Category: mystery

Ants in the Tequila by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 7 Comments

I lead a very small life. I get up in the morning, have coffee, stumble around, and try to wake up. I kiss my husband and pet the cat, or maybe the reverse. I can’t always remember. Most days, I sit down and write. Unfortunately, sometimes I have an appointment, errand, or chore that has been relegated to the morning, which is never my idea, but you can’t always control the world. I would rather sit down and write in the morning. Hence, mornings are predictably boring, followed by afternoons and evenings of…well…nothing much.

It’s possible my saving grace as a writer is my vivid and unpredictable imagination. I never know where my mind is going to go, taking me and my five senses along. If I witness something or hear a conversation between people or even animals, I am likely to concoct an entire scenario around that. No, I am not a dog, cat, or horse whisperer. It’s not just the words I pay attention to, anyway, but the emotions behind them. Plainly put, the world and its inhabitants are grist for my mill even though I have no mill and I’m not completely sure what a grist is. But I do love the phrase. And the sentiment.

Regarding the ants in the tequila, it was not about calling Orkin or Terminix. Our condo is ground level, in the midst of many gardens. I am surrounded by all sorts of living creatures that do not bother to knock and wait to be asked in. I am used to uninvited guests. However, I have never encountered ants in any of our booze before, let alone the tequila. Yet there they were, floating around, dead drunk, not a suicide note to be found. My writer’s mind clicked in. Where to go with this?

My instinct said this incident might be an article, blog, or flash fiction. It wasn’t novel material. For where was the story? And characterizations? Would I make one of the floaters my protagonist? Would I name him Harry? Or, as the ratio of female to male ants in a typical colony is three to one, Henrietta, Frieda, or Penelope? A lonely guy/gal, having left the nest, out on the town, only to find a pool of tequila too irresistible to ignore? No, no. No novel here.

In the meantime, we threw the bottle of nearly full tequila out, ants and all. Never mind that alcohol is a natural antiseptic, purifying anything it touches. I read that’s how the early Romans made such headway in Europe. The legions traveled on their stomachs, with a canteen of watered down wine by their sides to drink, as opposed to the local water. No local water, no dysentery. An inebriated, but hale and hearty group of marauders. That’s the Romans.

But back to my tequila and those marauding ants. My margarita days were at an end. I didn’t care if all the bacteria had been killed by the alcohol. Do not talk logic to me now, oh mighty Caesar. The sight of those small beasties drifting face down in the Don Julio, happy though they may have been at the end, did me in. I moved on to rum. Then I pondered on how to write about this incident.

Which is how the tale came to be right here, right now. All is grist for the mill, donchaknow, even though I’m still not completely sure what a grist is.

The Social Media Conundrum

~ Janet Dawson ~ 9 Comments

Facebook. I first heard about it maybe 15 years ago. I was about to be laid off from an administrative job at the University of California and part of the deal was a bunch of classes offered by UC on how best to look for a job. In addition to tips on writing resumes and interviewing, one suggestion was to create a Facebook account. Supposedly that was to get the word out that I was looking for employment.

In the long run, I found LinkedIn more useful for the job search. I tried Twitter because an author at a book event said that one had to be on Twitter. I thought and still do, that Twitter is absolutely useless and I don’t get it. Talk about a waste of time. I’ve posted things on Pinterest, but not lately. As for the rest of the social-media-de-jour, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever else is out there or might be next week—not interested.

But Facebook had a certain appeal and still does. I like posting photos of my kitties, the roses blooming in my garden and that peach pie I baked (For me! All for me!). Posts with news from friends and acquaintances. Posts that alert me to an article or a video that might be interesting.

But I’m at the point where I’m thinking seriously of leaving Facebook.

Thinking. Not quite there, though getting closer. Adorable kitty pictures aside, it’s a real time-waster. The political stuff—well, we’ve all been inundated with that over the past few years.

And I’m really tired of all those ads. I have only to think about buying something and I swear, my Facebook feed is full of ads for the very same. More ads than anything else these days.

So yes, thinking of leaving Facebook. But— ???? Is Facebook useful to me as an author? As a way to connect with readers? I don’t know.

I have a personal Facebook page that is limited to “friends” and an author Facebook page which is visible to everyone. On the author page, I post announcements—news of a new book that I’ve written, alerts about a deal for one of my books. Links to one of my blog posts here at Ladies of Mystery. Information on a forthcoming newsletter or a favorable review. In the pre-pandemic days, I would let people know that I would be speaking at this library or that bookstore. Or announcing the title of my panel at one of the mystery conventions.

I do that as well on my “friends” page, but I limit it. The “buy my book” stuff gets old, I know. Maybe the kitty pictures do, too.

So, what’s the solution? Or is there one?

I can certainly address the time-waster issue. Right now I’m on a Facebook diet, limiting my daily exposure. And if I leave the platform, what next? Do I post kitty pictures on LinkedIn? It’s not really that sort of platform.

I’m interested in hearing suggestions, so put your thoughts in the Comments section.

Guest Blogger ~ Nancy Lynn Jarvis

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

Writing PIP Inc. Mysteries is my way of keeping a friend who has moved to another state close and letting pets who have crossed the rainbow bridge live on as more than memories.

When I began writing mysteries in 2008, my protagonist was a realtor like I was. I used my experiences to enhance the story lines and told readers that as far-fetched as the real estate references were, they were all true and based on things that happened to me or my associates during my twenty-five-year career. It was easy to write authentically because I knew the business so well. But after seven books in the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series, it was time for a change.

I have a dear friend, also named Pat like my PIP Inc. protagonist, who is the most fascinating person I know. She gave me many ideas for murders and was especially helpful with bank robbery insider information she knew for my stand-alone novel, Mags and the AARP Gang, because she was on the board of the credit union where I set the robbery.

As I started formulating the PIP Inc. Mysteries series, I asked if I could use her and her background―like my Pat, she was the county law librarian and is a private investigator―as my protagonist and if she would be a consultant for the books because I knew nothing about being a private investigator and would need her help. She agreed under one condition: private investigator Pat had to have green eyes because she always wished her eyes were green.

 I made my Pat half her age, unmarried, and with an enviable figure, something the real Pat loved. When she saw the cover for the first book in the series she exclaimed that Pat had the hips she always wished she had.

I also gave Pat two pets, a Dalmatian named Dot and a ginger tabby named Lord Peter Wimsey. Dot is based on my beloved Freckles―whose real-life antics often find their way into the books―and my husband’s cat, Wimsey. 

Having Pat as a consultant has worked out better than I hoped. She advises me on how to conduct investigations so details ring true, and she comes to Santa Cruz at least twice a year for an in-person consult. You should have seen us spying on a neighbor when she was here recently. Pat suggested we climb his security fence to see if we were right about him and what was happening on his property. When I told her that could be dangerous, she said, “Don’t worry, I always carry my Magnum 357, just like private investigator Pat does.”

You can read about the adventures of Pat, Dot, and Wimsey in the PIP Inc. Mysteries series. Book 3, The Corpse’s Secret Life was released earlier this year. The series is intended to be read in order so you might want to start with The Glass House and then The Funeral Murder before you take on the sin-eaters and undercover agents of The Corpse’s Secret Life. (And if you want to find out what that neighbor was up to, there’s always the barely fictionalized A Neighborly Killing from the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series.)

Pat’s fledgling private investigation company, PIP Inc., has a promising new case.

Pat is still wearing a wrist cast after breaking her arm in a confrontation with a killer, so when she’s hired by the City of Watsonville to unearth the identity of an older woman who died in her bed, she’s delighted that her next job promises to be a simple computer-based research project.

Why is it that things are never as simple as she thinks they will be? Pat soon discovers nothing is as it seems, beginning with a corpse who had secret identities, murder, and a post-death ritual thought to have last been performed decades ago.

 “I love this series, and this particular mystery is very entertaining.”

        Janice J. Richardson author of The Spencer Funeral Home series

“Captivating from the start! The Corpse’s Secret Life transports you into a realm of page-turning mystery… a must read”

          Maryanne Porter, author of Haunted Santa Cruz, California.

You can find her all her books here: https://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Lynn-Jarvis/e/B002CWX7IQ

Nancy Lynn Jarvis left the real estate profession after she started having so much fun writing the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series that she let her license lapse. But after seven books, she was ready for a new adventure and is currently working on the fourth book in her PIP Inc. series which features protagonist not-quite-licensed private investigator, downsized law librarian Pat Pirard. She has also edited crowd pleasers Cozy Food: 128 Cozy Mystery Writers Share Their Favorite Recipes and Santa Cruz Weird. Read first chapters of her books at www.nancylynnjarvis.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nancylynnjarvis/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2918242.Nancy_Lynn_Jarvis

Stories that got away & the Second Hook

~ dzchurch ~ 4 Comments

My drafts tend to start out with a smart-alecky tone that slowly gets less and less so as I write. It is a mental exercise that helps me warm up to my characters. I’m used to that. What I’m not used to is a character who wants to stay funny. I’m several chapters into a book featuring a young clothing designer who wakes up in an alfalfa field after a convention ‘meet and greet’ in Kingston, Ontario. What’s written is a hoot. And there it sits. Waiting for inspiration, a different plot, another alfalfa field? Or maybe it was just a bad idea, after all one of the protagonists broke free to take on a key role in Booth Island.

Ever since I gobbled up Max Brand (The Gentle Gunman and . . .) and Alan LeMay (The Unforgiven and . . .) westerns, I have wanted to write a western. A dinner with Louis L’Amour at the Top of the Mark in San Francisco further fueled the fire. In those days, I was very up on the sheep wars and Billy the Kid so L’Amour and I had a great chat, during which he shared that Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck exemplified the characters in his books. If you haven’t read Hondo (also a great John Wayne movie) or Conagher do, they’ll hook you. As for my brilliant career writing a western mystery/thriller, it may still happen via one of the protagonists in my upcoming Wanee series.

Just like I still want to place Laury Cooper (Cooper Quartet) in Nîmes, France in 1970 and see what happens next. It would be weird though, since it would make the Quartet a Quintet and fill in a gap in the early years of the series. But still . . . what’s stopping me, read on.

A few years ago, I planned a mystery/thriller series that followed a farm woman sent from the East to marry a cousin living on an Illinois farm. I had the plot hook for ten books, beginning in 1850 through 1870s, the research started and had a line on the rest. I knew the farm, the crops and stock, and the land because it was based on the farm my father’s family settled. I loaded my research and notes to my OneDrive, put my hands over the keys of a blank screen and nothing. Why?

I’m not sure, but I suspect as Margaret Lucke (House of Desire) pointed out in a recent conversation, I needed a second hook to set the tale in motion. With the hook set, the characters feel free to inform themselves and whisper their stories in my ear until their words flow onto the computer screen.

Cover in waiting

As it turns out, like the protagonist from the alfalfa field, my farm woman migrated herself to Wanee, a fictious small northwestern Illinois town, set the first plot in 1876, and named herself Cora. Her brother Jess lives on the farm she was supposed to inhabit. When the series begins, nineteen-year-old Cora’s thieving mother deserts her, saddling Cora with debt and a boarding house with one boarder. Cora, who dreams of the single life of adventure and mystery, struggles to pay off her mother’s debts in a village troubled by post-Civil War growth while dreaming her dream of escape.

Cora’s story starts in Unbecoming a Lady, the first Wanee mystery, out soonish. The second book A Convergence of Enemies will follow next year. And Cora is currently whispering her third adventure to me nightly with help from a few Wanee friends, that’s what a second hook (in this case a disappearing mother and a restless town – is that two hooks?) can do.

Now Calypso and Grieg from Saving Calypso have something in mind, but they await a hook, I told them that and they both gave me that look. Sometimes stories don’t get away, they just wait for that second hook. And sometimes they do and should.

All books are available on Amazon, except Unbecoming a Lady. Find me at my website dzchurch.com and sign up for my shared newsletter there, too, or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mysteryhistorysuspense.

BACK IN THE GROOVE—SORT OF

~ marilynm ~ 2 Comments

Attending the PSWA Annual Conference was wonderful. So rewarding to see old friends and make some new ones—plus talk writing and hear speakers and panels on various writing topics.

I need to write another—and the last—Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery. Tempe is retired now and I’m ready to let her enjoy her retirement. Though I’ve had a request to put one of the ongoing characters in, one who is based on a real person and would like to see something specific happen with the character, that’s all I had. (I thought End of the Trail would be the last and then The Trash Harem had to be written. Now I need to send Tempe off with one last adventure.

In my newsletter, I asked my readers for ideas and did the same on Facebook. More ideas, but nothing that appealed.

While I was at the conference I some thoughts about what might be good in this final visit with Tempe started to pop into my brain. I even thought of a good beginning. No, I haven’t written anything down yet as I’ve had too many other things to do. When you come home from being gone six days duties pile-up: unpacking, laundry, and all the mail.

Frankly, I’ll be glad to actually be in the writing groove again, it’s been far too long. In the past, I’ve managed to write and publish two books a year. Nothing so far this year.

I’ll start like always, jotting notes down. Eventually getting to who turns up dead—where, and all those who might have wanted the victim dead. Naming and writing all the new character descriptions often comes next. Usually while I’m doing it, plot ideas will come tumbling unbidden but quite welcome.

Because I have other work I do for folks, sometimes it takes a while to get started on a new book. I am hoping for the best. I really, really want to get back to writing.

Marilyn