Category: Research

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?

February Sped By–

~ marilynm

So much so, I forgot I needed to write a post for this blog. The main reason for my forgetfulness is I attended a board meeting for the Public Safety Writers Association last week. I’ve been a part of this group since its formation, first as the program chair for their annual conference and second as the newsletter editor. I’ve since passed on both jobs to other younger and quite capable members. I’m still a member-at-large on the board.

I must confess though, I mainly wanted to attend because the board members are all good friends and I wanted to see them all again.

PSWA is a group for anyone writing with a connection to public safety, and this included all kinds of law enforcement, fire, EMTs, military, dog handlers, etc. and for anyone writing about any of these including mystery writers.

The conference is my favorite for various reasons: interesting speakers and panels on different aspects of writing and public safety, and a place to ask all those law enforcement and other related questions.  Mystery writers are welcome on appropriate panels and encouraged to bring books for sale in the bookstore.

This is an affordable conference, always in the Orleans hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The night-before reception and delicious lunches are included in the price. A writing workshop before the conference is offered for an extra fee.

Take a look: https://policewriter.com/events/pswa-summer-2022-conference/

And that is my excuse for being late.

Marilyn

Gathering my Thoughts

~ patyjag ~ 8 Comments

When a new year comes around and I’m starting a new book, it just feels right. My desk is clean. Something I do the end of every year is make sure my desk is tidy and ready for the coming year. (I also do it between each book/project) It wipes away what I had been working on and makes a clean slate for the next project.

This first project of the year is book 9 in the Gabriel Hawke series. I enjoy writing these books. They are set, mostly, where I grew up and have a unique character who I feel I can tap into better than my female protagonists. I don’t know why, but Hawke flows from me without doubts or self recriminations that the character isn’t this or that.

This book will push me and my character. He and his significant other are going to be pushed to their limits trying to help a wounded person and survive a blizzard in the Wallowa Mountains. I have my research books stacked up and have started reading them. I have even ran some tests in our snow to see what blood looks like when it first drips onto the snow. I took photos and studied the spot for about four days, until our snow melted. I know what my character will see or be on the look out for when they follow the sparse drops of blood from the bleeding person who left a dead body behind.

Blood experiment

Several of the scenes have played over in my mind since I came up with the premise of this book. I have sat down and discovered who the person they are following is and who the dead person was. I wrote out the chain of ideas for scenes. Once I do some more research on snow conditions and animals that would be accessible for food or to follow to stay warm, I’ll start writing the book this week.

While some people don’t like to have a “road map” or outline to follow when they write, I’ve found, after the last Spotted Pony Casino Mystery that I “mapped out” that it helped me to know my story better when I started and while I didn’t stick to the road or route I’d mapped, I felt I had a stronger book throughout because I knew a bit more about my characters and who I wanted to highlight as possible suspects.

As yet, I don’t have a title for book #9 in the Hawke books. I’m waiting to see what animal makes sense that is out in the winter and would work for the premise of the book. I’m a writer that either has the titles before I start the book or I come across it as I’m writing. It looks like it will be the latter this time.

If you have any thoughts on a winter animal put it in the comments and I’ll look up its habits to see if it might work.

At the moment I have Churlish Badger being made into an audiobook as well as the Shandra Higheagle Mystery book, Homicide Hideaway. But what you really need to know is through the month of January, if you like audiobooks, Book 1 in the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series, Double Duplicity is $1.99 at Authors Direct.

If you don’t have the app it’s easy to download and free. This audiobook resource gives me and the other authors using it more royalties than the other audiobook vendors. (and my books are priced lower here.)

https://shop.authors-direct.com/products/double-duplicity-shandra-higheagle-mystery

Ideas Knocking at My Creative Self

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

There are times, like now, when I wish my creative self would take a vacation. However, I also don’t really want all of my creative self to go away. After all, I need that part of my brain to help me write books.

It’s the part of my brain that comes up with story ideas that could take a rest. While going through the final edits on my newly released Gabriel Hawke book, Churlish Badger, I came up with the premise for the next two books in that series. Which is awesome because that means I will have two more books in that series. 😉 The bad part is I’m so excited about them, it’s hard to concentrate on the Spotted Pony Casino book, House Edge, I’m writing now. Sigh.

I can never seem to write as fast as my ideas hit. An idea can come out of nowhere in seconds, but a book takes a good month to prepare and research, then another three (without interruptions) to write. That means, I have about two more months of finishing House Edge, to do the research for the next Hawke book and start writing it in February, if all goes as planned.

When it is written, then I’ll start on book 3 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries, Double Down, which I started the premise for it in House Edge, which made me want to start on that book…. Yes, it is a never ending cycle for me. I get excited about the next book in a series, then have to wait to write it because, (oh, now why did I decided to write two series at once?) I have to write the next book in the other series.

I’m sure there are other writers out there nodding their heads. Yes, we understand, there are those of us who can’t work on one series at a time. Heaven forbid, we should get bored of that series and not want to write the next book. So we juggle, two, or three, or more series at once to keep the monotony of writing about the same characters all the time from becoming tedious.

As Churlish Badger publishes and House Edge is being written, I have three more books churning in the back of my mind. This is how I have spent most of my writing career. Always writing with two to three books on the back screen of my brain, fading in and out, as I dissect the new characters, plot, and setting. And I do the research for the next book while I’m writing another. If only I could plug into my brain and have it all pour out onto a computer screen.

Churlish Badger

Book 8 in the Gabriel Hawke Novels

An abandoned vehicle…

A missing man…

Oregon State Trooper Gabriel Hawke discovers an abandoned vehicle at a trailhead while checking hunters.

The owner of the vehicle never arrived at his destination. As Hawke follows leads, he learns the man was in the process of selling his farm over the objections of his wife who said he would only sell over her dead body.

Continuing to dig for clues, Hawke turns up two bodies buried on the farm. Who killed the two and why keeps Hawke circling for answers, backing the killer into a corner.

Buy link:  https://books2read.com/u/mZZx2l

Guest Blogger ~ Sharon L. Dean

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

(Re)appearing Ladies

It’s Halloween. What better time to write about ghosts, real and imagined. I spent my academic career writing about the nineteenth-century novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson. Woolson had her own family ghost story to tell about the haunting of the bedroom where her sister Emma died. A scholar I know claims she felt Woolson’s presence when she visited the apartment where Woolson leapt or fell to her death in Venice.

 I  felt no such presence there, but like so many scholars I know, once Woolson gets hold of us, we can’t let her go. She materialized for me in my second novel, Death of the Keynote Speaker, where I imagined her as a fictionalized Abigail Brewster in a setting on one of the Isles of Shoals off the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine. Woolson never visited those islands, but I drew on real life historical figures for an appearance in that novel: Celia Thaxter, who held a literary salon on Appledore Island; Karen and  Anethe Christensen who were murdered on Smuttynose Island in 1873; and abortionist Madame Restell, who was known as “The Wickedest Woman in New York.”

            After I published Death of the Keynote Speaker, I wasn’t finished with my ghosts. My newest novel, The Wicked Bible, reimagines Abigail Brewster and Madame Restell. How could I not reprise “The Wickedest Woman in New York” in a novel titled after an actual 1631 Bible dubbed “The Wicked Bible?”

            I’m not done with reappearances. The novel I’m working on now reprised a character I named Connie in Leaving Freedom. Woolson left her childhood home in Cleveland to accompany her mother to Florida and the beginnings of a writing career. My Connie also leaves her hometown in Freedom, Massachusetts, to care for her mother in Florida where she also finds success as a writer. My novel in progress is bringing Connie, now eighty years old, back to Freedom. It’s tentatively titled Finding Freedom. I don’t know yet what Connie will find, but I know that the ghost of Constance Fenimore Woolson has given me plenty of inspiration. I wonder what ghosts live for you, whether they be haunting or inspirational?

After a winter when she solved the cold case of a high school friend found dead in a barn, Deborah Strong needs a distraction. She joins a conference, “Libraries: Where Have We Been, Where Are We Going?” that will be useful for her work as a librarian in the small town of Shelby. The setting at a picturesque college in New Hampshire should also be healing.

Deborah’s project for the week plunges her into a mystery that would delight most researchers. What are the connections between a Bible dubbed “The Wicked Bible,” a woman called “The Wickedest Woman in New York,” a book written by a nineteenth-century author, and a letter penned to the author? As she slowly unravels the connections, Deborah confronts an event from her own past and anticipates a future that could be as brilliant as New Hampshire’s September foliage.

Buy links: Amazon- https://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Bible-Deborah-Strong-Mystery/dp/1645992810

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/new/59432097-the-wicked-bible

Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived and taught in before moving to Oregon. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries and of a literary novel titled Leaving Freedom. Her new seriesfeatures librarian and reluctant sleuth Deborah Strong. In The Barn, Deborah solves a thirty-year-old cold case. The Wicked Bible, scheduled for an October 2021 release by Encircle Publications,brings Deborah to a college campus and a search for who stole a Bible and a letter from the library’s archives. The third in the series, Calderwood Cove, forthcoming in 2022, will bring her to the coast of Maine and a murder. She continues to write and research in the landscape she’s discovering the Northwest.

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Website: https://sharonldean.com/ Publisher: https://encirclepub.com/