Category: Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger ~ Elizabeth Crowens

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

A few years ago, I interviewed the most prolific writer I know, Heather Graham Pozzessere, for Black Gate magazine. https://www.blackgate.com/2018/10/10/the-poison-apple-talking-about-ghosts-an-interview-with-the-queen-of-many-genres-heather-graham/ Writing since 1982, she’s produced over 300 bestselling novels, often mixing romance with suspense and the paranormal, especially in her Krewe of Hunters series. Many people in the mystery/thriller community knew her, but apparently few in the speculative fiction arena were familiar with her work, which was why I wanted to introduce the Black Gate community to her fantastic writing.

Since it’s one thing to knock off a quickie and let your editor polish it and another to have to make it almost perfect before turning it in, I asked her if editing got any easier as more books went down the pipeline. Obviously, she’s built a long-term relationship with her editors, but I also suspected after that many books one got much better at the craft, which also sped the process along.

Although Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles is technically my first bona fide mystery novel in print, altogether I have written ten novels which include unfinished works-in-progress, unpublished manuscripts, and published books in other genres. For each of them, I hired freelance editors. For my first novel I hired three, an expensive ordeal, but I was learning the craft of writing as I went along. In a certain way, it was like having a private writing tutor.

By now, I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. The editing process is a lot faster. For certain elements, I have it down to a science which I’ve nicknamed Search and Destroy. I should probably propose to teach this in a session at a writers’ convention, but this technique helps slash and burn word count and helps eliminate redundancies. The great thing about it is that anyone can do it using Microsoft Word and the Find and Replace function under the Edit dropdown menu.

In a nutshell when we are writing, all of us use certain words far too often. Try doing a word search for common conjunctions such as but and although, adverbs such as maybe (and not only the ones with ly endings) and prepositions such as up and down. See if you can make your sentences more concise. Many times you can also spice up your prose or dialogue with better synonyms. Once you go through your manuscript, it’s amazing how other errors will scream out at you. However, using my Search and Destroy technique still doesn’t eliminate the value of having a second or third set of eyes review your manuscript. – Elizabeth Crowens

Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles

Asta, the dog from the popular Thin Man series, has vanished, and production for his next film is pending. MGM Studios offers a huge reward, and that’s exactly what young private detectives Babs Norman and Guy Brandt need for their struggling business to survive. Celebrity dognapping now a growing trend, when the police and city pound ridicule Basil Rathbone and ask, “Sherlock Holmes has lost his dog?” Basil also hires the B. Norman Agency to find his missing Cocker Spaniel.

The three concoct a plan for Basil to assume his on-screen persona and round up possible suspects, including Myrna Loy and William Powell; Dashiell Hammett, creator of The Thin Man; Nigel Bruce, Basil’s on-screen Doctor Watson; Hollywood-newcomer, German philanthropist and film financier Countess Velma von Rache, and the top animal trainers in Tinseltown. Yet everyone will be in for a shock when the real reason behind the canine disappearances is even more sinister than imagined.

Buy links: Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/p/books/hounds-of-the-hollywood-baskervilles-a-babs-norman-hollywood-mystery-elizabeth-crowens/21021163

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hounds-Hollywood-Baskervilles-Norman-Mystery/dp/1685125425/ref=sr_1_1

ISBNS:                                    978-1-68512-542-4 (paperback) $16.95

                                                978-1-68512-543-1 (ebook)  $5.99

Elizabeth Crowens has worn many hats in the entertainment industry, contributed stories to Black Belt, Black Gate, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazines, Hell’s Heart, and the Bram Stoker-nominated A New York State of Fright, and has a popular Caption Contest on Facebook.

Awards include: Leo B. Burstein Scholarship from the MWA-NY Chapter, NYFA grant to publish New York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst, Eric Hoffer Award, Glimmer Train Awards Honorable Mention, two Grand prize, and six First prize Chanticleer Awards. Crowens writes multi-genre alternate history and historical Hollywood mystery. Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles, which won First Prize in both Chanticleer’s Mark Twain and Murder & Mayhem Awards and placed as a Finalist in Killer Nashville’s Claymore Awards for Best Humorous Mystery, was released in March 2024.

SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:

Facebook.com/thereel.elizabeth.crowens

X.com/ECrowens

Instagram.com/ElizabethCrowens

LinkedIn  https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-crowens-5227804/

Goodreads  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15173793.Elizabeth_Crowens

AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.elizbethcrowens.com

Guest Blogger -Jennifer Giacalone

~ patyjag ~ 1 Comment

Working Backwards

When people find out that I write the occasional mystery novel, the most common question I get is “so do you write the ending first and then work backwards?”

So, for anyone who might be wondering if I did that with “Art of the Chase,” the answer is no. However, I didn’t quite write it from beginning to end either. You could say I did it sideways, from the middle out.

Where Is the Middle Anyway?

For me, a mystery turns less on the beginning or the ending and more on the little bit of information that’s so interesting and surprising that it allows you to see certain things about what comes before it and after it.

For example: I was watching a documentary on the works of Vermeer. They talked a bit about how it was unusual for the time period that he used so much blue in his paintings, because it made them very expensive. Blue paint could only be produced with lapis lazuli stone, which had to be hand-ground and then processed in a very unpleasant, potentially dangerous procedure. You didn’t find many painters of that period using it as wantonly as he did.

The advent of French ultramarine produced chemically, in the 1880s, made it much easier and cheaper to work in blue. And it was this seemingly random fact that ended up being what the story turned on.

Because I started to think: what if you had a detective who specialized in art thefts? Would they know about the rarity of blue in Renaissance and Baroque painting? How would that knowledge come into play if a particular piece was stolen? I was starting in the middle. The middle of a story, the middle of a question, the middle of a period of history in which blue paint was a precious commodity.

Research Is The Fun Part

The process of writing is, for me at least, an opportunity to learn. I learn about myself, always; my biases, my areas of weakness as a writer, my own fascinations. But I also just learn about… well, stuff.

Almost everything I choose to write about requires some amount of research. And it’s always about something of interest to me. There’s nothing I love more than learning a lot about a topic of interest, in this case, art. And in particular, the life and work of Artemisia Gentileschi, the various methods of producing paint colors used by the old masters, and the architectural landscape of Florence. What a delight!

I fell down a rabbit hole, and popped up somewhere late in the third act with bits of fascinating information in my little paws like some sort of literary groundhog. The threads that connect my little prizes are ultimately what hold the story together. Why does this painter matter to this detective? What sort of thief would want to steal a piece of hers? And what does the history of blue paint have to do with any of it?

There is a Connection Here, I Swear

I spread my treasures out and draw lines from one to the next. I figure out why these things matter to each other, and so the story reveals itself. My plotting efforts tend to look less like a traditional bulleted outline, and more like a murder board with photos tacked up alongside post-it notes, connected by a brightly colored thread that runs from the middle out.

And I’m the lunatic cop who can stand back and see how it might all connect; who do I need my thief to be, my heroine, my informant? How do I build them to make these treasures shine and tickle my readers as much as they tickled me?

Ah, there it is. I see it. There’s my story. There’s my heroine. This is how she gets from here, to here, to there. There’s my thief. That’s what he wants, and why.  It’s not a matter of working backwards or forwards. It’s a matter of allowing the story to emerge from the bits and pieces that delight me the most, and letting them surprise the reader as much as they surprised me.

When a notorious art thief surfaces, warring detective exes reunite for the hunt. 

Six years ago, the “Fabulous Gustave” slipped the grasp of Agent Fleur van Beekhof, making off with a priceless artwork…and Fleur’s beautifully ordered life. Suddenly the cool, pragmatic Europol detective lost her detective partner and wife, her rising career, and her control, thanks to the addictive lure of cards.

When a new Italian art theft bears all the markings of Gustave’s flamboyant, taunting style, Fleur is put back in the field, because no one knows him better. She jumps at the chance to correct the mistake that ruined her life. The hitch? She has to work with her fiery ex-wife. 

Where Fleur is a detective who loves art, Renata is an art expert who loves being a detective. Where Fleur is by the book, Renata is reckless and leaps into danger. But they’ll need both of their skills to catch the slipperiest thief Europe has ever seen … even if it shatters what’s left of Fleur’s heart. 

Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/3963248351

Jen Giacalone is a neurodivergent queer nerd who has lived many lives and brings with her a wealth of experience to tell high-octane drama, thriller, and mystery stories across books, film, and TV.

After spending her twenties as a rock and roll frontwoman, and her thirties as a graphic designer in boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, she’s currently in what she likes to call her “final form” as a writer.

You can usually find her disappearing down rabbit holes of fascinating research on random subjects that will turn up in one of her books. And, of course, she sprinkles a little glitter on everything she touches.

https://www.instagram.com/jengiacalone/

Guest Blogger ~ Alice Fitzpatrick

~ patyjag ~ 5 Comments

THE MYSTERY IN MY LIFE

            I grew up reading my mother’s Agatha Christie novels, losing myself in idyllic English villages where everyone knows each other, sprawling manor houses with hidden passageways, and luxurious seaside hotels that reminded me of the England I’d left behind when we’d immigrated to Canada.  With each book, I took on the challenge of matching wits with Miss Christie, ever hopeful that this time I would identify the murderer.  However, the real mystery in my life was my own family.

            My Polish relatives lived behind the Iron Curtain which might explain my father’s secretive nature.  He spoke little about his past, but when he did, he told a different tale to each of us.  Once he confessed to me that as White Russians, we’d been forced to flee to Poland during the revolution where we’d adopted a Polish variation of our name.  But even so, he assured me, everyone would recognize our royal connection.  

            For several years, I revelled in the fantasy that I was descended from the House of Romanov.  Once I saw the film Anastasia, it became obvious who my grandmother truly was.  The grainy black and white photograph of the squat Slavic woman my father claimed was his mother was obviously part of the deception my aristocratic relations had been forced to perpetrate in order to remain safe.  Sadly years later, DNA analysis proved this to be false.

The Romanovs
Uncle Terry

            Like my protagonist’s Aunt Emma in Secrets in the Water, people in my British family had a habit of disappearing from my life—my Uncle Terry, my cousin Terry, and my great-aunt Marie.  I was a third of the way through the first draft of the book when I realized I’d unconsciously patterned the death of Emma on that of my uncle.  Only one month after the birth of his son, Terry fell asleep at the wheel, rolled his car down an embankment, and bled to death.  As you’d expect, his death devastated the family. 

            But even a seemingly straightforward car accident was problematic.  The family had always suspected Terry was a hemophiliac since he suffered uncontrollable nose bleeds whenever he became excited.  While it’s highly improbable he had this disease, the story was kept alive.  The family couldn’t accept that their only son, with his whole life ahead of him, could die such a senseless death.  As no one wanted to hold Terry responsible, the hemophilia myth allowed us to blame the disease for killing him, rather than his own carelessness. 

            In my book, with no evidence to the contrary and a suicide note, the coroner ruled that the responsibility for Emma’s death was hers alone, a judgement her family and friends have struggled to accept for fifty years.  Like Terry, Emma was about to start an exciting new phase of her life, having just been accepted into Cambridge University.  Part of what my protagonist Kate is up against as she searches for the truth of her aunt’s death is that over the years, the islanders have idealized Emma, choosing to ignore her weaknesses and failings.  But if Kate is to get to the truth, she must be open to every aspect of her aunt’s character, no matter how unpleasant.  When asked if she would like to know something about Emma, even if it wasn’t nice,  she replies, “It’s not the nice things that get you killed, is it?”            

So why do I write mysteries?  It’s because mystery has dominated my life.  Other authors write crime fiction because it allows them to set the world straight, to bring justice to victims, order to chaos.  But for me it’s the need to understand what happened and why.  It’s like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.  Only then is the picture complete.

Emma Galway’s suicide has haunted the Meredith Island for fifty years.

Back on the island to lay her grandmother to rest, Kate can’t avoid reflecting on the death of her aunt.  Learning that her late mother had believed Emma was murdered and had conducted her own investigation, she decides to track down her aunt’s killer. 

With the help of her neighbour, impetuous and hedonistic sculptor Siobhan Fitzgerald, Kate picks up where her mother had left off.  When the two women become the subject of threatening notes and violent incidents, it’s clear that one of their fellow islanders is warning them off. 

As they begin to look into Emma’s connection to the Sutherlands, a prominent Meredith Island family, another islander dies under suspicious circumstances, forcing Kate and Siobhan to confront the likelihood that Emma’s killer is still on the island.

Buy Links- https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Water-Alice-Fitzpatrick/dp/1988754607/

https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/secrets-in-the-water/9781988754604.html

Alice Fitzpatrick has contributed short stories to literary magazines and anthologies and has recently retired from teaching in order to devote herself to writing full-time.  She is a fearless champion of singing, cats, all things Welsh, and the Oxford comma.  Her summers spent with her Welsh family in Pembrokeshire inspired the creation of the Meredith Island Mysteries series.  Secrets in the Water is the first book in the series.  Alice lives in Toronto but dreams of a cottage on the Welsh coast. 

www.alicefitzpatrick.com/

https://www.facebook.com/alicefitzp

https://www.instagram.com/alicefitzpatrickauthor

https://twitter.com/alicefitzp

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10602521-alice-fitzpatrick

Guest Blogger ~ Laura Kelly Robb

~ patyjag ~ 1 Comment

The Audiobook Experience

Like nearly every writer I know, I proof my manuscripts by reading them out loud. With my finger poised over the delete button, I find unnecessary words that make a sentence sticky and verb tenses that don’t line up. The process turns up lines of dialogue that sound stilted, as well as gaps in meaning—those leaps in logic a reader would be unable to make without additional information.

My latest mystery, The Laguna Shores Research Club, published by TouchPoint Press in 2022, underwent the same process. The trade paperback version, further copyedited by editor Kimberly Coghlan, was praised for the readability of the prose. I was delighted when TouchPoint sold the audio rights to Tantor Media. The audiobook became available November 2023.

Listening to the audiobook taught me a few things about my editing process.  Something happens when one’s writing becomes performed sound. The story gets a new layer. All the characters gain an additional aspect through the voice the narrator chooses for each one. For instance, the character of the deceased friend, Billie, acquired a West Virginia accent, done very well by the narrator, Amanda Friday.  I had written Billie as having a slight drawl, but I meant only to alert the reader to the fact that she wasn’t a native of Washington, D.C. In Amanda’s narration, however, Billie’s soft, slow pronunciation serves to make her more vulnerable. When I first heard the full recording, Billie’s demise struck me as more tragic than in the written version.

During the process of proofing the manuscript out loud, I had not considered what a performer might add. Knowing what I know now, my instinct will be to give a potential audiobook creator more material to work with—more accents, more quirks of speech, or more variations of disposition that bubble up into the dialogue.

Another benefit that a recording can wring from the written word is to highlight the pacing. Feedback I received from some listeners pointed out that the plot began to gallop in the last quarter of the book and the ending left them breathless. Amanda anticipated the change in the rhythm of the story by speaking in the early chapters in a measured tone.  She saved her variations in intonation for the critical plot developments and final revelations. If I had realized the effect her techniques could have, I think I would have begun the suspense earlier in the book by spreading out the revelations and suspicions of the main character. I’ll be more likely in the future to take the listener as well as the reader into consideration as I structure a plot.

I found one downside to a vocal performance to be the treatment of the dialogue tags. Since we generally read faster than we listen, some repetition in a text is glossed over by the efficient reader. I often included dialogue tags for clarity on the assumption a few extra tags would not tire out most readers. In the audio, however, unnecessary repetitions can weigh down the performance. The narrator often indicates who is speaking through variations in tone and pitch, and the “he said” and “she said” tags become tiresome.  In future work, I will be more attuned to the tags and try to edit them more closely.

As audiobooks become more popular, writers may want to consider producing their own audio versions of their work. I am not familiar with the best ways to proceed, but I know more and more people are wading in. If you are interested, here’s my Mystery and Suspense magazine interview with Amanda Friday about the ins and outs of narration and her work with indie authors.

The Laguna Shores Research Club by Laura Kelly Robb

(ISBN 9781956851311; 328 pp, trade paperback)

Laila Harrow knows the best way to track down anything—or anybody—is to ask Billie Farmer. As the brains of the Laguna Shores Research Club, Billie teaches fellow members how to reach into the ether and pluck out facts.

Counting on Billie’s guidance, Laila promises the St. Augustine Museum a catalogue of Florida Highwaymen paintings that will catapult her standing in the art world. But when Billie dies suddenly, Laila is forced to pull herself out of the darkness and follow the facts. Her investigation turns up up one fact too many: Laila is at the center of a dangerous game.

You can find the audiobook of The Laguna Shores Research Club on Audiobooks.com, AudiobooksNow.com, GooglePlay, LibroFM.com, the free site that asks listeners to post reviews, AudioFreebies.com,and Audible, as well as other platforms such as Spotify. If you have time to take a listen, I would love to hear your thoughts. Reach me at Laura@LauraKellyRobb.com

After studying at the University of Toronto, Laura taught for five years in Spain. Returning to Seattle, she completed a three-week fiction class at Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and published short stories for Foliate Oak, The Nassau Review, and on the RTVE show, Nómadas. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America. The Laguna Shores Research Club is her second novel.

Social Media Links

Website: https://www.laurakellyrobb.com/

X: @LauraKellyRobb

Instagram: @BookHardy

Guest Blogger ~ Jacqueline Diamond

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

I never thought of myself as a rule-breaker but…

One “rule” prescribed for novelists is to establish your “brand” and stick to it. Romantic comedies? Write a zillion! Medical-themed romances? Stick with that! Mysteries with a medical twist? Make that your one-and-only.

Although I have a good imagination, I can’t picture spending more than forty years writing basically the same type of book over and over. Or maybe it’s because I have a good imagination.

Since I sold my first romance (Lady in Disguise) in the early 1980s, I’ve published more than one hundred novels. They include mainstream mysteries and paranormal suspense, romantic comedies and contemporary romances.

Isn’t that enough for any writer? Well, no.

About ten years ago, after completing my Safe Harbor Medical romance series for Harlequin, I felt an urge to use that small-town hospital setting for mysteries. Since that type of novel didn’t align with Harlequin’s needs, I decided to venture into self-publishing.

I’d already begun reissuing some of my earlier books, including the mystery Danger Music, so I had a sense of the technical requirements. This turned out to be a rewarding creative decision that resulted in my Safe Harbor Medical mysteries, starting with The Case of the Questionable Quadruplet.

The four books in the series feature a young widowed doctor who solves murders in conjunction with his cranky, private investigator sister-in-law. Much as I enjoyed writing them, though, that series eventually reached what felt like a natural conclusion.

In the meantime, I’d become intrigued by cozy mysteries with talking cats, magical villages and mystical libraries. What I needed was a fresh, original take on the genre.

Coincidentally (or so I thought), with the end of the Covid lockdown, my husband and I seized the opportunity to travel to a place I’d always been intrigued by: Prague, in the Czech Republic. This turned out to be an inspired, and inspiring, choice.

Prague is a gorgeous city with an impressive literary history. We stayed at the Art Nouveau Palace Hotel, whose café was once a meeting place for artists and writers including Franz Kafka.

I’d heard tales of a golden age in Prague when Jewish intellectual life flourished. Since that’s my ancestry, I especially loved the stories of a magical rabbi who created an artificial man of clay, called a Golem, that acted as a protector for Jews.

Unfortunately, they needed one. The Austro-Hungarian empress Maria Theresa, a religious bigot (and mother of Marie Antoinette), expelled the Jews from Prague in December, 1744.

Don’t you wish you could right the wrongs of the past? Maybe I could… in fiction.

What emerged from my offbeat mind was a reimagined, alternate version of Prague, ruled by wizards. When an evil queen tried to seize their city, they pooled their powers and accomplished the near-impossible, shifting their land halfway around the world.

The disruption shook loose and redistributed their town’s intrinsic magick, with surprising results. One of these was to imbue humanlike speech into a breed of cats. Yes, talking cats!

In a realm isolated from their surroundings (the West Coast of what became the United States), their culture developed in a unique way. Nearly three hundred years later, a young woman, an orphan who has no idea she’s from this enchanted city, is “summoned” there to discover that she’s inherited the town’s ancient library from her grandmother, who’s been murdered.

To solve the mystery and bring justice for her grandmother, she has to awaken her hidden powers. Along the way, she finds a touch of a romance and realizes her longtime companion cat, Kafka, has the power of speech.

The writing process was fun and challenging, splashed with humor and danger as my heroine, Chess, and I explored this new world. The climax proved even more exciting than I’d hoped, with a dash of bravery by Kafka and his pals.

My favorite review came from National Book Award winner Neal Shusterman, who wrote, “Master storyteller Jacqueline Diamond draws you in to this magical feline mystery, enchanting you page after page. You’ll fall in love with Chess Vevoda, and the wild world she’s stumbled into!”

A Cat’s Garden of Secrets launches my Forgotten Village Magical Mystery series. It’s complete in itself—no cliffhanger endings in my novels.

Now, I’m happily writing the next book, A Cat’s Nose for Murder, with a storyline that gives Chess and her cat a new mystery to solve and a little more romance (for both of them).

A Cat’s Garden of Secrets is my 109th book. But in a sense, I feel like I’m just getting started!

A Cat’s Garden of Secrets

Awakening magical powers? Yes! Solving a murder, sure. But turning into a cat? Who, me?

On the weirdest day of my life, my cat starts talking, my car kidnaps me to a charming hidden village, and I inherit a mystical library. Plus, I discover I have superpowers!

As an orphan who grew up in foster care, I had no idea I came from an enchanted land full of furry shapeshifters, including—surprise!—me. Or that I had a gifted grandmother, who’s been murdered. Now it’s up to me, with the help of a handsome, otherworldly detective and my know-it-all cat, to uncover the truth… if someone doesn’t kill me first.

Enjoy cozy mysteries with talking animals? Love tales of awakening supernatural abilities and small-town bookstores and libraries? Discover why National Book Award winner Neal Shusterman wrote, “Master storyteller Jacqueline Diamond draws you in to this magical feline mystery, enchanting you page after page.”

Buy links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CR4KYCM9

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-cats-garden-of-secrets-jacqueline-diamond/1144921034?ean=2940185636138

GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Kcn9EAAAQBAJ

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-cat-s-garden-of-secrets

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1542627

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-cats-garden-of-secrets/id6480234897

Audio https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CR5PBK9Y

USA Today bestselling author Jacqueline Diamond has sold more than 100 novels in popular genres from fantasy to mystery to medical romance to Regency. A former Associated Press reporter, Jackie has traveled widely, and currently lives in California. Among her honors are a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and a Thomas Watson Foundation fellowship. A Cat’s Garden of Secrets launches her Forgotten Village Magical Mystery series. You’re welcome to learn more about her and her books on her website, Jacquelinediamond.net.