Guest Blogger ~ Joanna Vander Vlugt

Lost in Plot

As a writer, what excites you? What makes your heart speed up and you experience that eureka moment? What causes you to type so fast your typing teacher would be impressed? Yes, I’m showing my age.

One piece of advice I was told when I started writing was write what you know. We’ve all heard that. Before I retired, I worked for 33 years in the provincial government. My career began as a Supreme Court Assistant in the Nanaimo Crown Counsel Office (prosecutor’s office). The files that came across my desk involved murder, sexual assault, break and enter to commit theft, and more.

The authors I read were Minette Walters and Dick Francis. Given my job and what I liked to read, no wonder I like writing legal thrillers. However, I cannot write a novel involving an innocent victim, because of what I’d seen at work. An author once told me that if you can’t write a fictional scenario where a character is murdered, then you shouldn’t be writing mysteries. There were times when I questioned writing thrillers.

Over the last five years I wrote and published three legal thrillers. In the back of my mind an idea for a time travel book, inspired by a black and white photograph, was itching to be written. After the publication of my last thriller, Spy Girls, I jumped genres and began writing that time travel. I usually write in the first person, but for the time travel, I chose third person to separate myself from my heroine’s voice in my previous novels. Writing in third person is a challenge, because I still find myself slipping into first. However, I’m enjoying seeing my heroine through other characters’ eyes.

In the first draft (the draft no one will see) the story takes place during the second world war. As much as I tried, I didn’t feel a connection to the story I’d been waiting so long to write. What was my problem? At my book club, my neighbour commented about the unfairness of the legal system. I had my first eureka moment.

While researching my story, I had become fascinated with women’s contributions to the war effort, which included much more than giving up silk stockings, and my story had turned into a war novel. That wasn’t what I wanted to write. I spoke with Christina Strasbourg of Agents Helping Writers. I asked how I could work in this additional legal plot line? Christina advised that I was trying to cram too many plot lines into a single story. She said, “You have enough going on here for two novels.” My editor of my previous novels has pointed out fizzling plot lines during constructive edits.

Guilty.

Christina suggested that my time travel could have the second world war as a backdrop, but it didn’t have to be the focus. She mentioned the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, as an example. She then asked, what excited me about my story? I told her, my heroine and the legal undertones. Then, write about that. For some reason, I thought writing a time travel meant it couldn’t have a legal slant. That thirty-minute discussion with Christina saved me hours of work. Christina also said that what I cut, could always be used in a second book. Once I locked into the main plot line, my elevator pitch was a snap.

If you’re wondering if being a pantser caused this dilemma, my answer is no. Before I began writing my time travel, I had converted to being a plotter.

I started with the first chapter. I cut scenes which didn’t contribute to the main legal story line. I’m halfway through this draft of rewrites, and I have cut approximately 14,000 words which I’ve saved on a document titled “extra”.

My time travel is coming together. I’m excited writing it, and I’m connected to the story and the characters. There’s still hard work ahead but that’s part of writing. I read an article about drafts and cutting words. I can’t remember the author, or the exact words. But basically, I’m not to despair about the words and scenes I cut, because those words and scenes, although they didn’t make it into the story, they had the important task of propping up the story until the final words and scenes could take over.

SPY GIRLS

A CIA action officer is released from prison. A Chief Justice is murdered, and the Law Society is scrutinizing Jade Thyme’s conduct. Jade’s life can’t get much worse until she is coerced into finding an elusive double agent. Tangled in lies and political agendas, high speed chases and sticky bombs, can Jade outplay a dangerous Hungarian assassin before her own life is terminated?

Spy Girls is adrenaline-fueled, adventure packed with heart-pounding action, unexpected twists, and a riveting plot that keeps readers hooked from the first page. With lives hanging in the balance and loyalties questioned, trust in each other is the only way to survive. But even the strongest bonds can be tested when faced with external threats and personal demons.”

—Joe Goldberg, author of the award-winning The Spy Devils thrillers

Buy links:

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Spy-Girls-Jade-Sage-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0CJ3P9Z1B

Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1999068440

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spy-girls-joanna-vander-vlugt/1144627069?ean=2940179143550

Joanna Vander Vlugt is an author and illustrator. As a teenager, she drew charcoal portraits and wrote mysteries. Now, she uses Copic markers to illustrate motorcycles and graphic novels. Under the pseudonym J.C. Szasz, Joanna’s short mysteries Egyptian Queen, and The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing were both published in Crime Writers of Canada mystery anthologies. Her essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in the Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle anthology.

Joanna draws upon her 13 years’ experience working in the prosecutor’s office and 10 years working in the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner for inspiration for her novels. Joanna is the VP of Memberships for the Sinc-CW. Joanna has just released her novel, Spy Girls, the third in her Jade & Sage series. Spy Girls was selected as the Chick Lit Book Cafés International Book of Excellence Award for best spy thriller and suspense. Joanna’s novels, art and podcast can be found at joannavandervlugt.com.

Website: www.joannavandervlugt.com

Instagram: joannavandervlugt_author_art

Fact and Fiction by Dwight Holing

Because I am one day away from taking off on my month-long vacation, my friend and author, Dwight Holing is filling in for me this month.

Spare me the moldy one-liner about journalism being the world’s second-oldest profession and nowhere near as well-compensated as the first or the old saw of never letting facts get in the way of a good story. After years as a freelance writer covering environmental issues and nature travel, I’ve learned that facts not only give fiction more depth, but create greater reader engagement.

     Characters, conflicts, and settings were always the keystones to the articles and nonfiction books I wrote. It’s the same with fiction, but bringing facts about the backdrop of the southeastern Oregon setting for my Nick Drake Mystery Series to the forefront has been a game changer. Be it geography and geology or wildlife and weather, realities about the natural world provide ready-made ingredients for crafting a story’s arc and layering in suspense, action, and mood.

     By doing so, I can pit my US Fish & Wildlife ranger hero not only against villains, but have him battle searing heat, wildfire, snowstorms, and raging rivers. How he deals with nature’s adversity bares his strengths as well as his weaknesses. I also use the sublime beauty of nature to reveal his spirit and that of the other principal characters. All provide insights and revelations that help them continue to develop as “real” people and make them all the more endearing to readers.

     Chiseled on a tablet somewhere is the adage Write about what you know. I’ve found that even more important is Write about what you want to know. Why? Because my excitement of discovering something new and infusing it into my novels is shared by readers. How do I know that? Nick Drake readers tell me by email and in person at book talks and writer conferences.

     Some say they read my mysteries while Googling at the same time to learn more about the subjects I explore, such as why there’s such an abundance of archaeological sites in southeastern Oregon or how come so many different bird species migrate through the national wildlife refuges there or what were the forces that sculpted and shaped such an amazing landscape. Others have sent me photos of the trips they’ve taken that were matched to the settings of my stories. Still more email notes with ideas for the next Nick Drake Mystery. Now, that’s reader engagement!

     I’m certainly not the first author to discover the natural world delivers honesty as well as a roundhouse punch to a mystery story. Raymond Chandler’s opener to “Red Wind” shows—not tells—what I mean:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

     While the high lonesome setting of my Nick Drake Mysteries is the gift that keeps on giving, it’s up to me to listen to all of its natural elements and give them voice. That takes more than online research—it takes being there.

     I need to drive every dirt road that I put Nick Drake and the flinty old county sheriff on as they chase vicious killers. I have to talk to ranchers about caring for livestock so I know what Nick’s romantic partner is up against as she works as a large animal veterinarian. Chatting with long-time residents about everything under the desert sun is a joy while sleeping beneath a blanket of stars that has no beginning or end is a must.

     Most of all, I need to stand atop Steens Mountain and in the middle of Diamond Craters and on the edge of Blitzen Valley so I can feel the wind, watch the birds gather, and admire pronghorns racing across the sage scrub. Like my characters, I rely on the sublime beauty of nature to unlock my own spirit so I can capture the creativity blooming both inside and all around me in order to share it with readers who love learning while kissing their nights goodbye turning the pages of an unputdownable mystery.

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Wildlife rangers Nick Drake and Loq take separate paths, but both lead to action, murder, and mystery in a thrilling and emotionally charged chapter in this bestselling series.

When his sister goes on the run with a charismatic Indian rights activist wanted for murder, Loq risks everything to find her. He teams up with a beautiful police officer tracking a member of her own tribe who joined the fugitive too. Danger, desire, and treachery test the pair as they follow a trail through the wilds of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana made famous a century before during a legendary and bloody flight for freedom.

Can they stay ahead of a ruthless federal agent, solve who’s responsible for leaving bodies on the trail, and rescue people who don’t believe they need to be saved?

Meanwhile, Nick Drake embarks on a hazardous undertaking of his own when his adopted son continues to be haunted by his traumatic childhood in war-torn Vietnam and a loved one is stricken with terminal cancer. Father and son go in search of healing and meaning, but deadly forces turn their quest into a fight for survival.

BUY LINK: https://books2read.com/TheBrokenBlood

Dwight Holing lives and writes alongside a river in California. His mystery and suspense series include The Nick Drake Novels and The Jack McCoul Capers. The stories in his collections of literary short fiction have won awards, including the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction. He is married to a kick-ass environmental advocate; they have a daughter and son, and two black labs who’d rather swim than walk.
Buy Link: https://dwightholing.com/nick-drake-novels/

Website: https://dwightholing.com
Facebook: https://facebook.com/dwight.holing

Instagram: @dwight_holing

Guest Blogger ~ Lori Robbins

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

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

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