Category: murder mystery

Guest Blogger ~ M.E. Proctor

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

Pretty as a Picture and Far from Innocent

By M.E. Proctor

Catch Me on a Blue Day, Book 2 of the Declan Shaw mystery series, takes place in Old Mapleton, a postcard-perfect town on the Connecticut coast.

It comes with Queen Anne cottages, a yacht club, a bakery-chocolatier, an art gallery, several cafés, including one next to the marina that serves delicious crab cakes and lobster rolls. The police station is in the Tudor style, and its dark beams and stained glass windows give it the appearance of a tavern, or an inn—Ye Olde Copper’s Nest, Declan Shaw muses when he first sets eyes on it. The old Customs House, restored, is a private residence on a point next to the commercial fishing harbor. The camp of a lesser robber baron is now a B&B, and art afficionados can visit an artist colony on the outskirts of town, by appointment.

Families flock to the beaches from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Dogs are not allowed on the beach. Other things are not allowed. The list is long; it includes ‘horsing around’.

Doesn’t it look like the perfect setting for a cozy mystery?

Before you settle down in a comfortable armchair with grandma’s Delft teapot in easy reach (I just read that Delft is fashionable again), I must warn you: I don’t write cozies.

Bad people do nasty things no matter the landscape. There are homicidal maniacs in Neverland. And all the notices painstakingly posted by the city council won’t stop mischief. Violence is even uglier in an ideal setting because nobody expects it.

But you, readers of Ladies of Mystery, have consumed metric tons of crime fiction and you’re already making guesses about what comes next.

  1. Small towns have secrets, buried deep.
  2. The detective has a good shovel.
  3. A love interest delivers inside information.   

I’ll try to stay away from big spoilers, I don’t want to ruin the fun, but I’ll knock down a few hypotheses.

Old Mapleton, CT, has a dirty past. Not in a Stephen King kind of way—it isn’t built on a burial ground, and it doesn’t suffer from recurring murder sprees—but it went through a traumatic episode of collective hysteria. A horrible murder happened there thirty years ago. A little girl, Ella, was killed. The town tore itself apart in a frenzy of suspicion, denunciations, anonymous letters, and recanted confessions, with the media stoking the fire. To this day, the case is still open. Lives were destroyed, and long-time residents remember. None of this is secret. Ella and Old Mapleton made headlines far and wide.

The detective, Declan Shaw, doesn’t come to town to poke in the trash of the past. An old friend, Carlton Marsh, asked him to help with research for his book. Marsh was a war correspondent and he’s gathering his articles on the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s. Declan is recovering from a severe leg injury and intends to take it easy. Learning, upon arrival, that Marsh committed suicide throws him off kilter. Nothing in his last conversation with the reporter indicated that he was in any kind of trouble. The Old Mapleton chief of police agrees … even if he’s not eager to have a PI sniffing around. No fisticuffs and roughing up, the two men get along. In the claustrophobic town, they’re both outsiders. The chief calls himself ‘the token punk’, he doesn’t belong to the local elite and has a lot more in common with the rough trade on the wrong side of the tracks.

The love interest. Ha! The title of this post applies to her as much as it applies to the town. Isabel is in her late twenties, smart, pretty, not too hindered by morality, and bored out of her skull. When Declan walks into the art gallery she manages, her first thought is that maybe her summer isn’t a complete waste of time. This would be a meet cute if the lust thermometer wasn’t stuck in the high nineties. I had a lot of fun writing Isabel’s point of view. Let’s say that she has very, very, little self-control … and no, she doesn’t know anything about the cold case, or Marsh’s suicide, which will not keep her out of trouble.

I like complex narratives. How does a little’s girl death in New England connect to political upheaval in Central America? Carlton Marsh knew but he’s no longer around to make Declan wise. The path to the truth will be sinuous and dark. Through the woods where Ella was found, many years ago.

—-

Catch Me on a Blue Day

A Declan Shaw Mystery

“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.”

It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide.

A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut to help him with research. He looked forward to Declan’s visit: “See you at cocktail time, a fine whiskey’s waiting.” They talked on the phone a few hours before the man put a bullet in his brains.

Now Declan stands in the office of the local police chief. The cop would prefer to see him fly back to Houston. He’s never dealt with a private detective, but everybody knows they are trouble. If only there weren’t so many unanswered questions around Marsh’s death … the haunting first three chapters of his book, and that dedication to Ella, a girl whose murder thirty years ago brought the town to its knees.

In Catch Me on a Blue Day, Declan is far from his regular Texas stomping grounds. He’s off balance in more ways than one, and the crimes he uncovers are of a magnitude he could not foresee.

Between the sins of an old New England town and the violence of 1980s El Salvador. And the links between the two.

Buy Links:

Catch Me on a Blue day is available in eBook and paperback

On Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Blue-Declan-Shaw-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0FR3DWYGD/

From reviews:
“In Catch Me on a Blue Day, she combines the strengths of the best of the best mystery writers, writers like Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, and Janet Evanovich, to create a mystery novel that will have you saying, where has this terrific mystery writer been all my life?” —John Guzlowski, author of Suitcase Charlie, a Hank and Marvin mystery

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, came out from Shotgun Honey. Catch Me on a Blue Day is the next installment in the series. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer short story nominee.

Social Links

Author Website: www.shawmystery.com

On Substack: https://meproctor.substack.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martine.proctor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEProctor3

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/meproctor.bsky.social

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

Characters, where do they come from?

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

Shandra Higheagle Mystery, this month.

After my post last month about Getting to Know my Character, I had a reader ask me to write about how I create, develop, and name characters.

I guess I’ll start with my Shandra Higheagle series. In the case of this series, my brother gave me the idea for a unique murder weapon. He is an artist and was working at a bronze foundry, welding bronze statues and putting the patina on them. He told me about a large statue of a warrior with a spear and how the spear from the warrior’s hand up could be removed. It was made that way for transportation.

Once that idea was in my head, I knew the first book had to be set in the world of art to have the statue come into play. I decided my main character would be an artist. Since I am captivated by Indigenous culture and have a friend in that world who was willing to help me understand things I would need to know, I made Shandra a potter who made vases that are sold in art galleries. She is also half Nez Perce from the Colville Reservation and half Caucasian. To make it easier for me to write from her perspective, I had her Nez Perce father die when she was four and her mother took her away from that side of her family. She grew up off a reservation on a cattle ranch in Montana with a stepfather who kept her Nez Perce origins hidden.

That gave me a good way to reacquaint her with her Nez Perce heritage as I learned things. I didn’t try to appropriate her culture, just share her learning and experience. I had the help of my friend, who lives on the Colville Reservation, to help me with the books that are set there and how the people there live.

I set the books in a fictional ski resort area in Idaho. We had traveled through Kellogg, ID, a few years earlier, and I thought it was a wonderful place for an artist to reside. It gave Shandra a mountain where she would gather clay and purify it to make her vases. I had learned about an artist who made his own clay in Wallowa County from my brother. He set up a time for me to meet with the artist and learn all about the gathering and purifying of the clay. While I was there, he showed me several of his pieces that were in various stages of the processes he used.

Once I had all about Shandra settled, I started working on secondary characters. Her dog, Sheba, who is large and scared of her own shadow. A woman who helps her with her clay and taking care of the land that she purchased. Crazy Lil came with the ranch like a stray cat. She grew up on the ranch, lost it when her parents died, and went to work for the person who bought it. When they sold to Shandra, Crazy Lil didn’t move on and became Shandra’s right-hand woman. She’s a bit on the cantankerous side and is leery of Ryan, the detective who takes a shine to Shandra.

Then I added friends. A woman who owns an art gallery in Huckleberry. Naomi is married and she and her husband, Ted, sell Shandra’s vases and know a good deal about her. Ruthie is a Black woman who owns a diner in Huckleberry. She and Shandra bonded over Shandra’s love of cheeseburgers and caramel shakes. Her other good friend is Miranda Aducci, whose family owns the Italian Restaurant in Huckleberry. There are several other unique characters like the albino doctor who is trying to find a cure for the disease that killed all the males in his family in their 50s, and Maxwell Treat whose family owns the local mortuary.

When Shandra is considered a suspect for the death of a gallery owner in the first book, she butts heads with Ryan Greer, the detective for the county. This brings in a man who was a cop in a large city and came back to where he grew up because his large Irish family all live in and around the county. His cultural beliefs about little people help him to come to terms with Shandra’s dreams with her deceased grandmother before she realizes that they are helpful.  

Detective Ryan Greer came to me as I was building the beginning scene in my head. I made him Irish and gave him a good Irish name. His mother is Irish and taught her family all about her homeland. His siblings all have Irish names.

My vision of Shandra

Shandra’s name just came to me as I was putting together what she looked like to me. Of course, I wanted a last name that sounded Native American. Sheba’s name came from a big black fluffy dog my daughter had while growing up. Crazy Lil, was just something I typed the first time I brought her into the book. That’s the way all the secondary characters’ names come to me in each book.

As I type a scene and add a new character, I have in my mind what they look like and I add a name that seems to suit them, or the purpose they have for the story. That sounds kind of vague but that’s the way my mind works.

I always have the main character, the victim, and the suspects fleshed out when I start a book, but the secondary characters that are new to the series pop up as they enter my head.

I’m sure readers are interested in how I came up with my Gabriel Hawke and Dela Alvaro characters in their series. I’ll tell you about them in next month’s post.

I wanted to give you the info about my new Cuddle Farm Mystery Series. There will be a blog tour for the first book, Merry Merry Merry Murder, from October 10th-23rd. there will be character posts and posts about how I came up with the series on multiple different blogs if you want to hear about the book from Cocoa, the border collie, Cupcake, the pygmy goat, Lulu, the chiweenie, and Betty, a secondary character who is one of the main character’s best friends.

 You can purchase Merry Merry Merry Murder ebook from the usual vendors or you can purchase the ebook from my website.

“Where comfort and cheer meet scandalous secrets—A holiday mystery set in a small town.”

In the close-knit town of Auburn, Oregon, Andi Clark’s therapy animals bring comfort to the community, especially during the holiday season. When a young girl seeks solace from Athena, Andi’s therapy dog, after witnessing an unsettling scene behind the sleigh, it marks the beginning of a much darker holiday.

As the town gathers for the Tree Lighting Ceremony, a scream shatters the festive atmosphere. Cocoa, Andi’s loyal Border Collie, pulls her toward a chilling sight: a woman standing over the lifeless body of the girl’s mother, strangled with Christmas lights.

Determined to help the grieving girl and her town recover from the shock, Andi, her therapy animals, and her niece, a county deputy, take it upon themselves to investigate. As they uncover secrets and untangle clues, they stay one step ahead of the new sheriff and worry that the killer lurking in their midst could be someone they know.

Purchase now from my website: https://www.patyjager.net/product/merry-merry-merry-murder-ebook/

Purchase from a universal buy link: https://books2read.com/u/mZ6qpJ

Guest Blogger ~ Kris Bock

~ patyjag ~ 3 Comments

Kris Bock on Two Very Different Heroines in her Mystery Series

My two mystery series have first-person (past tense) narrators, so I’m writing from their close point of view and the reader gets their thoughts. A novel, being fiction, doesn’t merely copy people from real life, of course. Still, an author might use bits and pieces of several people to create some characters, and completely make up others. We might also use personal experience – a great way to develop characters who feel authentic!

In the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. I wrote it as I was facing fifty, and Kate has some of the same concerns, such as perimenopause and aging parents. I drew on my experience with chronic back pain, which sometimes throws off my walking stride, in order to write about Kate’s bombing injury and use of a cane.

Those things bring Kate to life, but she’s not me. I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for nearly 30 years, but I’m definitely not a war correspondent. Kate is me if I’d gone into journalism instead of other forms of writing – and if I was much more outgoing and fearless.

My new mystery series, The Reluctantly Psychic Mysteries, star Petra, who can touch an object and sense the emotions people have left behind. To create her character, I tried to imagine what it would be like growing up with a “gift” like hers. She avoids friendships so she won’t have to explain her psychic power or feel like she’s spying on people. Because she’s such a loner, she has many pets. She went into geology because it typically doesn’t force her to handle objects that have emotional residue from prior handling.

In some ways, she’s less me. She’s younger than I am, at thirty. I have no psychic powers. But I drew on the more anxious, cautious parts of myself in creating her, and used plenty of imagination to explore what it might be like to grow up with a challenging psychic power.

Extrovert or Introvert

Because these two characters are so different, they investigate mysteries in very different ways. Professional journalist Kate is used to interviewing people. She’s had practice seeking out the truth. People ask for her help, and she craves the adventure.

Loner Petra has childhood trauma due to neglect, abandonment, and betrayal from both family and friends. She tries to understand people’s behavior so she can protect herself. Her caution and fear mean she overanalyzes everything, but that works pretty well for an amateur detective.

Readers seem to like both characters. People think Kate is fun. They enjoy her eccentric sidekicks, including her sister, her father, and a couple of her father’s wacky friends. Many people would like to be like Kate – or they identify with her attempts to start over in midlife. Readers have said:

“I so related to Kate and her struggles to get back to her regular life. Can’t wait for the next book in this series!”

“A fifty-year-old who is wondering what she wants to do when she grows up? That’s more like it! Bock’s story offers proof positive that no one outgrows the need for more maturity and self-discovery.”

“I loved her smart world traveler, foreign war correspondent heroine. I loved reading a story where the heroine is so fascinating, as fascinating to me as the mystery.”

Something Shady at Sunshine Haven (the Accidental Detective book 1) is FREE this month at all E-book retailers!

From Isolation to Friendship

Most people don’t want to be Petra, but they sympathize with her (and often identify with her caution and anxiety). Book reviews have said:

“What truly resonated with me was Petra’s emotional journey. Her anxiety about being discovered, her cautious approach to forming friendships, and her affection for her pets (the cats! the ferrets! my heart!) made her character incredibly relatable. I found myself laughing, gasping, and perhaps shedding a tear or two.”

“What wrecked me emotionally was Petra’s struggle with trust. She’s spent her life pushing people away to protect herself, but now she has to rely on others to solve this murder. That slow, painful opening-up? The tentative friendships? I felt every second of it… Petra’s journey is one I won’t forget.”

“Petra is such a compelling lead. Her psychometry isn’t just a plot device—it’s a curse that’s shaped her entire life… And her journey from isolation to finally letting people in? Perfection.”

I’m sure most readers don’t have psychic powers. (If you do, please tell me all about it!) So why do people respond so much to Petra’s isolation? Maybe because we can feel isolated for so many reasons: neurodiversity, gender nonconformity, being artist types in a corporate world, feeling out of tune with our community’s or country’s politics … Who among us feels “normal”?

Petra masks her true self most of the time, for her safety, but she craves connections with people who understand and accept her. Don’t we all feel that way some (or much, or all) of the time?

Maybe Kate and Petra represent reasons readers turn to books: We want to identify with characters and believe they would like us too, or we want to feel what it would be like to be entirely different – or sometimes a bit of both.

A Stone Cold Murder: The Reluctant Psychic Murder Mystery book 1: Petra Cloch has the gift, or curse, of psychometry – she can sense the emotions people had while wearing or using objects. Now she’s starting a new job at a quirky private museum in smalltown New Mexico. When she picks up a rock in her new office, she feels flashes of rage, fear and death. Everyone says her predecessor died in a car crash, but what if he was murdered? If he died because of the job, she could be next.

Purchase link: https://tulepublishing.com/series/reluctantly-psychic-murder-mystery/

Readers say:

“[A Stone Cold Murder] is both heartwarming and suspenseful. For those who appreciate mysteries that offer depth, a distinctive supernatural element, and a protagonist to cherish, A Stone Cold Murder is an essential read.”

“The murder mystery is fantastic. The idea that a museum curator was killed with a rock (how chillingly ironic) and that Petra is the only one who knows? Genius. And the small-town setting? So atmospheric. The Banditt Museum feels like a character itself, full of hidden corners and whispered history.”

Kris Bock writes mystery, suspense, and romance, often with Southwestern landscapes. The Accidental Detective humorous mystery series starts with Something Shady at Sunshine Haven, which is FREE this month at all E-book retailers!

Sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter and get an Accidental Detective short story, a Reluctantly Psychic short story, and other freebies. Then every two weeks, you’ll get fun content about pets, announcements of new books, sales, and more.

Kris’s romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue. Readers have called these novels “Smart romance with an Indiana Jones feel.”

As for Kris’s romance, the Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. Start the series for free at all e-book retailers!

In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery. Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire? Turns out winning the lottery causes as many problems as it solves.

Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie. Find the books at all E-book retailers.

Find Kris:

Website

Kris Bock newsletter signup

GoodReads Author Page

BookBub

BlueSky

Amazon US page or Amazon UK page

Guest Blogger ~ Glenda Carroll

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

Where Did I Put That Plot?

By Glenda Carroll

            Plots don’t come easily to me. When I first started writing the Trisha Carson amateur sleuth mysteries about ten years ago, I sat down and blithely typed away following any idea wherever it took me. But that stopped working. I aimlessly spent time chasing after dead ends … nicely written, to be sure, but instead of moving the plot along, it stopped it cold. I wasted so much time.  I realized that I needed more control over what happened and when.  I’m not a plotter, as you can tell. I enjoy the freedom of following whims. So, this hasn’t been an easy step for me. But I’m trying.

 Take Better Off Dead (BOD), the latest book in the mystery series. Like all the mysteries before it, I knew the catalyst for the plot. It’s always based loosely on something true. In the series, each book swirls with an undercurrent of open water swimming.  That’s usually the true part.

 Almost fourteen years ago, a solo swimmer in the Maui Channel Swim, a 10-mile relay race between the islands of Lanai and Maui, was sucked under a powerboat by the propeller wash near the finish line. He suffered catastrophic injuries to one arm which had to be amputated and one hand that was reattached although it had two finders missing. I wasn’t there, but I read about it. Things like that stay in the back of my mind especially when I’m swimming in open water like the San Francisco Bay in Spring and Summer and Fall.  It came to the surface when I began to think about BOD.  I knew I wanted to use the idea of a horrible boating accident. But I needed a victim, some potential murderers and a realistic answer to the question, “why?”

            I lingered over the concept of a premeditated horrific accident but could go no further. At the time, I was also tutoring first generation, low-income high school students in English. One sophomore was reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet and wasn’t thrilled about the language. He didn’t understand Elizabethan English and no amount of my prompting and wheedling made the play on par with a Marvel comic book. That is until I told him the story of Hamlet, his dead father, his uncle and his mother in everyday language. It went something like this:  Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, is at university when he learns of his father’s death. While returning to the family castle, he runs into the ghost of his dad who tells him that his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, poisoned him and that he wants revenge. The revenge part sparked his interest.

 I lingered on how Shakespeare killed his actors: drowning, poisoning, stabbing with a sword, stabbing with a poisoned sword. I compared it to the violence running through video games or a superhero movie. What if Hamlet was the Hulk? That caught his attention. I convinced him to come up with a modern-day plot based on Hamlet. He bought into the idea.  So, we read the play, both the contemporary translation and the Elizabethan language version and he jotted down notes to help him with his video game. That’s when the light bulb went off.  If my student could update Hamlet, so could I. Later that evening, following Shakespeare’s plot, I started writing … modernizing the famous revenge tragedy. The moody Hamlet became Harrison. His dead father and the very much alive brother turned into Andy and Marty Barlow, wealthy Marin County financiers. That’s all the kick I needed. The story began to fall into place.

I can’t say the rest was easy, but I could see a path ahead of me. As part of the Acknowledgement in Better Off Dead, I thanked Will Shakespeare. Without him and Hamlet, there would not have been a Book 4 in the Trisha Carson series.

I’ve started Book 5, and it revolves around a skull found on a San Francisco Bay beach covered in eel grass. (That’s the true part.) Do you think I learned anything from my experience with Better Off Dead? Unfortunately, no. I have no idea what to write next.

BETTER OFF DEAD: A Trisha Carson Mystery

Successful Marin County, Ca financier, Andy Barlow, is training for a competitive open water swim in the cold San Francisco Bay. Unexpectedly, his support boat runs him over midstroke, killing the swimmer instantaneously. Consumed with grief and anger, Andy’s college-aged son Harrison, returns from London to probe what really happened. Although the local sheriff’s office and the Coast Guard have closed the case, Harrison refuses to believe their findings. He reaches out to amateur sleuth Trisha Carson to hunt down the real killer.

Trisha digs into the man’s history and finds fractured relationships in his family, his business and his marriage. There’s clearly more than one person who had reason to seek a deadly revenge, but would they go as far as murder?

Amazon – paperback, ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Dead-Trisha-Carson-Mystery/dp/B0DXKTJRK2

Barnes & Noble – paperback, ebook

https://tinyurl.com/u4tt9nas

Audiobooks

Apple:  https://tinyurl.com/y5t5jw34

Audible:  https://tinyurl.com/yy5anbwr

Glenda Carroll is the author of the amateur sleuth Trisha Carson mysteries set in the beautiful San Francisco Bay area. The fourth book in the series, Better Off Dead, came out in Spring 2025. It’s available in paperback, ebook and audiobook. Alas, Carroll hasn’t won any awards; hasn’t even been short-listed for one. Glenda spends more time swimming than writing. She also tutors first generation, low-income high school students in English and History. She is the current president of Sisters in Crime, Northern California.

She lives in Northern California with her dog, McCovey.

Website: glendacarroll.com

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y5mmhh55

Indies United Publishing House Lcc: https://tinyurl.com/ycynyr8a

Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/u4tt9nas

Audible: https://tinyurl.com/yy5anbwr

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/glenda.carroll

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenda.carroll/

Bluesky: ‪@ggcarroll.bsky.social

Getting to Know My Character

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

As the days and nights are starting to cool, I’m looking forward to dressing in cozy sweatshirts, wrapping up in fuzzy blankets and settling into a routine of writing and quilting.

During the summer, there isn’t time to quilt. I spend a lot of time on the road either to attend events to sell my books, to attend family events, or do research for my writing. When I’m home I’m writing, pulling weeds, doing gardening, or helping hubby.

But come fall and winter, there are my walks and housework, but then I write until 3 or 4 pm and then I work on whatever quilt I have going until it’s dinner time. If I’m cutting fabric for a quilt, I’ll continue doing that after dinner.

It’s funny, I don’t like putting puzzles together, but I enjoy moving pieces of fabric around to find the right pattern in the colors and adjusting them. I can have fabric pieces laying on the guest bed for several days, or even weeks, as I wander in and out rearranging and deciding if I like the way they look. Once I’m satisfied I start sewing them together.

That’s kind of how I write. I start with the idea of a story in my mind and rearrange the characters and the setting as I formulate where the story will start and who will be murdered. It’s a process that I recently realized is crucial to my being able to write an enjoyable story.

My book Merry Merry Merry Murder that is releasing October 15th is the first book of what I hope will be a new series for me. I had the idea for it last fall. And then in January, I wrote the book in one month and felt I was on to something I could do to give my readers something extra to read in between my Gabriel Hawke Novels and Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries releasing.

I sent the book to my beta readers and they all said that they didn’t like the main character and the story fell flat. That is not what a writer wants to hear. I didn’t have time right then to work on it, because I was busy getting the next Hawke book written.

The Christmas book sat and I thought about it when I wasn’t deep in the Hawke book. And then I needed to get the next Spotted Pony book written. I talked to my beta readers some more about the Christmas book as I wrote the Spotted Pony book.

I swirled the main character Andi around in my mind a lot when I wasn’t actively writing or thinking about the books I was writing. After a couple of chat sessions with a beta reader and having a break between my other books, I sat down and went through Merry Merry Merry Murder. ( I know too many Merrys, but sing it like the Carol of the Bells song and you’ll get it)

After letting the character “ferment” in my brain for nearly a year, I dug back into the story. In that year, I’d learned more about my main character, so I “knew” her better. I rewrote the beginning of the story and gave her a new interesting friend and sent the new version to my beta readers.

It was a hit!

Every time I’ve started a new series, I’ve lived with the main character in my head for a year or more. So I knew them inside and out before I started writing their first book. I didn’t do that with Andi and now that I have had her in my head for longer, she is a complete character.

I’ll be sharing her book with you next month, but it was the idea I came up with for this month’s post.

I do have the next Hawke book, Wolf Moon, available in ebook, exclusively at my website right now or you can preorder it from your favorite ebook vendor and get it on September 19th.

In the remote, snowbound wilderness of Oregon’s Eagle Cap Mountains, a sled dog race turns deadly.
State Trooper Gabriel Hawke is teaching winter survival to Search and Rescue recruits when he’s called in to find a missing musher. Arriving at the race camp, he discovers the musher isn’t just a name on a list—she’s someone his friend Justine cares about deeply.

As Hawke searches rugged trails and icy backcountry, the case quickly shifts from a rescue to a murder investigation. Then a second body turns up, and it’s clear the killer is hiding among the racers, handlers, or volunteers. The deeper Hawke digs, the more he uncovers buried secrets and dangerous rivalries.

Now, with a killer on the loose and Justine possibly in the crosshairs, Hawke must navigate blizzards, betrayal, and bloodshed—before the race ends in even more tragedy.

Buy Direct for $1 off and read now! https://www.patyjager.net/product/wolf-moon-ebook/

Universal Buy link or pre-order https://books2read.com/u/bWO1dD