Category: Guest Blogger

Guest Blogger ~ Lori Robbins

~ patyjag ~ 7 Comments

It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot

Central to my identity as a writer is that I’m a serial late-bloomer. This pattern began when I was a teenager and decided to ignore conventional wisdom that dictated dancers had to begin training at a very young age. The result of my quixotic effort was a ten-year career onstage that defied the odds. Success as a dancer, of course, meant that I didn’t attend college until long after my peers got their degrees and began their grown-up lives. Luckily, the New York City public university system welcomes nontraditional students like me, and I graduated from Hunter College shortly before giving birth to my third child.

The habit of late starts didn’t end there. I was the oldest beginning teacher at my first job and didn’t publish my first book until the youngest of my six kids graduated high school. This personal history may explain why I love reading and writing stories about people who reinvent themselves. There are many examples of writers who find their voice later in life, but my favorite is Frank McCourt, who published Angela’s Ashes at 66 after spending much of his adult life as a high school teacher. As a former high school English teacher, the trajectory of his career has particular resonance for me.

Reinvention is a central theme in my books as well as my life. I write two mystery series and am in the process of writing a standalone thriller. Series often feature protagonists who deliver a comforting sameness. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot investigate different crimes but those endeavors don’t materially change who they are. My characters, however, aren’t the same people at the end of the book as they are in the beginning.

The On Pointe series is set in a New York City ballet company and features a ballerina on the wrong side of thirty with two surgically reconstructed knees and an uncertain future. What I didn’t want was an ingenue who triumphantly overcomes obstacles and in the end, becomes a star. Leah is more complex than that. She defies expectations, both fictional and factual. Yes, she’s embroiled in a murder mystery, but the stakes are higher for her than they would be for someone at the start of her career.  Those challenges make her observant, wary, and more than a little cynical. In other words, the perfect amateur sleuth.

The Master Class mysteries leap across the Hudson River to suburban New Jersey and feature an English teacher who also is at a crossroads in her life. Although this marks her as different from someone like Miss Marple, she does share that redoubtable amateur detective’s skill in analyzing personality, means, and motive. Miss Marple draws upon her experiences in the tiny town of St. Mary Mead but Liz Hopewell’s expertise is in literature. It’s her superpower, and she uses it to untangle mysteries when concrete, forensic evidence fails to provide answers. I love puzzles and had a lot of fun integrating clues from books into the narrative. Every chapter title includes a reference to a famous poem or book that might help the reader solve the mystery. Or, it could be a red herring. Teasing out truth from lies is at the heart of these books.

Work is central to the identity of both protagonists. It’s how they define themselves and how others define them. And yet, both rebel against those easy labels to forge an identity filled with the possibilities of what might be next.

Me too.

Study Guide for Murder: A Master Class Mystery

Murder has no place in Liz Hopewell’s perfect suburban life. She left her complicated past behind when she moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey, and she’s determined to forget the violence that shadowed her early years. As an English teacher, wife, and mother, Liz now confines her fascination with dark themes and complicated topics to classroom discussions about Frankenstein and Hamlet. But violence follows her from the mean streets of her childhood home to the manicured lawns of suburbia when Elliot Tumbleson’s head has an unfortunate and deadly encounter with a golf club. Her golf club.

A second murder, a case of mistaken identity, and a rollicking trip back to Brooklyn all point to one prime suspect in each crime. Liz embarks upon a double investigation of homicides past and present, using her gift for literary theory to unearth clues that she finds as compelling as forensic evidence. But the killers, like her students, don’t always read to the end.

Amazon Buy Link: Study Guide for Murder

Lori Robbins writes the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and is a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won two Silver Falchions, the Indie Award for Best Mystery, and second place in the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense. Her short stories include “Leading Ladies”which received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Ballet, but it was her commercial work, for Pavlova Perfume and Macy’s, that paid the bills. After ten very lean years onstage she became an English teacher and now writes full-time.

Her experiences as a dancer, teacher, writer, and mother of six have made her an expert in the homicidal tendencies everyday life inspires.

You can find her at lorirobbins.com

https://www.lorirobbins.com/

https://linktr.ee/lorirobbinsmysteries

https://www.instagram.com/lorirobbinsmysteries/

https://www.facebook.com/lorirobbinsauthor/

https://twitter.com/lorirobbins99

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lori-robbins

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16007362.Lori_Robbins

Guest Blogger ~ Lorie Lewis Ham

~ patyjag ~ 10 Comments

The Birth of My Main Character Roxi Carlucci

By Lorie Lewis Ham

The main character in my latest book, One of You, the second book in my Tower District Mystery series, had a bit of a journey before discovering where she belonged. Here is her story.

In the early 2000s, I wrote a mystery series that featured a gospel-singing amateur sleuth named Alexandra Walters. She lived in a fictional version of my hometown of Reedley called Donlyn. While writing the final book in the series, The Final Note, which came out in 2010, I started thinking about what I wanted to do next.

There is a character named Stephen Carlucci who has been with me from the very beginning. He has never had a series of his own, but he has been present in every book I’ve written. So when my last series ended I set him up to move on as well since Alex ended up with someone else and not him. The original plan was for him to move to the coast of California near Santa Cruz where his cousin Roxi Carlucci lived. First, though, I had to create Roxi.

I had decided to write a new series featuring Roxi set in a fictional town on the coast of California called Ayr. She ran a pocket pet animal rescue (hamsters, guinea pigs, pet rats) and wrote children’s books. When I first came up with this idea there weren’t any animal rescue cozies that I was aware of and it was a world I knew well having run an animal rescue for several years. It seemed like a perfect idea. I introduced Roxi in The Final Note, even including some chapters from her point of view. Done with the intention of immediately starting her series after that.

Alex had been too much like me, so I wanted Roxi to be different. I started by making her tall—I am not quite five feet. She is also braver than I am, and far more outspoken. By making her Stephen’s cousin, she automatically had a darker side as they come from a Mafia family, even though they both chose different paths. Roxi also knows how to use a sword—something I have since started learning myself.

When I finally tried to sit down and write the first book with Roxi, it just wasn’t working. I kept trying, but suddenly now the cozy mystery world was being flooded with animal rescue mysteries so it also no longer felt unique. Perhaps I wasn’t able to write it because it just wasn’t the right series for Roxi. The world I created for her just didn’t work. But since I’d already created Roxi, I didn’t want to let her go. So what was I to do with her?

While I was pondering that question, I was also creating my online magazine called Kings River Life (KRL), and that began taking up a lot of my time. But it also ended up leading to the answer to my dilemma with Roxi. While half of KRL covers mystery, the other half is all local (I live in the San Joaquin Valley of California near Fresno). We cover local arts and entertainment, food, and animal rescue, among other things. One day while in Fresno’s arts and entertainment district to review a play it dawned on me that this area would make a great setting for a mystery series! This district is called The Tower District! Hence the Tower District Mysteries came to be.

Roxi however, lived on the coast of California so I had to figure out how to get her to the Tower District. I decided that I would have her lose her book contract, and have her roommate get married and move out, leaving Roxi without a way to pay her mortgage. Mean I know, but sometimes it just has to be done.

I also decided that after being dumped by Alex, her cousin Stephen moved to the Tower District and he just “happened” to have a spare room that Roxi could stay in while figuring out the rest of her life. So Roxi closed her rescue, packed up her life, and moved to the Tower District. She may not have been thrilled at first about leaving behind a lovely coastal town for the summer heat of Fresno, but by book 2, One of You, she is settling in nicely and discovering that living in the Tower District isn’t so bad. She’s made friends, started an entertainment podcast, and she is even helping to put on a big mystery event called Mysteryfest during Halloween at the local bookstore.

As to the rest of how she came to be, well oddly enough Roxi shares a lot of my interests, even if she isn’t as much like me as Alex was. Just a different assortment of them than Alex did—with a few exceptions like Frank Sinatra—come on she’s Italian!

I hope you will want to get to know Roxi in the first two books in this series, One of Us and One or You, and that you will come to like her as much as I do.

Lorie has a Giveaway of an ebook copy of One of You or One of Us winner’s choice. Just leave a comment and she’ll pick a winner

With her life on the California Coast behind her, Roxi Carlucci is beginning to feel at home in the Tower District—the cultural oasis of Fresno, CA—where she now lives with her cousin P.I. Stephen Carlucci, her pet rat Merlin, a Pit Bull named Watson, and a black cat named Dan. She has a new entertainment podcast, works as a part-time P.I., and is helping local bookstore owner Clark Halliwell put on the first-ever Tower Halloween Mysteryfest! The brutal summer heat is gone and has been replaced by the dense tule fog—perfect for Halloween!

She just wishes everyone would stop calling her the “Jessica Fletcher” of the Tower District simply because she found a dead body when she first arrived. But when one of the Mysteryfest authors is found dead, she fears she jinxed herself! The Carlucci’s are hired to find the killer before they strike again. Will Mysteryfest turn into a murder fest? How is the local gossip website back, and what does it know about the death of Roxi’s parents?

Buy links-

Ebook amazon https://tinyurl.com/83befuae

Amazon print https://tinyurl.com/tb79uukj

Barnes and Noble.com ebook https://tinyurl.com/4trwukbb

Barnes and Noble.com print https://tinyurl.com/yf3kyhxj

Kobo https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/one-of-you-3

Universal Buy Link https://books2read.com/u/m0eWAy

Lorie Lewis Ham lives in Reedley, California and has been writing ever since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13, and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories, and poems throughout the years, as well as write for a local newspaper, and publish 7 mystery novels. For the past 14 years, Lorie has been the editor-in-chief and publisher of Kings River Life Magazine, and she produces Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, where you can hear an excerpt of her book One of Us, the first in a new series called The Tower District Mysteries. Book 2, One of You, was released in June of 2024. You can learn more about Lorie and her writing on her website mysteryrat.com and find her on Facebook, BookBub, Goodreads, and Instagram @krlmagazine & @lorielewishamauthor.

Guest Blogger ~ Marla White

~ patyjag ~ 7 Comments

Why I Write the Un-Cozy Genre

Any time someone asks “why do you write mysteries” I tell them because it’s the only way to kill someone who irritates me and not go to jail.

And I tend to stick to cozy mysteries because I don’t want to have to learn cop procedures. Just kidding. I still do a lot of research on cop jargon, weapons, and crimes, but I like to focus on what makes characters tick more than the policy and protocols. I leave that to the more procedural driven writers because those are the kind of details you cannot get wrong and still maintain your readers’ trust.

First, let’s establish that most people define a cozy mystery as a book set in a small town. In “Framed for Murder”, the setting of Pine Cove is heavily influenced by the actual town of Idyllwild, California. Neighbors know each other, they have a dog for a mayor, and there’s only two major streets. To me, there’s something comforting about characters living in a place where nothing truly bad happens (unless you count the dead person who usually is universally disliked anyway) and often there’s a spark of romance. It’s a nice break from real life.

One of the first books I read as a kid was a Nancy Drew mystery, so detectives out of uniform who can make up the rules as they go along have always been appealing. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, Robert Parker’s Spenser, and of course the great Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum all get to solve crimes but bend a few laws along the way. Dick Francis’ mysteries were a huge influence as well. My first full-length novel from The Wild Rose Press, “Cause for Elimination,” has a cop as one of the main characters, but there’s also Emily Conners, professional horse trainer and part-time snoop. Besides, once you throw a little romance in there, it’s reasonable that some rules get broken. Plus, his partner is a snarky, lovable jerk who refuses to draw inside the lines anyway, so problem solved!

Which brings me to the “un-cozy” part of the story. One reviewer loved “Framed for Murder” but commented that they’d call it an un-cozy because my characters go beyond the sure steadiness of a Miss Marple. For instance, my characters’ lives are screwed up long before they find the body In the Pine Cove books, the main character Mel O’Rourke faces a fear of heights, learns how to run an aging B&B, deals with her eccentric grandmother, and solves a murder. The stakes for Mel aren’t just life or death, although there’s that too; she struggles with her identity as she has to start her life over.

In truth, I’m one of those idiots that writes in multiple genres. The idea of self-discovery is a common theme throughout all of them, whether it’s after losing a job, a cheating boyfriend, or the world as you knew it. It’s when characters are at their most vulnerable but also the most interesting. It’s one thing to know at the end of a cozy the killer will be caught, that’s kind of a given. But as a writer, I love the journey of writing a book where I have no idea what’s next for my characters beyond solving the core plot problem until I’ve outlined all the way to ‘The End’.

Old enemies become allies to unravel a deadly mystery. 

Mel O’Rourke used to be a cop before a life-changing injury forced her to turn in her badge. Now she leads a relatively peaceful life running a B & B in the quirky mountain town of Pine Cove. That is, until her old frenemy, the charismatic cat burglar Poppy Phillips, shows up, claiming she’s been framed for murder. While she’s no saint, Mel knows she’d never kill anyone and sets out to prove Poppy’s innocence.

The situation gets complicated, however, when the ruggedly handsome Deputy Sheriff Gregg Marks flirts with Mel, bringing him dangerously close to the criminal she’s hiding. And just when her friendship with café owner Jackson Thibodeaux blossoms into something more, he’s offered the opportunity of a lifetime in New Orleans. Should she encourage him to go, or ask him to stay? Who knew romance could be just as hard to solve as murder?

Buy Links

Amazon – https://bit.ly/43Uwj96

Barnes and Noble – https://bit.ly/3TKdPDu

Apple Books – https://books.apple.com/us/book/framed-for-murder/id6483932566

GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211106987-framed-for-murder

AllAuthor – https://allauthor.com/book/87348/framed-for-murder-a-pine-cove-mystery/

Books2Read – books2read.com/u/4Djgor  

Book Bub-https://www.bookbub.com/books/framed-for-murder-by-marla-a-white

Marla White is an award-winning novelist who prefers killing people who annoy her on paper rather than in real life. Her first full-length mystery novel, “Cause for Elimination,” placed in several contests including Killer Nashville, The RONE Awards, The Reader’s Favorite, and finishing second in the Orange County Romance Writers for Romantic Suspense. Originally from Oklahoma, she lived in a lot of other states before settling down in Los Angeles to work in the television industry.  She currently teaches at UCLA Extension and gives seminars about the art of script coverage. When she’s not working on the next book, she’s hiking, cheering on the LA Kings, or discovering new craft cocktails (to, you know, drown her sorrows over the Kings #GKG).  

Social Media Links

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/TheScriptFixer

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marlawriteswords/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarlaAWhiteAuthor

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marlaw825

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21467766.Marla_A_White

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/marla-a-white

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3MHIzkB

Substack: https://substack.com/@marlawhite?utm_source=edit-profile-page

Guest Blogger ~ Kitty Felde

~ patyjag ~ 1 Comment

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of research. Dangerous, I know, because researching is a great excuse for not writing. But often you find unexpected treasures that can sometimes become an essential part of your mystery.

I write two mystery series.

The Fina Mendoza Mysteries follow the adventures of the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman from California who looks for the Demon Cat of Capitol Hill and the bird that pooped on the president during the State of the Union address. They’re actually a civics lesson in disguise, with teacher’s guides and a “Facts Behind the Fiction” blog.

I also write a historical mystery series set in Theodore Roosevelt’s White House, featuring his outrageous daughter Alice as our amateur sleuth.

Both require research. A lot of it. In many ways, Fina is easier because I covered Congress for a decade and if I have questions, there are human beings on the Hill who I can tap for the answers.

For Alice, I’ve been using the vast newspaper records available online at the Library of Congress. Chronicling America, a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a free, searchable database of American newspapers from 1777 to 1963. If you’re writing about an era before or after that, the LOC has a secondary collection of newspapers from 1690 to today.

There’s a map where you can discover ethnic newspapers across the country. Who knew there was a German newspaper in San Diego and a Finnish one in Washington state? There were dozens of African-American newspapers from Butte, Montana to Miami, Florida.

I fumbled around at first, but found absolute gold in the digital pages of Chronicling America.

Because Murder on the Potomac: a Princess Alice Mystery was set in 1902, I had so many questions.

How did police get around town. Did they ride horses? Drive motor cars? Bicycles? Who were they? A profile of “Well Known Men of the Metropolitan Police Force” in the Washington Times helped me create my policemen characters – including one who was active in the temperance movement.

What happened at an inquest of the era? The Evening Star  had a full report of one particular proceeding. Though I admit I was distracted by the ad for furniture on the same page that featured a $22 “Polished Mahogany-Finished Toilet Table.” A what?

I needed a place for a body to be discovered. The Washington Times reported on a years-long battle to either fill in or fence the James Creek Canal. Little more than a sewer, neighbors labeled it a “death trap” where five bodies a month were pulled from the mud.

For one scene, I needed the name of a stationary store where my amateur detective could find a blank book to record her clues. I searched “stationary supplies” and found an advertisement at the top of the page in the Evening Star.

My favorite gem didn’t happen in Washington at all. TheWashington Times, like papers and TV news today, reprint sensational or odd stories from around the world. This one involved a pair of guinea pigs at a temperance meeting in Paris. The experiment was designed to demonstrate the destructive power of alcohol. One animal was given water, the other alcohol. Guess which one got sick.

There were challenges. I was overwhelmed. I wanted to read everything. (Anything to avoid staring at a blank screen and actually have to write. But my lousy eyesight made it difficult to see an entire page on a 13” laptop. I wasn’t sure how to find what I needed. And when I found a juicy tidbit, what was the best way to keep track of it? Was saving links the best way to capture the information?

I am no research genius, but let me save you the learning curve and share my tips:

  • SEARCHING:
    • Narrow down your search parameters. If your work is set in 1939, look for newspapers from that year. If it’s set in Pittsburgh, narrow your search to just papers from Pennsylvania.
    • Try various search terms. If you get too many hits with “police,” try “detective.”
    • You’ll soon discover which newspapers go with the sensational, which have the most advertisements. Ads are great to help you describe clothing of the era or which stores or restaurants were frequented by your characters.)
  • READING
    • If you’re using Microsoft Word, use the snipping tool. You can isolate the articles you want to keep, and save images for future reference or inspiration. And for those of us who are visually challenged, you can save it IN A LARGER SIZE. 
    • Images are also helpful while you’re writing. I often drop an image into the manuscript if there’s a quote I want to use or a detail that’s perfect for the scene. (And then I delete the image.)
  • ORGANIZATION
    • DO keep track of your links. It will save going back and searching all over again. Note the source and date of the article, just in case you do have to go back and search.
    • I’m sure your graduate school training will have given you a better way to organize your research. Me? I keep a simple Word or Google doc where I list topics I’ve researched. Sometimes I drop in a line or two, sometimes an image, but always a link. (At first, I kept a numbered “footnote” file at the bottom of the document, but since I’m not including my research in my notes, I gave up on that.)
  • PERMISSIONS
    • If you’re considering including images in your book, take note of the copyright and who owns it. You might want to start asking for permission now to use the material later, long before you’re done with the book. If the answer is “no,” that gives you time to find an alternate image.

Good luck! And happy reading.

Kitty

 WELCOME TO WASHINGTON FINA MENDOZA:

The West Wing meets Nancy Drew. Legends say if you see the Demon Cat of Capitol Hill, you’re cursed with bad luck. Ten-year-old Fina Mendoza just saw it. And the last thing her family needs right now is more bad luck. The only way for Fina to save her family from future “cat”astrophe is to solve the mystery of the Demon Cat of Capitol Hill.

 STATE OF THE UNION:

The 10-year-old daughter of a congressman solves mysteries in the U.S. Capitol with the help of a big orange dog named Senator Something. Her latest case: find the mysterious bird that pooped on the president’s head during the State of the Union address. Is it Chickcharney, the legendary bird from the Caribbean? Did it fly to Washington D.C. with a secret message for the president? Or Congress? Or is the message for Fina from her mom who passed away not so many months ago?

 LOSING IS DEMOCRATIC: HOW TO TALK TO KIDS ABOUT JANUARY 6TH:

A Latina protagonist of spunk and smarts worries about her congressman father on January 6, 2021. Fina Mendoza, our amateur detective, is in the middle of an investigation to find out who stole the 5th grade pizza. But all thoughts of detection go out the window as she watches on television as a mob breaks into the Capitol. Is Papa okay? Most of Fina’s classmates have parents who work inside that building as well. Their teacher calms their fears turns the event into a teaching opportunity and students discuss the importance of both winning and losing, whether it’s in a baseball game, a reading competition, or an election.

In addition to her Alice Roosevelt mysteries, Kitty Felde is the author of Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza, State of the Union, and Losing is Democratic: how to talk to kids about January 6th – mysteries for children designed to introduce civics education. They are also available as an episodic podcast The Fina Mendoza Mysteries. Kitty is an award-winning public radio journalist. She is also Executive Producer of the Book Club for Kids podcast.

X – https://x.com/kittyfelde

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreatorofFinaMendoza

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?firstName=kitty&lastName=felde&origin=SEO_PSERP&sid=4zI

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kittyfelde/reels/

Guest Blogger ~ PJ McIlvaine

~ patyjag ~ 3 Comments

The Monster Mash by PJ McIlvaine

A few summers ago, I was at a writing crossroads in my writing life and personally. I was a Jill of all trades: screenwriting, articles, interviews, essays, and kid-lit picture books. My first attempt at writing an adult book had failed miserably. It was a Stephen King rip-off that a big mucky muck agent had derided as “mediocre.” After I cried buckets of tears, I realized he was right. Call me many things, but not that. I vowed never again.

I’d long nursed two very different ideas: the first idea was a middle-grade coming-of-age about two brothers on summer vacation in Montauk who decide to create a monster in a failed attempt to save their parent’s floundering marriage. The other idea was a gritty, bad-to-the-bone adult thriller about a man who can’t remember exactly what happened the hot summer night his mother and brother were brutally murdered.

It was Labor Day. With the grandkids back to school, I began writing. It soon took over my life. Hunched for hours on the kitchen table, the words poured out of me. I wasn’t just in the zone, this was a white-hot blazing inferno on auto-pilot. I based my characters on people I knew and loved: my troubled brother and our dysfunctional family plus my imagination. I tossed in lots of pop and political culture, too, things I loved and hated. It was a heady brew of fact and fiction, and I loved every minute of it even though I had no idea what I was doing. Would it even work? Who knew? Not me. I was so scared that I refused to give it a title. For a long time, it was known only as THE THING.

Well, I finished THE THING–more likely, it had finished with me–after two intoxicating months. My brain was mush. I had no idea if my book–now titled A GOOD MAN–was publishable. Hell, I hadn’t even thought of anyone reading it. I write family stuff. Nice, family stuff. This was brutal, full of coarse language and behavior, and truly evil people. I knew it would probably–no, undoubtedly–turn some people off. But I hadn’t written it for some people. I had written it for me; in hindsight, it was therapeutic and I got a lot of ghosts out of my head. I like to say that some books need to be written. Well, this book chose me. I didn’t choose it. But since it had, I ran with it and pushed my boundaries far beyond what I thought myself capable of.

The road to publication wasn’t easy. Agents passed right and left. I heard every reason in the book and then some. They liked the voice, they hated the voice. They loved the characters, they hated the characters. There was too much sex. The main character was too unlikeable. I killed too many people. And the language. One agent who strung me along for weeks finally told me in no uncertain terms that A GOOD MAN was in their opinion–the words I’d dreaded–unpublishable and unmarketable as written. My sole consolation was that she didn’t say it was mediocre. That was probably my lowest point. I quietly mourned and consoled myself that it just wasn’t meant to be. I told myself the next book. For authors, hope is an eternal spring.

And then–just like in a Hollywood movie–a reputable British publisher appeared and offered a publishing contract. She told me in no uncertain terms that she thought my book–my poor little red-headed stepchild whom I loved fiercely and would defend with every breath of my being–was “brilliant.”  I wasn’t about to disagree and quickly signed the contract. The book, published in August 2024, became an Amazon best-seller. Who knew? Not me.

So what are my takeaways? Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust your gut despite the nagging voices of doubt in your head. Challenging myself to write with abandon and permitting myself to fail were wonderful gifts that keep on giving. Also, you can’t please everyone. The only thing a writer can control is the writing. The rest is up to the universe and even then, you still need a good deal of luck and magic.

Monsters are real. At least, the ones in my head are, but I put them to good purpose.

A GOOD MAN

Decades after a brutal childhood trauma, a famous novelist finds his life shattered once again, in this unsettling psychological mystery thriller.

After years of turmoil, Brooks Anderson is sober and has a stable life with his wife and two kids. He should be enjoying life, but the persistent nightmares and sleepwalking tell a different story.

As hard as he’s tried, Brooks can’t run away from the defining event of his life: the senseless murders of his mother and brother during a vacation in Montauk. An eight-year-old Brooks was the sole survivor of the carnage, which left him in a catatonic state. He buried his pain and eventually overcame his demons. Or so he believed.

Now an unscrupulous journalist is threatening to write about the deaths. Fearful that the truth will be twisted to suit sordid ends, Brooks decides to write his own book, despite the grave misgivings of his agent, wife, and father.

However, when the journalist is brutally killed, Brooks finds himself in the authorities’ crosshairs. To prove his innocence and exorcise the past, he digs deeper into his psyche and that fateful summer. His relentless pursuit of the truth soon leads Brooks down a slippery slope that challenges everything—and brings him face-to-face with the real monster of Montauk . . .”

“‘A Good Man’ provides the kind of insolent first-person narration that is reminiscent of John Self’s in Martin Amis’ ‘Money’ or Mickey Sabbath’s in Philip Roth’s ‘Sabbath Theater’. . . . Perfectly entertaining and well-crafted . . . McIlvaine writes with a ferocious wit and great breadth of knowledge. ‘A Good Man’ offers all the surprises and shocks that a mystery should.” —Newsday

Buy link: https://geni.us/AGoodMan

PJ McIlvaine is a prolific best-selling author, screenwriter, and journalist.

PJ is the author of the twisty adult contemporary crime psych thriller A GOOD MAN (Bloodhound Books, August 2023),  THE CONUNDRUM OF CHARLEMAGNE CROSSE  a YA alternate history adventure set in Victorian London(Orange Blossom Books, September 2023), VIOLET YORKE, GILDED GIRL: GHOSTS IN THE CLOSET a MG historical supernatural mystery (Darkstroke Books, 2022), and the picture books NO SUCH THINGS AS DRAGONS (Roan & Weatherford, 2024) illustrations by K.M. Brown, and  LITTLE LENA AND THE BIG TABLE (Big Belly Book Co., 2019), illustrations by Leila Nabih.

PJ’s Showtime original movie MY HORRIBLE YEARwas nominated for a Daytime Emmy. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, Crime Reads/Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere.

PJ lives in Eastern Long Island with her family along with Luna, an extremely spoiled French Bulldog/couch potato. Also, she’s distantly related to the French philosopher/feminist/writer Simone de Beauvoir (PJ not Luna).

Website: https://pjmacwriter.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pj.mcilvaine

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PJMcIlvaine

Instagram: @pjmcilvaine

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19256202.P_J_McIlvaine

Amazon Author Profile: https://amazon.com/author/pjmcilvaine