Category: murder mystery

SAYING GOODBYE TO ROCKY BLUFF

~ marilynm ~ 5 Comments

Rocky Bluff, California is not a real place, but it has been alive and active through sixteen Rocky Bluff P.D. mysteries with one more yet to come. The fictional beach town is much like the one I lived in many years ago although located a little farther up the coast. It seems quite real to me.

The decision to end the series came to me while I was writing the newest, now with my editor. My reasons to do this are many.

First, I’m up there in years, and much slower in so many ways.

Second, policing has changed so much since I first started writing this series. I’ve been fortunate to have many persons to call upon for research, starting with my now deceased police officer son-in-law, plus the wonderful members of the Public Safety Writers Association who’ve always answered my questions.

Third, though I’ve always had my police department be understaffed and underfunded and using the nearest big city for many of their needs such as the coroner, forensics etc., it limited much of what I could include in a plot.

Fourth, I’ve been reading some of the big name author’s police procedurals and I feel like I’m not up to addressing the modern day issues for police officers in the outstanding way they’re doing.

As I was writing this last RBPD, I decided to tie up some loose ends for some of my characters, part of why I came to my decision to end the series.

No, I’m not giving up writing. I love to write and I can’t imagine not having a writing project. I’ve got some ideas for a new Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery floating around in my imagination. (I truly thought I’d ended that series with End of the Trail but ended up writing The Trash Harem.)  I’m also considering writing a young adult mystery set during WWII—and yes, I will use a lot of my memories of what it was like to be growing up during that time period.

I’d like to hear from other authors who’ve decided to end a series, and how they felt about it.

Marilyn

My “Little Gray Cells” Are Getting Full

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

As Hercule Poirot, one of Agatha Christie’s prominent characters, was often to say, his “little grey cells” were working. I have been feeling of late that my “little gray cells” or brain is getting too full to handle much more. LOL

Between the research I’ve been doing for the latest Gabriel Hawke book I’m writing, which is set in the winter in the mountains, to the research for Dela Alvaro, a lower limb amputee, I feel like I finish one book on a subject, only to pick up another book and read about something else I need to know for the book I’m writing or plotting.

While I sound like I’m complaining, it is the research I love the most about writing a book. Well… maybe that’s a second to coming up with an interesting or unique way to kill someone. They are close in what I enjoy most about writing a murder mystery.

I have been using Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking, The Outdoor Survival Book, Hiking Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, Field Guide to Tracking Animals in Snow, and the Oregon Gazetteer, not to mention Google Maps and numerous sites I’ve pulled up on the internet to answer questions. These are all for Owl’s Silent Strike, book 9 in the Gabriel Hawke series.

My character has to take care of a broken leg on his significant other in three feet of snow. Care for another person’s frostbite on their feet and keep all three of them away from men with AR rifles that Hawke believes are after the man he found wandering on the mountain. So you can imagine I had to also research caring for a compound fracture and frostbite.

I also was lucky enough when I started this series to make friends with an aviator who is always willing to help me with aircraft questions as Hawke’s significant other is a pilot. He helped me figure out why she wouldn’t be able to fly the helicopter, they came after, off the mountain.

There are some books, like this one, that I feel like I put in twice as much time with the research as I do actually writing the book. I hope all of this effort pays off in the incidents sounding plausible and realistic.

I have also been filling my head with as much information as I can about a lower limb amputee for my character, Dela Alvaro, in my Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries. I found a book the other day titled AMPossible. It’s written by a lower limb amputee who also counsels other amputees. It has all the nuts-and-bolts information about how a person feels after the amputation, from emotions to physical and what to expect. It has been very helpful for knowing how to portray my character.

All of this and the research I will continue to do for each book as it comes along is why my “little gray cells” are getting full. It’s no wonder I forget the little things. Where’s my phone? What did I do with that letter? What was I supposed to do when I finished writing?

The Second Draft by Karen Shughart

~ kshughart47 ~ 2 Comments

I’ve just finished the second draft of Murder at Freedom Hill, the next book in the Edmund DeCleryk cozy mystery series. Draft one is the rough draft, where I have a general idea of the plot, the main characters and whodunit, but there are a lot of gaps between the beginning and the end

Draft two is the one that takes the most time, because it’s at the point where the disparate threads of the book must be woven together, the pieces of the puzzle must fit, and the story becomes cohesive.  My brain almost never shuts off. I keep a notepad nearby to write down ideas as they occur to me, sometimes in the middle of the night and often when I’m multitasking. These are the ideas that help to fill in the gaps in the story and where the rough draft evolves into something smoother.

 I write the introduction, dedication, and acknowledgements in draft two. I add or delete characters, expand the number of suspects, and accordingly change the story line. Now’s also when I check for timeline inaccuracies, chapters that aren’t listed in order, cut and paste sections of the book and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite: the prologue, the epilogue, chapters with missing pieces.

Photo by rikka ameboshi on Pexels.com

Then there’s what I call “wordsmithing”, changing some words to others whose meanings are more precise. Inside a folder on my desk is a sheet of paper with an extensive list of words to substitute for “said” and another of overused words. Draft two is when I make those changes, too. It’s also the time for eliminating redundancies and paring down too much dialogue.

Paying attention to detail is tantamount to having a coherent finished product, and draft two is where that occurs. Recurring characters from previous books must age accordingly- a baby can’t be a teenager three years later- and someone who is described as six-feet tall can’t suddenly shrink to five-feet seven inches. Unless they’ve changed careers, they can’t be teachers in one book and truck drivers in the next or say they were born in Rochester but in another book, Buffalo. A character with blue eyes can’t also have brown eyes . It goes on and on, I’m sure you get the picture.

After spending weeks rewriting, cutting and adding chapters, and rebuilding what I destroyed to make way for what I believe will be a better story, I’m finally comfortable with draft two and ready to move on to the final draft.

Draft three is when I polish, spend lots of time copy and proof editing, re-read recipes that appear at the end of the book, and verify that all the ‘i’s’ are dotted and ‘t’s’ are crossed, at least as much as I’m able. It’s at this point that I’m finally ready to send the book to my publisher.

Getting into the Rhythm

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

My second book in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries is up on pre-order, publishing on February 18th. I have been fascinated with my main character, Dela Alvaro, ever since I conjured her up for a short story I entered in a contest. She kept knocking around in my head until I decided to make her a main character in her own series.

Even before starting her series, I introduced her to my readers in a Stolen Butterfly, book 7 in the Gabriel Hawke novels. Readers liked her and the secondary characters who are in her life. I was excited to start her series. I had gathered gambling terms to use for book titles because she is head of security at a casino on a reservation. The first book was Poker Face. It delved deeper into what makes Dela tick as the reader is in her point of view, not someone seeing her on the outside.

She has been medically discharged from the Army due to losing a lower limb from an IED. Her plans had been twenty years in the army, which was cut five years short due to the explosion. In book one she has returned to the reservation where she grew up and is trying to piece her life back together. She’d planned on a job in law enforcement but being an amputee put a stop to that plan. Through Grandfather Thunder, the man who lives next door so her mother, Dela gets a job working security at the casino.

During book one, while Dela and FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce work together to find out who killed and stuffed a casino employee in a laundry chute, Dela, myself, and readers discover more about her and how determined she is to not let her disability be who she is. One of my beta readers thought I’d talked too much about her disability in the first book. But I wanted readers to feel how she felt. She has only been an amputee for less than two years, a year of that was spent in surgery and rehab in an army hospital.

Fast forward to House Edge, book 2, the same beta reader said she loved how I handled the disability, how she’s coming into her own, and the expanded men in her life. That made me feel good. Because I thought after the short story and Dela having a large role in Stolen Butterfly that book 1 wouldn’t feel like an author exploring what she could do with a character.

As I wrote book 2, the premise I had planned for book 3 took root and I planted a hint of what will happen in book 3 in book 2 and I wrote the opening scene for Double Down while I was writing House Edge. It felt right to get the information accurate while the start of the conflict was fresh in my mind.

It isn’t new for me to come up with ideas for future books while I’m writing the current book. I do it all the time. I generally just jot down the idea and then when I’m not writing, swirl it around in my head figuring out how to make the idea work and where in the line of books it will fall.

I have several ideas for what will happen down the line in various books. Some deal with her friends in trouble and some will deal with the father she was told died before she was born.

There will be more mystery in Dela’s life as she continues to solve murders that happen at the casino and on the reservation. It’s a good feeling when a character becomes real in my mind and writing the book is like walking in their footsteps. That’s when I know I have found the rhythm of the character.

Book 2 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries has Dela Alvaro not only trying to keep her job by discovering the killer before word spreads about the murder, but she also has to deal with FBI Special Agent Quinn Peirce butting heads with her high school sweetheart who has returned to the reservation as a tribal police officer

Zealous Environmentalists

Greedy Power Companies

…and a body

A bitter dispute over the breaching of dams in Idaho sparks emotions at a summit held at the Spotted Pony Casino. When the keynote speaker is murdered, Dela Alvaro, head of security, teams up again with FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce.

The suspects are many since it appears the victim was playing both sides of the controversial environmental issue. Did someone take advantage of a marital dispute… witnessed by a crowd of casino spectators? Or did an angry wife murder her husband? 

Pre-order link:

https://books2read.com/u/bWQ8X0

Another Month Gone

~ marilynm ~ 3 Comments

Can you believe it? January of 2022 is almost over. And unfortunately, a whole lot hasn’t changed from 2021.

I miss our monthly chapter’s Sisters in Crime meetings, and I fear this long hiatus has probably meant the end of this group. Our newsletter stopped and we’ve had no other contact. Another chapter I belong to has continued with Zoom meetings.

A local writers’ group I met with on a monthly basis is no longer meeting either, though members are in contact with one another.

The critique group I belong to is still meeting, but they meet at night, and at this time I need to be home to assist my husband in the evenings. However, a handful of us are meeting once a month at a local restaurant to enjoy each other’ company, have conversation, and have a nice lunch together.

I have been asked to be a speaker at a writers’ group on the coast, and it may be in person.

A women’s group here where I live has invited me to come to their regular meeting in May and tell them which of my Deputy Tempe Crabtree mysteries were inspired by real events. They are interested in the subject because that series is set in a town much like the one the members and I live in. I’m delighted and will bring copies of the books I’m going to tell about. Plus I’m invited for lunch—always a plus.

This tells me not to give up hope, things are changing, though at a much slower pace than I’d like. However, I’m grateful for what little is happening.

What about the rest of you? Are you seeing any signs of life getting back to normal where you live?

Marilyn