened Lee, she’d taken the name at an early age and when I was born, gave it to me as a middle name. Heather Lee Haven. I dropped the Lee, myself, because I feel that spoken in toto, I sound a bit like a rest home. “You, too, can enjoy your golden days at the Heather Lee Haven.”

But back to my characters. I wanted the protagonist, Lee Alvarez, to be bright, beautiful, quick-witted, spirited, savvy, and a huge lover of life. My mom was all those things. Insecurity was the other side of the coin for her. I never quite knew why my mother had these feelings of insecurity; sometimes people just do. Nonetheless, I handed this dichotomy off to my protagonist. It has a certain charm about it i.e., someone who has everything going for them but is constantly on the lookout for Life’s banana peel.

With Lee, however, I give several reasons for her insecurity. One, since being a small child, she wanted nothing more than to be a professional ballerina but could not make the cut. Mediocre is mediocre. The second reason is having the “perfect” mother.  Step forward Lila Hamilton Alvarez, mother and CEO of the family-owned detective agency, Discretionary Inquiries.

Lila is a cool, aristocratic blonde who wears confidence like a crown on a head that’s never had a bad hair day. As a backstory, this Palo Alto blueblood married a Mexican immigrant, Roberto Alvarez, a scholarship student she met at Stanford U. This marriage surprised no one as he was her equal in every way and theirs was the love affair of the century. A running thread in the series is Lila’s inability to recover from his recent and unexpected death. Their daughter, Lee, takes after her father, even to her dark hair and twilight-blue eyes. But most of the things Lila found irresistible in Roberto, she finds annoying in Lee. They have an edgy relationship, as neither understands the other. But genuine affection is there, and they keep on trying. That’s the key to everything, as we know. Keep moving forward, keep trying.

Don’t let this get around the neighborhood, but I based Lila’s character on two people, my mother-in-law and my then boss. Both were highly intelligent women who liked to put you in your place even before you entered the room. I have a certain amount of sympathy for these real-life women – they were not always well liked – but they serve the strained relationship between the mother/daughter Alvarez women well.

Moving on to the Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries. Percy Cole, the protagonist, is also a PI. Unlike Lee, who sits at a desk wearing designer clothes and sipping a latte, Percy’s a where-the-rubber-meets-the-road sleuth. She’s also a unique kind of woman, one I’d not tackled before. I had been challenged by my writing instructor to come up with a non-conforming female protagonist. Thus, Persephone Cole was born, and I love her. She’s self-assured and sharp, and by no means the average beauty or thinker of the time. Or of any time.

At five foot eleven in her stocking feet and, for lack of a better word, zaftig, Percy is as physically big, if not bigger, than the average man of the time. She handles herself like a champ. She even takes boxing lessons at the local Y should the occasion arise when she needs to slug a villain. My redheaded, green-eyed gumshoe functions in the 1940s man’s world better than many a man and it all comes naturally to her. As for most other 40s women, they may be helping the war effort by temporarily taking a man’s job on the home front, but they know their place is in the kitchen when the war is over. In Percy’s mind, her place is wherever she wants it to be. What softens this steamroller of a woman is a wicked sense of humor, and being the single mother of an eight-year-old boy, Oliver, a child who gives her life meaning.

Her mother, Lamentation Cole, understands her daughter even better than Percy does herself. Indeed, Mother, as she’s called, has a deep understanding of all three of her children and their father. She has a gift for always honing in on the truth and you will never fool her. Mother is reminiscent of a walking dandelion, being five foot eight, weighing maybe a hundred and ten pounds, topped off by long, wild white hair. She may have many of the characteristics of ZaSu Pitts, a well-known comedic actress of the time, but no one who knows her, especially Percy, underestimates Mother’s astuteness or that she is the glue that holds the family together.

The Alvarez Family Murder Mystery series is based in today’s Palo Alto, California, and the Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries take place in 1940’s Manhattan. They are for the most part humorous. Although you’d never know it by this post. But in order to be funny, truly funny, you often have to base your humor on sadness or loss, confusion or misunderstanding, and sometimes downright anger. But in both these series, there is familial love which rushes in when all else fails.

My job as a fiction writer is to shine a light on the truth. And my truth is that family is what keeps us going. I believe there are two ways to have a family. Some you are born into. Others you create through love, respect, and honor.

As a side note, on September 1st Bewitched, Bothered, and Beheaded was awarded the Readers’ Favorite Bronze for Best Fiction Mystery Sleuth, 2024. That would be Lee. And she couldn’t have done it without her mother, Lila’s, help!

Disclosure: the below is just my opinion and my particular experiences. I am not a seasoned IT person nor the grand poohbah of publishing. What I am is a writer. Let’s be clear, the problem is no doubt me but nonetheless, I share it. I’ve heard many positive things about IngramSpark. You can’t be as big and successful as they are without doing a lot of things right. It’s just that I can’t seem to get any of those things right for me.

I jot down this sad tale because IngramSpark and I have had, from the start, a tenuous relationship. I will elucidate. A few years back and hoping to sell more books, I uploaded the whole shebang into IngramSpark (which cost a pretty penny because it wasn’t free to upload books then as it is now). Instead of selling more books, I learned a valuable and expensive lesson. Here comes the elucidation. Shortly after the upload, 40 of my books were ordered by an assistant buyer at a bookstore where I was going to be doing an event. Even though there were 4 writers at the event, and the crowd was only going to be around 45 people, the buyer still ordered 40 of my books. 8 of them sold, which sounded pretty good to me until . . .

I found out the remaining 32 would be returned to IngramSpark and I was going to be charged full retail for the books. This was because stupid me had NOT said ‘no’ to any returns. This gets worse. Not only would I be charged full price, but once the books were returned to IngramSpark they would be destroyed. I threw myself on the mercy of this bookstore, even though I was really annoyed with them for ordering so many of my books to begin with. This bookstore, who will remain nameless, said I could buy the books for 30% off the retail price (everybody has to make a profit, right?) But let’s do the math. 32 X $17.50 less 30% is what I wound up paying. This little jaunt to the bookstore cost me around $600.

On the bright side, at least I had the books. If I had let them be sent back to IngramSpark, I would not only have been out 30% more money, but I would have had no books because they would have been destroyed. It was the lesser of two evils. In a snit, I withdrew my books from IS. IngramSpark should rethink the practice of charging full retail price instead of their cost and making a profit on a writer who is a double loser. The books are being returned because they didn’t sell, and then the writer gets charged up the ying-yang for the honor.

But years passed, times change, and once again I decided I needed to try having my books available to libraries and bookstores across the country. And I was lulled into a sense of security that IS has become more my style because they no longer charged for the initial process of uploading book covers and contents. Yes, they do charge for any changes after 60 days but that sounded reasonable.

So, I began reentering my books into their system. But I said a resounding NO to any returned books no matter the IS ‘words of wisdom’ about libraries and bookstores being less likely to order them if they can’t be returned. That lesson I learned. You are always going to find that knothead who will order 40 of your books when there’s 3 other writers at an event and only a crowd of 45 because what’s it to them if the books are returned or not? After all, writers are rich, right?

But back to IngramSpark being my own personal pain in the patootie. From the beginning I found them difficult to work with and, of course, I admit you could lay it at my feet. Still and all, I find their system isn’t user-friendly or intuitive. You need to know or have access to the minutest details of publishing a book, from A to Z. And I always seem to forget one letter of the alphabet. If you don’t do what they want exactly, you are going to learn the hard way that they ain’t puttin’ up with nothin’.

 For example, it took me 6 exasperating hours to figure out how to embed fonts from Word into PDF. I searched all over the Internet and did everything I could to find the answer. I gave myself until 5:00 PM to resolve this or I was never speaking to IS again. At 10 minutes to the self-imposed deadline, I found the answer. Somewhere, someone on the Internet advised to check under options in Word for this issue. Vague, but that was my only clue. There are about a dozen places you can find options in Word, but I finally found the right one. And IS finally took the file.

But they went on to say they did not like the book cover, something about the colors. I looked at the sample of my book cover they were not happy about and it looked just fine to me. In fact, it looked exactly the same. I said, well, phooey, take it the way it is, guys. So, I uploaded my 6-hour book. The next one took me 15 minutes to upload once I’d found out where this stupid option for embedding was.

I became giddy with success and decided to upload a  third one. Big mistake. Naturally, something went wrong. IngramSpark told me the ISBN number is already in use. Well, no it isn’t. Or is it? I had to go back to Bowker, spend a certain amount of time on hold, finally spoke to someone who did some research and found out that it was, indeed, my ISBN number. After an hour of dealing with this, I sent a text to IS telling them of the problem on their end. Below is what I received from IngramSpark. Be still my heart.

Hello Heather,
 
Thank you for contacting us.
 
This email is to let you know that the title xxxxxxxxxx was set up through Amazon Digital Services first and it cannot be set up from the beginning using the same ISBN number on our platform.  
 
A title transfer request would have to be placed with us, but it is not guaranteed that Amazon Digital Services will transfer the title. 
 
Please submit your title transfer request by using the link below: 
https://www.ingramspark.com/lp/title-transfer 
 
What happens next? 
– We will review your request. 
– We will reach out to the current publisher to inform them of the request to transfer the title to your account. 
– You will be notified via email when the title is transferred and available in your account. 
 
Please allow about 30 days for confirmation and transferal. 
Please allow us time to obtain approval from the current publisher and process orders before we complete the transfer of the title to your account. 
 
Since the title will be moving from one publisher to another, please consider purchasing a new ISBN or one of our free ISBNs. All past sales and returns information will follow the current ISBN, which means if the book is returnable, you could end up with returned books. Please see the following article for more information ISBN & SKU INFORMATION. You may need to be logged into your IngramSpark account to view this article. 
 
Let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll be happy to help. 
 
Thank you for choosing IngramSpark! 

Well, their last sentence was like pouring salt on the wound. If I had a choice, I would stay as far away from them as I could. IngramSpark is my Goliath, and I am David minus a slingshot. But when it comes down to it, I’m a fighter not a victim, so I persevered. The emails have been flying back and forth between IngramSpark and me for weeks now. I sent them the URL number of the website and an image of it on Bookwire several times. Didn’t work.

I checked with Amazon, and they agreed with me but say they can’t do anything about IngramSpark’s protocol (who I could never reach by phone). Furthermore, the Amazon representative told me that even though the book is expanded, it should have nothing to do with the ISBN number. Amazon says everything’s fine the way it is. IngramSpark says it’s not. IS maintains I need to request Amazon transfer the ISBN number over to IngramSpark even though Amazon says it’s not necessary. IS is determined. I am depressed.

After a large martini and a strong backrub courtesy of my husband, I began the process of transferal, knowing it will take a month to learn the outcome. A month of waiting, martinis, and backrubs. Hmmm, not all bad. But somewhere in the recesses of my mind lurks the question of whether or not I will wind up having to buy another ISBN number to satisfy the gods. And this only is the 3rd book. There are 15 more to go. That’s a lot of martinis. And I may need to hire my own personal masseurs.

Yes, yes, I could pay somebody else to do all this but reality check. It would probably wind up costing me thousands of dollars because I’m dealing with 18 books. And there is often this type of glitch that eats into the clock and you never know when it’s going to turn up. The gods can be so finicky. So, nobody’s doing this process but me. Arrrrg!

I want to go on record as stating I hate this part of publishing. And it would be lovely if IngramSpark were a little more accessible and worked a bit on their people skills, even though I’m sure they have very good business reasoning for being the way they are. But I would be over the moon if they stopped all this futzing around with my ISBN number.

A few days ago, I took a tumble in the parking lot of the San Jose Kaiser Permanente. While I don’t advise it, if you have to take a fall, try to do it in the parking lot of a hospital. Within seconds about 12 doctors, nurses, and orderlies came running. They were all very concerned about me. I, on the other hand, sat there wondering how I was going to get up. Getting up from the ground at my age is not always the easiest thing to do and it certainly isn’t the most graceful. It may have taken four nurses and orderlies to do it, but they hauled me up and took me to ER where I was diagnosed with a broken wrist. Not only did I have a broken wrist, but it was my dominant wrist, which is the left. I’m left-handed. And a writer. Yikes!

 This presented some problems, not the least of which was being in the middle of my latest WIP, Cleopatra slept here. Aside from the fact that I am completely dependent upon my husband to do nearly everything and will be for the next six weeks, what bothers me the most is I can’t type any of my work into the computer. What to do?

Big Decision born of necessity: go rogue and use the dictation program in Word for Windows. I gave it a whirl, but it didn’t work. Where was this stupid microphone? I spent the better part of two hours searching for it on my computer only to discover I didn’t have one. There’s always a glitch.  

But undaunted, I bought a microphone from Amazon, a plug and play. A plug and play does all the necessary setup work such as drivers for your computer and was the way to go for this wounded-wing writer. I’m using Microsoft Word’s AI now to dictate this post.

Using the AI dictation program in Word is akin to having a really dumb secretary. Maybe I shouldn’t say dumb. Maybe unseasoned. And stubborn. Unlike human secretaries, this one doesn’t try to fit in with your work practices. When you tell this AI what not to do, it simply doesn’t listen and continues to make the same mistakes again and again. OK, I thought, the program is free and better than nothing. Why not try to deal with its idiosyncrasies? So, I am.

Remember the Three Stooges? I call the AI on my phone Moe. Moe knew early on I used the word ain’t every now and then. It no longer tells me it’s a misspelling or I should put in something else. Microsoft Word’s AI, who I call Curly, is not so smart. It will put a period or capitalize a word in the middle of a sentence for I know not why. Or add an extra space in between words. Really, Curly? Also, if I leave the microphone on and say nothing, it takes my breathing to be the words bye-bye. And if I clear my throat? It puts in the word Oh. With my allergies, I’m always clearing my throat. At the end of the day, I find a plethora of Ohs scattered around my manuscript. And do not talk to the mailman or a passing dog while it’s on. There’s no telling what it will write. Flergon deherden flup??

As I read this back, I must say I come off like an ungrateful cow. Moo. Maybe I’m being a little like Larry, the third member of the Three Stooges. Or maybe I’m just taking out my frustrations about my broken wrist on an inanimate object that acts a lot like a person, but isn’t. After all, these are very useful tools we have now. AI has really come up with some things that makes our lives better. Not perfect, but better. Nothing is perfect in this world. I remember once at about 23 years old, I thought I might be perfect. I was mistaken. Even my mother had a good laugh over that one.

So, until my wrist heals up, I will continue to use this free dictation program, glad I don’t have to type with my nose to get my work done. Or hire a real secretary. And if this secretary knows the eight parts of speech, it could be up to 40 bucks an hour. To recap, if the iPhone is Moe, and Microsoft Word is Curly, then I guess I’m Larry.

 I can go there.

I started a new novel a few weeks ago, Cleopatra Slept here, Book 11 of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries. All enthusiastic, I got off to a rip-roaring start, only to peter out several days later. I found any excuse not to sit down and write, some of them pretty lame. Watching the leaves grow on a rosebush is not a valid excuse. Neither is watching the new season of Bridgerton, although the costumes are fantastic and there is a lot of huggy-poo-kissie-face. But still, not a good enough reason to put off my work. So, I called myself on it and found, as usual, I was in a stall because I was on the wrong road.

I should be used to this. I am directionally challenged. I remember back in ’86, when my husband and I packed up everything we owned, including two reluctant cats, and headed from New Jersey to California. It was December 14^th. Chilly weather, but drivable. Naturally, the car hitch to the truck didn’t work. As it was a Sunday and Avis Rent-a-Truck was closed, we decided he would drive the truck (alone) and I would lead the way driving the car (with the two cats). I was the leader because I was in charge of the Trip Tik, an involved layout of driving instructions from Triple A, before the internet was a going concern. I think I mentioned I am directionally challenged. That was the day we found out. December 14, 1986.

Instead of heading west and south to Texas, I managed to head us northwest, even with directions. We discovered this error about 9 hours later, 5 miles to the gallon, during a blizzard. Divorces have been caused by less. Norm became suspicious about the blizzard and not seeing any signs for Texas. He honked me over to the side of the road where reality hit. Lake Erie was in view.

Near the border of Canada, we crashed for the night at a Motel 6 when it really was 6 bucks. I will not go into the discussion about me leading us closer to Lake Erie than we had ever been before or since, but sufficeth it to say I gave up my rights to the Trip Tik or any other directional leadings in the future. But at least my husband was still talking to me, even if it was through tight lips. The cats were not talking to me, so it was a long night, blizzard and all. A week later we arrived in California, no thanks to me.

I allude to this December 14^th snafu as it has a direct bearing on my writing.  Metaphorically speaking, I was heading in the wrong direction, about to run into the Lake Erie of writing, a lovely lake I’m sure, but not my destination. Initially, I may not have known that’s what I did to myself, but somewhere in the deep recesses of my soul, Life’s Trip Tik did. It took a while because I didn’t have a snow-covered, tight-lipped husband standing over me with flames shooting from his mouth, but eventually, I got the message. I had gone north when I should have gone south.

This is particularly important with book 11, Cleopatra Slept Here. I will elucidate. Book 9, The Drop-Dead Temple of Doom, takes place in Guatemala, the storyline dealing with ancient Mayans, archeology, and what have you. So here I am in book 11 writing a storyline dealing with ancient Egyptians, archeology, and what have you. I knew from the beginning the story had to be as different as possible from book 9 but Laudie, Laudie, Laudie.

Leave it to me to head north when I should be going south. I’d started out with the same scenario as book 9. It was comfortable. Missing person, trip to the pyramids for Lee Alvarez, protagonist; former Navy SEAL husband, Gurn; and she-who-must-be-obeyed mother of Lee, Lila. Really, Heather? It took me a long time to find a U-turn from that road.

After I slept on it, played in my garden, and bought things on the internet I am now returning, what to do hit me. Start the stupid story ANEW. Forget anything you wrote before. Pretend you never wrote book 9. Don’t be influenced by it. Every series writer knows it’s tough not to repeat yourself, but you simply can’t. The readers remember, bless their hearts. And it’s about as close to cheating as you can get. I mean, plagiarizing yourself? How gauche.

And I realized I did want something different in book 11. I wanted the entire Alvarez family together on a ship floating down the Nile. The three mentioned above, but I also wanted Tío, retired chef uncle; brother and IT guru, Richard; his wife, Vicki; their 2-year-old daughter, Steffi; and Lee and Gurn’s 2 cats, Tugger and Baba. Why? Why not. The more, the merrier. But how to accomplish that?

A 2-week vacation! No need to stick in missing people, mishaps, or mysteries in the story. Yet. Just a family vacation laid out as simply as possible, with everything falling into place. This includes free private transportation to Egypt, thanks to Gurn’s pilot buddy who happens to be flying a large plane to Luxor and needs him for a co-pilot. There’s also free lodging on the Blue Nile, a ship with rooms to spare, thanks to the original dig seeking out Cleopatra’s tomb in Alexandria being canceled and most dig members scattering. Gurn’s parents, amateur archeologists, were willing to pay through the nose to be included in this canceled dig but have been persuaded to join a new one, the search for Cleopatra’s mother.

Cleopatra VII, of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony fame, was born in early 69 BC to the ruling Ptolemaic pharaoh Ptolemy XII and an unknown mother, possibly Ptolemy XII’s wife Cleopatra V Tryphaena. But it is not certain. The Dig Director and main benefactor of the original dig decides instead of following the pack in Alexandria trying to locate Celopatra’s tomb, sailing aboard the Blue Nile for Aswan to find out just who the queen’s mom was is the way to go. The Alvarez family decides to join in the search. And all for free!

But nothing is free in this world, not even in fiction. What starts out as a gentle, family-oriented vacation lolling around on the Nile ends up with the Alvarez clan being caught up in a mind-numbing ride of murder, drugs, and other chicanery. The trade of heroin may persist in Egypt, despite efforts by security forces to eliminate it, but something is mightily wrong with the elegant Blue Nile. Who are these strange voices heard in the middle of the night? Why do missing waiters seem to be commonplace aboard this ship?  And what is the secret the elusive captain’s log holds?

Egypt’s strategic location makes it a significant destination and transit point for heroin moving from Asia to Europe, Africa, and the US. But all of this settles in on the Alvarez clan too late to do anything but ride posse on the truth, camel-style.