Stories Behind the Story

June 25, 2015 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 3 Comments

It was the mystical—some people would say woo-woo—aspect of Santa Fe that inspired the plot of my new book Soul Loss. I had a friend there, an actress and water aerobics instructor, who channeled beings from the Pleiades, and her husband, an actor, did a little energy healing on the side. Through them I met a man, a gardener by trade, who could see energy. He said that most people had a dark crystal over their heads, and if they were ready, he could remove it, but the spiritual opening would be intense, and once it was off, it couldn’t be put back. This is only a small sample of the diversity of other-worldly connections I’ve encountered in the City Different.

When I started writing it four years ago, Soul Loss was meant to be the second book in the Mae Martin series. I began with the scene that is still Chapter One, in which a fortune teller gets a strange and chilling client. I knew what Mae’s role would be, and the nature of the mystery, which revolved around the troubles affecting a psychic fair. Then, about five chapters into the first draft, Jamie Ellerbee popped up out of the blue as a minor supporting character. With his eccentricities, his complex history, and his intense personality, he took over the book. I set Soul Loss aside and did the final revisions on The Calling, in which Mae’s life took an unexpected turn and a new world opened up for her. Parts of my original draft of Soul Loss split off and became Shaman’s Blues, and then Snake Face, giving Mae time to get to know Jamie and to adapt to living in New Mexico. Then, I could finally get back to what was now book four.

The seed for the scene I mentioned was planted by a sign I saw on the garden wall of a small adobe house many years ago: Fortune teller. Palm Readings. Tarot. I was curious and wanted to go in, but didn’t have time to stop. Later, when I thought to look for the sign again, I couldn’t remember which street it had been on. The idea of a traditional fortune teller in Santa Fe stuck in my mind, though, mixed in with a memory of a young woman of Romani ancestry I’d met while I was in graduate school. She gave occasional Tarot card and palm readings in the lobby of the campus center. I don’t remember what her reading for me said, but I couldn’t forget her forthright personality. She didn’t fit the stereotype of “Gypsy fortune teller,” but she was one. I began to picture her as the person inside the little house with the sign I couldn’t find again.

Another encounter that became a seed of this story took place at a complementary and alternative medicine conference. The workshops and presentations were enlightening—except for one, with a famous neo-shamanist. I wondered if the people who said they had visions and met guides were making things up, or if I was biased by prior experience with more traditional ceremonies. A few years after that, I met two women in a small town who conducted shamanic journey groups for twenty-five dollars a session. Their credentials? A weekend training with this same famous teacher. Could they really have learned to be shamans? The question stayed with me and found its way into Soul Loss as part of a mystery only a psychic could solve.

Soul Loss

The fourth Mae Martin psychic mystery

Spring winds blow strange times into the City Different:

Mae Martin’s friend Jamie Ellerbee has dropped out of her life—and perhaps his own life as well. A teenaged model breaks contact with her parents after an encounter with a Santa Fe shaman. A psychic fair can’t recruit any psychics. Something is wrong with all of them … except one.

Faced with mysteries that reach into in the spirit world, Mae takes on her most challenging work yet—work that puts her gifts as a psychic and a healer at risk.

The Mae Martin Series

No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.

To learn more about the background behind the book, check out my guest posts on these great blogs:

On a yoga’s healing process: http://killerhobbies.blogspot.com/2015/06/yoga-stories.html

On the concept of soul loss: https://awomanswisdom.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/guest-blog-losing-and-recovering-the-soul-by-author-amber-foxx

To help new readers to get caught up on series, the first three books are discounted to $2.99 through August 18^th. Happy summer reading!

https://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com/buy-books-retail-links

Goodreads giveaway for Soul Loss: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/143009-soul-loss

Follow:

https://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com/

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My Mystery Writing Bucket List

June 21, 2015June 10, 2015 ~ marilynm ~ 8 Comments

To tell the truth, I never really had one, but if I did I have there is one thing I could cross off:

Riding in an ambulance.

Coming home from a wonderful vacation visiting my eldest daughter and her kids and grand kids, we stopped off at a Taco Bell to visit the bathroom and I tripped over those yellow bumps by a handicapped parking spot. I took a header, split my temple open, hurt my hand and knee, and ribs. I bled so much, a nurse who stopped by to help insisted on calling 911–and so I got my ambulance ride.

I also got to experience a very busy and well-run emergency room.

Both events are filed away for future mysteries.

Through the years, I’ve had other experiences that could easily have been on a bucket list and I’ve either been able to use them in a mystery or filed away for a later one.

Attending a Pow Wow gave me a great idea for a mystery and I used it in the first Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, Deadly Omen.

A visit to a sacred rock shelter to view pictographs including one of the legendary Hairy Man, the Tule River Indians version of Big Foot. Yes, the Hairy Man has appeared in three of my mysteries: Dispel the Mist, The Invisible Path, and the latest, River Spirits.

Going on a police ride-along, is another good bucket list item.

I’ve done three. First time was with my policeman son-in-law. No seat belts back then, so at times the ride was a bit scary. He also had me follow while he chased a burglar. Second time was with a brand new officer in a small department–he wasn’t pleased to have me along. Third time was with a female officer who let me go with her on every call except a family dispute. In the wee hours of the morning, she bared her soul about the problems of being the only female in the department, and being a single mom. I’ve used a lot of what I learned from her in both of my mystery series.

I’ve ridden in a helicopter, all sizes of airplances–including a 6 seater.

While attending different writers conferences, and conventions, I’ve visited many of our states including Alaska and Hawaii.

Going to MWA’s Edgar week in New York, followed by a train trip to DC and attending Malice Domestique was a thrilling time. One of the highlights in New York was chatting with Mary Higgins Clark whom I’d met many years before at a tiny mystery conference.

So, what would I add to this writing bucket list?

Truthfully, I can’t think of a thing. I’m truly grateful for all my life’s experiences and have drawn on them many times for my writing.

My question now is to all the rest of you, if you have a bucket list share some of what’s on it, writing related or not.

Marilyn

Location, Location, Location by Carole Sojka

June 18, 2015 ~ patyjag ~ 5 Comments

Readers often ask me if I’ve ever lived in Florida, and when I say I haven’t, they ask, logically, I suppose, “Then why are your mysteries set there?” But I’m afraid I don’t really know the answer. Because I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer who doesn’t outline and who lets the characters dictate the course of the story, Florida as a setting just kind of happened.

My friend of longest duration−−we met as babies−−lives in the area where A REASON TO KILL is set, and I’ve visited her often over the years. On my trips we went to the usual tourist sites, and I found attractions that found their way into my imagination and then into my books.

My original idea for the story centered around the houses of refuge built by the U.S. government in the late nineteenth century. The barrier islands along the Florida coast were the scene of many shipwrecks from the years when the Spaniards sailed ships back to Europe loaded with treasure until today. These islands had no fresh water, no food, no inhabitants, and until recently, no means of communication with the outside world. Surviving a shipwreck didn’t mean the sailors would live. Stranded, they died of thirst and starvation before they could be rescued.

Starting in 1876, the U.S. government built ten houses of refuge along the barrier islands to provide shelter, food and water to men shipwrecked and stranded on these islands until they could be rescued. The Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge is the last remaining one, and my first idea for a novel was centered on the wife of a keeper of the house, a lonely woman isolated with her husband, who falls in love with a shipwrecked sailor.

That idea didn’t make it past a few draft chapters, but still I liked the house of refuge setting. Mara, my alcoholic character and the one suspected of murder in A REASON TO KILL, was my original protagonist, and she was closely tied to the Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge. But I felt more comfortable with a police detective who had the authority to ask questions and demand answers rather than an amateur sleuth, so I created Andi Battaglia, the detective in the Burgess Beach Police Department. I kept Mara and her problem with alcohol in the story, but she became a more minor character. Thus are settings and stories born.

Besides the houses of refuge, I also was interested in the groups who observed and protected the endangered loggerhead turtles as they came ashore along the coast to lay their eggs. This became the setting for the poisoning of Max Denman in A REASON TO KILL.

Once I set the first book in Burgess Beach, my pseudonym for the real town of Jensen Beach, when I wrote the second book, SO MANY REASONS TO DIE, of course it was also set in Florida. This time my range expanded south to Miami and South Beach and north to Fort Pierce. The area, by the way, was christened the Treasure Coast because of the 1961 discovery of treasure from, among other shipwrecks, the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet, lost in a hurricane near the Sebastian Inlet.

Perhaps Andi and Greg will leave Burgess Beach in the third book—now in progress—but I can’t tell you that yet because I’m only the writer. It’s up to the characters to decide.

A REASON TO KI Cover__8x5 LL is the first in the series. When nine strangers convene on a Florida beach to observe and protect the endangered loggerhead turtles nesting there, one dies of poison and another turns up dead soon after. It’s up to Andi Battaglia, a rookie detective in the Burgess Beach Police Department, to find out who among the remaining wildlife supporters has a reason to kill.

When in SO MANY REASONS TO DIE, Andi’s police partner, Greg Lamont, walks onto the murder scene of his ex-lover, he and Andi find themselves tangling with dangerous drug dealers amid the sizzling nightclubs of Miami’s South Beach.

See you all next month.

And in the end…

June 15, 2015June 12, 2015 ~ janegorman ~ 10 Comments

And in the end …

June is national crime reading month in Great Britain, thanks to the Crime Writers Association, UK. Imagine that, a whole month dedicated to reading crime fiction! Then again, I generally dedicate about twelve months out of the year to that…

The CWA’s been posting some wonderful blogs on the subject. Commentaries on subjects such as Does Authenticity Matter in Crime Fiction? (I know a few mystery writers with very strong opinions on this subject), and Are Crime Writers Psychopaths? (now there’s an interesting question).

As you can probably tell by now, I don’t just read and write crime fiction and mystery… I also read about crime fiction and mystery. Blogs by authors, book reviews, blogs about mystery books. If it’s mystery-related, I’ll read it! One commentary that caught my attention recently was posted over on WritersWhoKill (another great blog, if you’re interested).

Kara Cerise references a 2006 study of German students to see what kind of ending they preferred – and what that said about their personalities. Does craving a surprise ending or twist suggest that you have high self esteem? And if you prefer a story that confirms your suspicions, does that really say the opposite about you? The study is a few years old and fairly limited in sample size. But it is a great question for discussion.

I think about endings a lot, of course. One of the hallmarks of a traditional mystery is that justice is achieved in the end. But what counts as justice? I play around with this a bit in my books. Does the killer have to get caught? What if there was someone else who motivated the killer, knowingly or not — does he or she have to get caught? There are lots of definitions of justice.

I’ve had some enthusiastic comments from early readers on the ending of my first book, A Blind Eye. I can’t say too much – spoilers, spoilers (for the Doctor Who fans in the audience) and besides, the book won’t be published until September – but it’s made me really think about what achieving justice means, particularly within the traditional mystery genre. After all, when we pick up a juicy mystery, we have certain expectations, don’t we?

So tell me, what do you want to see at the end of the mysteries you read?

Guest Author- Zanna MacKenzie

June 13, 2015June 8, 2015 ~ patyjag ~ 3 Comments

Please Welcome British mystery author, Zanna MacKenzie.

I never thought the way I spent some of my school holidays as a child would be the inspiration for a crime scene in a novel.

When the summer rolled around and school broke up for six wonderful weeks I’d eagerly await the occasional days when I would get to accompany my dad to work. Before he retired, my dad was a contract haulier for a local quarry. He drove a 32 tonne truck. It was a monster of a vehicle. I had to be lifted up to clamber onto the edge of the wheel arch and into the cab. In the days before seatbelts and health and safety I was allowed to sit on the 2 seats on the passenger side of the cab unencumbered or even perch on the centre console (the engine manifold) next to the driver’s seat.

We would pick up and deliver huge quantities of sand and various types of stone and gravel for road building and construction. Being something of a tomboy as a child I loved all the noise and dust. I’d watch in awe and excitement as huge dumper trucks cruised past, so large they dwarfed my dad’s lorry. I can still remember sitting in the lorry as tonnes of stone cascaded into the back of it from the imposing-looking grey metal buildings where the stone whizzed around on conveyor belts. There was also a scarily (but aptly) named crusher which took the big-as-a-car sized chunks of rock and reduced them to gravel size.

At the end of the day I would dash up the steep bank which bordered the quarry as my dad and I walked home. It was just a ten minute stroll if we cut across the woods, through the meadow and hopped over the stepping stones in the stream. I would arrive home scruffy, exhausted but happy.

As a child it never occurred to me how dangerous an environment quarries were. As an adult when I felt the urge to switch from writing romantic comedies to cozy mysteries, I knew straight away where the first crime investigation was going to take place – a quarry!

In book one of my Amber Reed Mystery series, Amber – a barmaid and newspaper admin assistant who makes up horoscopes for the local paper – finds herself in a quarry in the middle of the night with handsome special agent Charlie as they try to find out just what is going on at Set In Stone. Amber gets caught up in the murder investigation because the victim is the brother of her ex- boyfriend Ennis. Now a movie star, Ennis pleads with Amber to help out by keeping an eye on special agent Charlie Huxton, sent by the Celebrity Crimes Investigation Agency to catch the killer. Ennis, harassed by paparazzi, is paranoid Charlie might be feeding news on the story to the media so he wants Amber to keep a close eye on the CCIA agent. Whilst trying to help out her ex Amber’s life gets very complicated indeed…

And The Earth Moved (Amber Reed Mystery Book One)

A new cozy mystery series with oodles of fun, romance and the smart, sassy special agents of the CCIA – otherwise known as the Celebrity Crimes Investigation Agency.

BOOK BLURB:

Amber wished her life was more exciting – then, with one phone call, her world turned upside down.

Now she’s got to cope with:

Her ex-boyfriend from university (who’s now a heartthrob movie star) desperately needing her help.

Getting herself caught up in the middle of a celebrity murder investigation.

Having to try and keep tabs on hunky special agent Charlie who’s in town to catch the killer – and convince him she can help him with the case.

Maybe her life just got too exciting….

Find this book on Amazon: http://getbook.at/AndTheEarthMoved

Extract:

“What kind of excitement are Gemini’s going to have this week?” I ponder, tapping my fingers against the keyboard.

I’m a third of the way through making up the horoscopes for this week’s local paper. Aries are going to get news of a fantastic job opportunity. Capricorns will receive some kind of windfall. But what about Gemini? I always like to give my Madam Zamber horoscope column an upbeat feel – after all, nobody reads their star signs to get depressed right?

My fingers hover over the computer keys as I debate on Gemini’s fate. I’m a Gemini so this one better be especially good; it’s been a rough week.

My phone, nestled somewhere in the depths of my bag, starts playing a chart tune at full volume. When I eventually find it I check the caller display and see Ennis’ name.

Ennis and I haven’t spoken for a while but I know he came home last week after he’d finished working on his latest movie, he sent me a text. He probably wants to meet for a coffee and a catch up. It’s strange; to me Ennis is, well, just Ennis. I don’t think of him as a heartthrob actor, just my ex, my university boyfriend, who I meet up with for a chat whenever he’s in Palstone.

Time for a little break from the horoscopes. I hit the answer button.

“Hi, how’s things?” I ask, leaning back in my chair.

There’s nothing but silence on the other end of the line.

“Ennis?” I sit up, instantly concerned. “Are you there? Is something wrong?”

His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him. “Joel’s dead,” he says.

“What?” I shout, leaping to my feet and earning myself a look of curiosity from the other two members of staff at The Palstone Courier. I lower my voice. “How? What happened?”

“We don’t know yet,” he replies, his voice heavy with emotion. “But the police are saying he died in suspicious circumstances.”

I gulp. “You mean murder?”

“Look, Amber can you please come over?” Ennis says. “Now? Please? I need to ask you a huge favour.”

I grab my jacket and bag. “On my way.”

Author bio:

Zanna Mackenzie lives in the UK on the Derbyshire/Leicestershire border with her husband, 4 dogs, a vegetable patch that’s home to far too many weeds and an ever expanding library of books waiting to be read.

Being a freelance writer and editor of business publications is her ‘day job’ but, at every opportunity, she can be found scribbling down notes on scenes for whatever novel she’s working on. She loves it when the characters in her novels take on minds of their own and start deviating from the original plot!

Find out more about Zanna on her blog http://www.zannamackenzie.blogspot.co.uk, on Twitter via @ZannaMacKenzie or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/zanna.mackenzie

Find out more about Zanna at:

www.zannamackenzie.blogspot.co.uk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZannaMacKenzie

Facebook: www.facebook.com/zanna.mackenzie

Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10703273-zanna-mackenzie

Amazon Author Page – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zanna-Mackenzie/e/B00BKY1A18/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Pinterest: http://uk.pinterest.com/zannamac/