Category: mystery

The 8 Parts of Speech and Me by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 7 Comments

I am married to a retired English teacher. Which is a good thing on a lot of levels. Not only is he a sweetheart but he takes out the trash and loads the dishwasher. Okay, not the way I would load it, but I need to let that go. Moving on, hubby is my go-to guy for all the parts of speech, which sometimes I don’t know. It’s not for want of trying. I do try. It’s just that it gets away from me. Maybe I’m so busy writing the words I don’t always know why I compile them the way I do. When I write a sentence it either feels right or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, I move everything around until it does.

Now, I do know a noun when I fall over it. A person, place, or thing. Tom is a noun. Good old Tom. I also know a verb. Whatever Tom is doing is a verb. Tom runs. Because I’m doing so well, we will move on to an adverb. Tom runs swiftly. Noun, verb, adverb. It helps that most adverbs end in “ly.” I like that. Also, I have just described Tom’s running ability. Adjective to follow. Tubby Tom runs swiftly. We have just described Tom. Although, how he can run swiftly being tubby is questionable. I’m tubby and can’t. Of course, I sit on my derriere all day writing parts of speech. It’s a wonder I can move at all.

But back to the parts of speech. While I am fairly clear on the four above, the remaining sometimes throw me. For instance, a preposition. Those are the teeny, little words, often no more than one to three letters long like “in,” “at,” “on,” “of,” and “to.” Remember good old Tom? Well, he’s stopped running and now he’s arrived at his destination, the friendly neighborhood bar. But is Tom in the bar or at the bar? Got me. I don’t always know and usually fudge it. Then when I reread it, I either keep it the way it is or change it to what feels better. And good grief, here’s another side of prepositions, the time frame stuff, such as “since,” “for,” “by,” “during,” “from…to,” “from…until,” “with,” and “within.” Well, Tom is going to stay at the bar until his wife comes to pick him up because he’s had it with running.

Conjunctions. These are  “and,” “since,” “for,” “by,” “during,” “from…to,” “from…until,” “with,” and “within.” Conjunctions allow me to make my run-on sentences. You know, the ones that never end. But I am a piker. The longest sentence award goes to: Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, 13,955-word sentence. You can bet Mr. Coe used a lot of the above to accomplish that. I am not including Tom in any of this because he is tired from his run, imbibing, and listening to his wife tell him off about his imbibing, and wants to take a well-deserved nap. Conjunctions. You gotta love ’em.

Pronouns. I used to get these until the current move to make every “she” and “he” “her” and “him” into “they” and “them.” I understand and appreciate it all in theory, but I still don’t know how to speak it. When you’re talking about one person doing something or going somewhere but have to use the plural form is hard for me to do. Where is Tom going? They are going to the bar. Okay, I’m working on it.

Interjections. Wow! I do that a lot. Golly, gee, do I. For instance: Fer cryin’ out loud! Tom, put down that bottle. You’ve had enough.

Then we have past participles, predicates, and stuff like that. That’s when I need retired English professor hubby standing over my shoulder. Preferably with a martini in his hand. Tom and I have a few things in common.

Mom’s Creative Children

~ Janet Dawson ~ 8 Comments

Mom once told me she had been blessed with two creative children. At the time, I took it to mean that she thought my brother and I were underemployed.

He’s a musician. I’m a writer. He was also a teacher for many years. I knew from an early age that I wanted to write. So I spent my working life in a variety of jobs, the last being an administrative position at the University of California. It was all in aid of paying the bills in order to support my avocation. I wanted the kind of job I didn’t have to take home with me.

My brother had the same desire to make music. He got his first guitar when he was a teenager. With two friends, he played rock ’n roll. They practiced in the basement after school. Was it my imagination, or did the house shake? Maybe that was the windows vibrating?

They were certainly loud. I once asked Mom if the noise bothered her. She said, “At least I know where your brother is.” True enough.

Me, I was the kid who always had her nose in a book. So, it seemed natural to write one. I wrote what I called a book in the sixth grade. It was more like a short story, a very short story. And I illustrated it, too. It was a mystery, natch.

My brother kept playing music over the years, in local bands in the town where he lived, doing gigs on weekends and teaching full-time. He has multiple guitars and takes several wherever he goes. I understand this is a condition common to guitarists.

I graduated to short stories in junior high and high school, some of them longer. I called them novels, but they weren’t. Novellas, maybe. We will draw a veil over the plot about the circus.

At some point I began writing a mystery. Through various drafts it got better, and I was sending it out to agents. Then I got the idea for the book that became my first published novel, Kindred Crimes, and everything got pushed to one side while I wrote that.

Publishing lightening struck and I won the St. Martin’s Press Private Eye Writers of America contest for best first PI novel. I was to pick up the award at Bouchercon, which was in Philadelphia that year. My parents were so proud and excited they got on a plane and flew to Philly to see me get that award.

From then on, they were my biggest promoters. Dad was a salesman. He’d carry copies of Kindred Crimes in the trunk of his car, telling everyone about his daughter the writer. And if his audience had a glimmer of interest, he’d pop open the trunk and sell them a book. Mom did her part, too, selling books to family and friends alike. She would buy them when a new book came out and give them as gifts, too.

Dad is long gone. Mom died in August, just over a month ago. Mom being Mom, she left detailed instructions about her memorial service, right down to the Bible verses and the songs. She specified that she wanted my brother to sing a song he’d written. Of course, he had a guitar with him. He didn’t think that any of his rock or blues songs would be appropriate, so he wrote a new one for Mom.

The other instruction was that I was to read something from one of my books. As I stood in front of the people at the church, I prefaced that by saying, “Well, Mom, I write crime novels.”

Then I read a few paragraphs from Bit Player. That’s the book where my private eye Jeri Howard gets involved in a decades-old Hollywood murder because she learns that her grandmother, an aspiring actress in the 1940s, was once questioned by the police. It seemed the appropriate choice, since Mom grew up selling tickets and watching every available picture at the movies theaters her family owned. In fact, that’s where she met Dad, at the ticket booth of the family movie palace during World War II.

Here’s to Mom, a love letter from one of your creative children.

Guest Blogger ~ Mollie Hunt

~ patyjag ~ 9 Comments

Ten years, ten Crazy Cat Lady mysteries.

Ten years ago, my high school best friend said to me, “Let’s publish your book.” She was an editor. I was a writer, unpublished even though I’d recently completed my ninth fiction manuscript. I’d been trying the query route, but I never had the patience to carry it through. When I finished a book, I’d send out a frenzy of query letters to everyone in the marketplace manual but then get tired of waiting for that one good response and start another book. Writing books fascinated me; trying to pitch them did not.

I’d completed three mysteries, a thriller, and three and a half sci-fantasies when on a trip to Mazatlán Mexico, I began something new. With the warm breeze off the Pacific Ocean and the sound of marimbas playing in my ears, I penned the first chapters of a cat-themed cozy featuring a cat shelter volunteer. This one felt different; even then I knew it could be a series.

That story, Cats’ Eyes, was the one my friend the editor said we should publish, and we did.

After Cats’ Eyes came Copy Cats and then Cat’s Paw. The Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mysteries found its voice and established its living characters. I kept coming up with new things for my shelter volunteer Lynley Cannon to do and new crimes that only she could solve. Her varying clowder of cats helped in their catly way, along with her octogenarian mom, her teenage granddaughter, her shelter buddy, and a hunky humane investigator. When I sat down at the computer, the stories would write themselves.

And now, ten years later.

I’m about to publish a new Crazy Cat Lady mystery, Cat House, and this one is special for a few reasons. It’s the tenth in the series, ten being a milestone. It takes place in my own neighborhood, and though the exact locations are fictional, anyone familiar with the Hawthorne district of Southeast Portland, Oregon will be able to visualize some of the features. And if you’ve read any of my series, you know I incorporate cat information into each story and include cat facts and snippets at the beginning of each chapter. Like my character Lynley Cannon, I am an devoted cat person, a volunteer, and an advocate for all cats. If my stories can not only entertain but teach something about cats, I’ve achieved my objective.

In Cat House, I’ve incorporated a secondary storyline involving a cat being treated for Feline Infectious Peritonitis. Up until recently FIP has nearly always been fatal to the unfortunate cats and kittens who contract it, but now there is a cure. Sadly, however, the drug to treat FIP isn’t approved in the United States, so sufferers have to look elsewhere. To get this storyline right, I needed to do quite a bit of research, and not just the internet kind. I reached out to a friend who had successfully treated an FIP kitten with “black market” drugs she obtained through an online group. I also learned of FIP crusader Peter Cohen and his cat advocate work. I was able to interview Peter and find out a whole lot more about why we can’t get this lifesaving drug in the US.

I included Peter’s interview as an afterword in Cat House. My new book may be cozy fiction and light reading for those who like cats, mysteries, and happy endings, but the reader might just learn something along the way.

Right now you can pre-order Cat House for its release on October 29th. Link to Pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CGSXLYTP

Cat House

Book 10 in the Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mystery Series

This Halloween, the cats are hiding, and the monsters don’t wear costumes.

Young men from the Portland-Seattle area are going missing. It’s just another sad headline to Lynley Cannon—until she starts her new cat sitting job for an enigmatic neighbor.

An off-limits room, a suspicious phone message involving drugs, and the sudden appearance of a missing man’s cat arouse Lynley’s suspicion, but how far can she go before the consequences of her cat-like curiosity turn deadly?

https://www.amazon.com/House-Crazy-Lady-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B0CGSXLYTP

Cat Writer Mollie Hunt is the award-winning author of two cozy series, the Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries and the Tenth Life Mysteries. Her Cat Seasons Sci-Fantasy Tetralogy features extraordinary cats saving the world. Mollie also released a cat-themed COVID memoir. In her spare time, she pens a bit of cat poetry as well.

Mollie is a member of the Oregon Writers’ Colony, Sisters in Crime, the Cat Writers’ Association, Willamette Writers, and Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and a varying number of cats.

You can find Mollie Hunt, Cat Writer on her blogsite: https://molliehuntcatwriter.com/

Follow Mollie’s Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/molliehunt

Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/MollieHuntCatWriter/

Consequences and Truth

~ dzchurch ~ 4 Comments

Sometimes, it seems as though every YA novel is about a dystopian world populated by evil, conniving adults who would do anything for power. People are starving, living in fear, fighting for existence, sometimes eating each other. And along comes a girl, a boy, a set of boys and girls with some superpower. Great archers, wizards, vampire slayers, and so on, who through their trueness and bravery vanquish the evil adults.

I ask you to think about that message. All government is bad. All adults in power are bad. A few youths are the heralds of virtue. It reminds me of the old disco song, Holding Out for a Hero, sung by Bonnie Tyler.

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Whatever happened to youths who overcame the obstacles of being a teen? Those books are out there with some censored by the arbiters of taste, unlike books where adults are killed wholesale or turned into mice.

I acknowledge that all youths and adults are not reading YA dystopian novels, but a lot are. What attracts them? I would wager that the teens and pre-teens, like we all did when that age, are grappling with adulthood, want control, and yet feel disenfranchised by adults refusing to see that they are pre-adult and capable of remarkable things. Thus, the appeal of a story that is based on this very angst. But think of the world promoted by these books.

Lack of faith in anyone who is in charge. Couple that with some social media time and – whoa – it all gets ugly fast since truth can be a bit hard to come by in a world of influencers pushing beliefs that may or may not be exactly true. If you believe all adults are evil, and you can’t trust anyone in power then you are ripe to be attracted like a bass to a shiny spinner by those who claim to be that hero you need.

Because these books sell well, the genre is packed. Admittedly, our current future has a tint of that dystopia (fire, floods, famine, war, lies). Now that the Mockingjay kids are all grown up, can they provide us a hero, or will they watch in expectation as evil actors take control of the world, and, yes, untrustworthy adults? Yikes!

I don’t know. Either way it gives me the whim-whams.

Our responsibility

So about now you’re wondering what the heck this blog has to do with ladies of mystery. Just this. As mystery writers we have a responsibility to consider the world we present to our readers. One where not every adult is a liar, villain, killer, rapist, serial killer or stalked by one (especially across books in a series).

Our heroes and their supporting cast may be flawed but they are human with human skills. For those of us who write historical mysteries, we are careful in our presentation of fact as we weave it into the fabric of our story.

Our mysteries provide a respite from the crazy world, a land where no matter what, everything turns out right. Justice lives in our pages. The bad ones get their just desserts. And along the way, we present our readers with some truths, comfortable or uncomfortable.

Whew, now that’s all off my chest.

Holding Out for a Hero lyrics © Sony/atv Melody

INSPIRATION IN THE OLD

~ Kimila Kay ~ 1 Comment

I have been obsessed with finishing my two novels this year. Every spare minute I have is dedicated to my writing. And, God willing, both Vanished in Vallarta and Redneck Ranch will be published by the first of November.

As you all know, writing is a singular endeavor, until you have pages, chapters, a novel for someone to read, critique, edit. With these two novels, I’ve struggled with finding editors and Beta Readers.

After losing my first editor, my friend Sharon North, stepped in and took on both books. At first, I was disappointed that she didn’t like my villain in Vanished in Vallarta. After listening to her concerns and weighing them against how I’d hoped to show my villain in the story, I realized I’d been the one to let this character down. As I rewrote him, I not only showed his story better, but was also able to strengthen another character, both changes making the story stronger.

Sharon blessed me with a fabulous opinion of Redneck Ranch, which encouraged me to hand off the manuscript to my three Beta readers. These lovely women worked reading Redneck Ranch into their busy lives, while I improved Vanished in Vallarta. One of the things I find interesting is all three readers have found some of the same issues, but also problems separate from each other. Both Mary Eastman and Stacy Robinson loved Redneck Ranch, and as you’ve already guessed, their input and kudos helped me make the novel even better.

My final Beta reader, Cindy Schmid, a Montana girl through and through, made me aware of some specific story issues with regard to my descriptions of the Redneck Ranch. For instance, I decided the ranch could be five acres, but if I want to have horses and other animals, I need to picture a bigger spread. She also explained to me that Stone County, where my story unfolds, needed more history and fleshing out to make the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Oregon seem like a real place. I love creating characters and stories, but this is the first time I’ve actually created a county and town.

One of the reasons I wrote the novel, Redneck Ranch was to honor my Autistic son, Derrick, who passed away six years ago. Derrick always wanted to be a policeman or a sheriff, so I’ve created a fictional Deputy Sheriff named Derrick Austin Stone who always solves the crime in my novels and novellas. Obviously, losing Derrick was difficult and my journey to a place of zen was aided by the support of all the women I’ve named above and two friends who may not participate in the editing or reading phases of writing a novel, but their encouragement is priceless. Both Toni Hilton and Debbie Boutinen listen to my ideas about characters or my lamenting over whether the story is good, believable, or worth reading.

Cindy and Stacy are taking on the rewritten Vanished in Vallarta next and, with any luck, they will love the story as much as they did Redneck Ranch.

As I write this blog, I’m ensconced in my friend Cindy’s beautiful home in Montana on Whitefish Lake with Debbie, Sharon, and Toni. We’ve had a wonderful visit remembering how our friendships began, reminiscing about our younger days, and laughing about what old age has brough us so far.

The one thing growing old has taught me is the appreciation for the inspiration these friendships have brought me. Without their love, support, and shared interest in my writing I probably would have thrown in the towel years ago.

So out of something old, has come something new and I can’t wait to see what these few days with great friends will inspire in my next novel.