Category: murder mystery

Please, no, not another book idea!

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

I get asked all the time, “Where do you get your ideas or how do you come up with so many ideas for stories?”

Nia

I like to call it my superpower, but then something like this happens: My friend and I who sell books twice a year at an outdoor flea market enjoy watching all the dogs go by and try to figure out their breeds or crossbreeds. It’s just a fun game. Then, this past summer, I had my little dog Nia with me at one of the events. A woman came in to look at our books and, of course, asked to pet Nia. My little Chiweenie is a people dog. She loves kids, she loves anyone that isn’t wearing a hat and built large. The woman pet her and talked to her for several minutes then looked up at me and said, “You should use her as a therapy dog. She has the right temperament and look at that loving caring face.” The woman went on to tell me all the places I could take Nia to comfort people.

After she left, my friend and I were talking about it and instead of doing the humanitarian thing with this information, I flipped it and said that would make a great way to have an amateur sleuth get involved in all kinds of murders. (Yes, an idea for another series popped into my head and hasn’t left.)

Then someone was playing old time records on a record player as a means to bring in customers and sell the record player. The song Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas came on and as the song progressed, my mind went to what a great title for a book. Merry, Merry, Merry Murder. And make it set at Christmas. Now this stuck and has been brewing in my mind as the holidays are fast approaching. Too late for this year, but I will have a book with that title coming out next year.

But wait, how can I get this title to work with the two series I have right now? All the Gabriel Hawke series titles have animals in the titles. It would be out of sync with the rest of the series. Same goes with the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series. Those titles all have to do with gambling terms. How can I use this title to write a Christmas murder mystery if I can’t make it fit the two series I already have going?

Pop back to the new shiny idea of the woman with therapy animals who travels to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, outreach centers, and so on. She could start her series with Merry, Merry, Merry Murder. Or I can make it a standalone Christmas Mystery.

But wait. This has all been spinning in my head for several months now and two days ago when I was finishing up sewing Christmas presents, I had Christmas music playing. Christmas Classics to be exact. The Jackson 5 were singing, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. There is a spot in the song where Michael stops singing and says he’s going to tell Daddy. He says it like he’s mad at his mom. And BAM! The whole idea for the murder and who is blamed and who really did it came flashing into my head. I had to leave the sewing machine to find a piece of paper and a pen to write down all the things that had come together to make the story work.

And now, I just have to decide if it will be a standalone book or the beginning of a new series… I really don’t want to juggle three series, but I also like the idea of the shorter cozy style mystery. Maybe one of those a year…. So I can keep putting out two books a year in the other two series. We’ll see!

If you’re looking for some great gifts for the readers on your Christmas list, check out the Ladies of Mystery Cavalcade of Books. An online place to find some of our books on sale and just some of our books. https://bodiebluebooks.com/ladiesofmystery/

Life has made changes in my writing style.

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

When I started writing to get published over 30 years ago, I would sit down and knock out words for an hour or two a day. That was when the kids were in school and I’d finished all my outside and household chores. Back then I hadn’t attended more than a college class on fiction writing and a community Ed class on writing for hire.

I had one children’s story published in a parenting magazine and I was working as a freelance reporter for first the Redmond Spokesman and the the Bend Bulletin. These didn’t pay much but they showed me I could write.

The first novel I wrote was a murder mystery. I’d read the first three Kinsey Millhone Mysteries by Sue Grafton and felt I could write a mystery novel. I loved the main character and enjoyed writing about a divorced mother of two who made her living with freelance photography helping her ex-husband prove he didn’t kill someone. I used a book I’d heard about on a television talk show that would help you be your own detective. Great premise! I did my homework looking through the tombs of agents in the books you couldn’t take out of the library and thought I’d found the right one.

Back then I didn’t know you didn’t pay them to read your books. I was already working on the second book in the series when I received the rejection letter that said mystery books in first person didn’t sell. I stood open-mouthed as I read it. But the very books that had set my muse on fire were in first person and they were selling well. I changed the book into third person and resent it, without any money, and never heard back from the agent.

In the meantime, I’d heard on a television talk show ( this was back in the day when I watched television as I cleaned, folded clothes, and did all the household chores) that homemakers were writing romance books and making money. I started writing a historical romance. I attended what I realized, after the fact, was a literary writer’s event. The two workshops I wanted to take were reasonable and I could stay with my parents. I went to the first class and enjoyed learning more about writing. The second workshop was with an editor from New York. We were to read a section of our work to her. The first person started reading and I thought, wow, where is the plot in this? Then the second one read and I was completely lost. Then the third had the moon as the protagonist. I was clearly feeling like I didn’t belong in this group. Then it was my turn and I started reading from my historical romance. Everyone leaned back and stared at me. The agent stopped me and asked if I’d heard of RWA. I hadn’t and then she told me to come see her after the workshop.

From the RWA organization I learned the craft of writing. I learned to make my characters flawed and likeable. I learned how to use villains and tragedy to draw the reader in. I learned about suspense and crafting a good hook. During that time, I wrote every week day. I became published in historical Western romance. After I became published I wrote seven days a week, for three to four hours. I decided to make this a career.

Ten years ago I decided to get back to writing mystery books. That’s when I started writing the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series.

I have written at least 2-4 hours every day since I became a published author.

Until this year.

This year I decided to indulge in life more. Which had me not writing for days, weeks, even a month when I went on my Europe trip.

I take that back, I did write every day because I kept a journal of my trip. But I didn’t work or even think about the next book, which is unusual for me. I usually have two books in my head, the one I’m working on and the next one. I had neither for a whole month.

When I returned, I set a goal for myself. To finish Gabriel Hawke, book number 13, titled Wolverine Instincts, this month. The plan on my whiteboard is for it to publish in January. Right now I’m thinking late January and possibly early February. However, I am writing my 3k a day on this book since November 1st and my goal is to have it ready to go to critique partners and beta readers by the first of December.

This is the second book this year that I’ve given myself a month to get written. I was able to get that book written in the month, but there weren’t two book-selling events and a holiday during that month.

My character Dela Alvaro in the Spotted Pony Casino mysteries is a disabled veteran. The audiobook for Down and Dirty will soon be available. But today, on Veterans Day, you can download a free copy of Poker Face, book 1 in the series using this link from Bookfunnel. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/xlsrf57q4l

Thank you to all Veterans!

And don’t forget that starting November 15th through December the Ladies of Mystery have our Cavalcade of Books available for you to get deals or gift books to people on your Christmas list. Each of us is offering three books, some at special prices just for you! Ckick HERE to see what’s what, once again starting November 15th!

Guest Blogger ~ Pamela Fagan Hutchins

~ patyjag

Vigilante with a Badge in the Modern West: Delaney Pace

My Delaney Pace Series is set in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, present-day—the real-life Modern West. It’s a setting I know well. I live there, right on the eastern face of the Bighorns near Sheridan. For the book, I created the fictional town of Kearny. Its name was inspired by Fort Phil Kearny near Story. My husband and I used to live across the street from its ruins and the museum that now stands in its place. That setting has fueled many of the books I’ve written.

But any good series is driven by its lead character more than anything, so it is with that in mind that I present to you my vigilante with a badge, Deputy Investigator Delaney Pace. My friend Daisy is the inspo for Delaney, and you couldn’t get more Modern West than Daisy—or more kick ass.

A few years ago, my husband Eric posted that we were giving away rusty, fire-damaged barbed wire. One of the takers was Daisy, who showed up with her family to claim some to use for a project.

We soon learned that she’d given up oil field trucking in North Dakota—and a side gig as a reality star— for taking over the family homestead, raising her second daughter twenty years after her first, and being a service to others through philanthropy and her physical labor. She was a key player in organizing one of the largest agricultural relief efforts in the history of the United States through a huge convoy of truckers, donors, and volunteers after historic fires devastated America’s Midwest. She and her family raise (and butcher) a large flock of turkeys every year to feed 300+ people at a free community Thanksgiving dinner.

Daisy’s the one you want as your second in a knife fight, who could have been a model or actress instead of a rodeo star and extreme trucker, and she’s the friend you can knock back a cold one with or take to meet your pastor (after you’ve done your best to prepare them for the encounter). If by some small miracle you find her in a church, you won’t see her sitting in the pews… she’s the one standing in the back.

She was forged in the kind of volcanic upheaval that can result in smoking rubble or beautiful rocky mountain ranges. Daisy, through character and force of will, is the latter. If you enjoy Delaney as much as I do, it is because of my friend Daisy. {Daisy, thank you for agreeing to let me reshape you in fiction.}

Whether it is her love for her niece, her desperate need to find her father’s killer and unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance, or her passion for hunting down killers (and for the handsome deputy she works alongside), Delaney goes all in. Her spirit embodies the Modern West. Rugged, self-reliant but selfless, with one foot in 1950 and one in 2024.

I think she and I have a long road to travel together, and I’m thrilled to ride shotgun on her fictional journey.

Hop in with us—we’d love to have you, too!

Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Catch Delaney Pace in her latest adventure: HER FORGOTTEN SHADOW https://amzn.to/3Nh54xYA violent storm erupts over the small town of Kearny, bringing a devastating mudslide. Amongst the debris, the worn threads of a child’s blanket, hides the body of a young girl, her long dark hair matted with the fallen earth that killed her.

When the rescue team find rope marks around the ankles of the teenage girl, they call in Detective Delaney Pace. Fourteen-year-old Marilyn Littlewolf went missing five years ago after moving to Kearny from a local reservation. Fearing she was dead, nobody expected Marilyn to ever come home. So where has she been? And why is her body covered in bruises?

Delaney thinks Marilyn was held captive in the mountains that tower above the town, but with acres of remote wilderness to search, the investigation seems impossible. Diving into Marilyn’s case, one name stands out that makes her blood turn cold as ice: her friend and longstanding babysitter to her two adopted daughters, Skeeter Rawlins.

Racing to his home, she finds it in disarray, it’s clear he left in a hurry. In disbelief, Delaney takes in the empty whisky bottles and wonders if she was wrong to trust her reliable old friend with her darling girls?

As evidence piles up against Skeeter, Delaney’s heart shatters when another girl is reported missing. Tracing her to a remote cabin deep in the woods, she fears she’s about to finally uncover the truth about her once-trusted friend. But when she bursts into the disheveled shack nothing could have prepared her for what she finds. Was she wrong to suspect Skeeter as the twisted mind behind the missing girls? And is she already too late to save another innocent life?

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is a USA Today bestselling and Amazon All Star mystery/thriller/suspense author with books in ten languages, who believes in soulmates, loves to laugh, travels too much, and lives out the adventures in her books at a rustic lake camp at Maine’s Mooselook Lake and in an off-the-grid lodge on the face of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains with her husband, sled dogs, and draft horses. She’s currently along for her husband’s year-long assignment on the Mediterranean coast of France, writing her fifth Delaney Pace crime thriller in a tiny village where no one speaks English or has ever seen Alaskan malamutes before… and loving it.

Website: http://pamelafaganhutchins.com

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My Brain Is Taking a Break

~ Pamela Beason ~ 4 Comments

Ack! My post is scheduled for tomorrow, and my mind is blank. Not a single pithy idea is pinging around in my head. So, I’m just going to blather on about what’s going on while my creative brain is taking a vacation. I’ve finished the manuscript for my latest mystery, IF ONLY, which is a crossover novel between my Sam Westin Wilderness series and my Neema the Gorilla series, and trust me, it was not easy to mix those two very different settings and groups of characters, but I believe I pulled the blend off smoothly, although it took me a long time.

But then I ran into two snags. One, my editor is very busy and has been sick, so my manuscript has been held up in the final edit. Two, I planned for this book to be positioned in both the Sam Westin series and in the Neema series, cleverly eliminating the need to write another book for each series. But it turns out that Amazon will only allow me to place the book in one of my series, which then caused a need to make cover changes and dream up creative ways to make it clear that the book also fits in the other series.

I still have all the minutiae to complete after I make final manuscript changes: register ISBN numbers for both print and ebooks, make an ebook version for Amazon with links to my other books, make an ebook for Draft2Digital without those links, write the description for the book page, find appropriate keywords for the listing, etc., etc. Being a self-published author can be tedious, but at least I’m in control and making far more money than I did with a traditional publisher.

So, while I’m waiting for the final edit to arrive on my desk, I’ve been giving my brain a break with reading. I always read, and although I tend to prefer mysteries, I also read all sorts of other books, and I often read more than one at once. Right now, I’m reading two very different books, and they are both unusual picks for me. First, Jodi Taylor’s The Long and the Short of It, which is a collection of wacky humorous short stories. I rarely read short stories, and even more rarely read humorous stories, but these are much more entertaining to me than most, as the plots involve historians who travel back in time and accidentally muck up the details of historical events. Second, I’m reading Camp Zero, a post-apocalyptic story about groups of people who have been posted in the arctic for mysterious reasons having to do with discovering pristine air and livable places for humanity as the southern half of our planet devolves into climatic and political chaos. However, in Camp Zero, it’s clear that men, and not necessarily honorable men, are in charge of all these experiments, so it’s never clear what is going to happen next.

These make a great break from my normal reading. Lately I’ve been plowing through Sara Driscoll’s FBI K-9 series, which has great suspense and action as the protagonist works on life-and-death cases with her canine partner. I will definitely return to that series later. I adore stories that honor the abilities and intelligence of animals, although my cats often express the wish there were many more books that feature feline heroes.

Soon IF ONLY will be out, and my attention will then be diverted to marketing, which I am generally terrible at. But for now, my mind is having a great time in the virtual worlds created by other writers.

My Writing List

~ patyjag ~ 8 Comments

Every writer has their mantra, motto, or theme for their writing. I have a list of items I try to hit with each book I write.

The list is:

  • Character endures longer than plot.
  • Action intrigues the reader more than passive language.
  • Scenes excite the reader more than narration.
  • Dialogue interests the reader more than exposition.
  • Nouns & Verbs trump adjectives and adverbs.

I’m not sure where I found this years ago, but the saying has hung either from my monitor or as now, on my whiteboard plotting calendar by my desk. These five things are what I strive for in each book or short story I write.

I want the readers to love my characters whether they are the main characters or the secondary characters. Because if I don’t care or like them why would a reader want to read about them? From the reactions of my readers when I ended the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series, I believe they fell in love with my characters. Which makes me happy and I try to do the same with all my other series characters.

As for action, I like stories that aren’t bogged down with descriptions. I want to know what the characters are doing and have their actions and reactions move the story forward. I like books that carry me along on the ride without distracting me with mundane things.  

Sometimes I wonder if I put too many breaks in some chapters, but they are usually ones where the characters are jumping from scene to scene as they move forward to question someone or look for a clue. All the scenes whether they are long or short keep the story moving.

I prefer to write dialogue that informs the reader either about the past, present, or to show the character’s character. I try not to use too much narrative to inform the reader. It can end up feeling like an info dump. As much as I can, I try to keep information in the dialog and not do any dumps.

There have been times after I’ve written and published a book, I think, “Man, I should have described this or that better.” Then I get a review with how well I showed or revealed an area or place and I think, “I guess I did okay.” I am not a wordy person in real life. I don’t care for small talk and I like to get to the point of things. I’ve found I’m the same way with my writing. I use words sparingly and make sure the words I do use inform without having to add three words for the one. I do use some adjectives but only if they are necessary to show what I want to show, not to flower up the pages. When I read a book with lots of description, I’ll jump over those paragraphs to get to the action.

The books I like to read are ones with strong likeable characters and action that moves the story forward. That shouldn’t come as a surprise after reading this post. If a character grabs me in the first chapter, I will finish the book unless the story is slogging. I came across a book recently that the premise intrigued me but I couldn’t finish the book because I didn’t like the main character and some of the things the character did seemed dumb. I put a book like this down and start another one. I have lots of books on my TBR pile and limited time to read.

So when I read for pleasure, I want the book to make me think about it even when I’m not reading. That is a good book.

What is a good book you’ve read lately?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about my newest release.

Down and Dirty

Book 6 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries

The Spotted Pony Casino’s head of security, Dela Alvaro, receives a late-night call that takes her to a deserted walkway along the river. After confronting a woman babbling about love and bodies being buried, Dela stumbles over a corpse and discovers her knife covered in the victim’s blood.

Dela and Tribal Detective Heath Seaver find themselves working with FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce when the murder seems to be connected to a drug cartel. Dela nearly becomes the victim of a hit-and-run while someone is trying to frame her for the murder.

Proving her innocence has Dela interviewing past acquaintances and members of a drug cartel, all while trying to decide if the woman she met the night of the murder is truly crazy … or the killer.

Universal buy link: https://books2read.com/u/bagQ66