The Irrational Terror of it All or Losing the File

~ dzchurch ~ 6 Comments

I lost a file.

I’m of course not talking about any file. I’m talking about the file, the one where you’ve gotten the last draft almost exactly where you want it. You know, sage, wise, fast-paced, thrilling, the bad guys are really bad, the good guys are in character. In short, if your readers are paying attention, they know who did it and what’s going on. Pride fills you; you make a note that bliss has been reached.

Then, the file is gone. Without a trace. A weird sort of calm sets in. You can handle this. Did I misfile it, like accidentally drop it into another folder? You search the file name through every blasted folder in your writing directory. Then the whole computer. Nope, it’s gone.

You check your backup. Nope. Gone. I mean, really, how can that even happen? What is the backup for if not to backup? What is the trash bin for, if not to collect deleted files and accidentally deleted ones? Reason takes flight. You begin to pant like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. You know how dangerous this is; people faint. Remember the kids’ game? So you take a breath.

Now, I’m no amateur at finding files. In my day, I ran a proposal center that produced pages and pages of explicit, required text. Four proposal managers and a host of support people kept this churning. Files went missing. I had an assistant who could locate most files, even the ones you didn’t want unearthed. But when we arrived one day at 5 am, a vast swath of a proposal due to ship in two days had gone walkabout, in the Aboriginal sense. Gone, nowhere, unfindable, outta here. People were waiting to edit, print, and collate it. I’m talking millions and millions of dollars on the line.

We cocked our heads in opposite directions at near the exact moment. The last person in the file was our most precise and careful proposal manager, who was assisting the proposal manager in charge because she was on the verge of hysteria. You know the look after a while. I opened our rather massive file base, my assistant over my shoulder, and tried to think like a man. We found the files squirreled away in a directory in his sector, not the proposal sector, marked XXXX.

The moment he waltzed in, I walked into his office and uttered something akin to #$^%& were you thinking? His answer? “They’re in the proposal files.” I challenged him to find them. He couldn’t. Turns out, dog-tired, he had cleaned up a bit … you know how that goes, slide the files into the wrong sector, log out, go home at 4 am, get a shave and grab some food, come back at 10. What a piker.

So, you’d think I could handle losing a file. But no. I lost my tiny little mind. Thinking, thinking. If I accidentally deleted it and it wasn’t in the trash bin, might it not magically appear if I went back in time? I went to OneDrive and ordered my files restored to one day before the file took a hike. Don’t do this. Ever. Well, not ever, it can be beneficial.

When I checked the restore, the file wasn’t there, nor were any of the other changes I’d made in the last three days, all wiped out in my madness. Luckily, it was mostly the Bodie Blue Books newsletter (a copy of which I’d sent to my BBB partner) and sales reporting (which was recoverable).

Still, I thought, who cares? I’d used my ReMarkable for the final run-through and had my handwritten edits; all I had to do was open my unedited file and make those changes again.

Sigh. The notes were there yesterday, not today. Why, because the OneDrive restore resets the ReMarkable, wiping out all my edits. After considering several implements with which to slit my wrists, I had this major cool idea. What if I restored the OneDrive to yesterday?

We’ll see how that turns out. It’s not like I lost the whole book. Right?

For now, I await the recovery of my OneDrive files, hoping the notes on my ReMarkable magically reappear. If not, well, you know how that goes.

Let this be a lesson to you. Do not be me!

Discover more about D.Z. Church and the Wanee Mysteries, The Cooper Vietnam Era Quartet and my thrillers: Saving Calypso, Booth Island and Perfidia at https://dzchurch.com

I found joy – as a jellyfish (and other aquatic animals)

~ donaleeMoulton ~ 6 Comments

By donalee Moulton

My newest book is Melt. It’s the second in my Lotus Detective Agency series, and it focuses, as does the first book, Bind, on three women who meet in yoga studio and discover there is more to life than a downward dog. There are crimes to be solved.

Long before the series was even an inkling of an idea, I was practising yoga – and writing about life as a crow, a bird of paradise, and a pigeon. The article below, originally published in The Globe and Mail, unveils how I ended up birdlike and otherwise on a yoga mat, twisted, inverted, and smiling. 

There were several occasions in the last three decades when I took a yoga class, four by my latest count. Nothing stuck for more than 60 minutes. Now I’m on the mat (as we, ahem, like to say) four or five times a week.

Not sure what happened between decades three and four, but here I am today in my 60s actively seeking out a yoga flow class, searching YouTube for restorative practice and talking retreats with new-found friends. I have blocks, straps, pillows, bolsters, blankets and mats in many colours, designs and grips. I even have a plastic frog in full lotus. Truth is, I have a yoga room.

I’m not an exercise person. I have never had the desire to scale mountains, ski down or hike mountainous terrain. I’m equally averse to water aerobics: surfing, paddling, polo. Give it all the cool names you want – finswimming, aquajogging, wakeskating – and I’m staying on terra firma.

Fact is, I’d rather have an enema than exercise.

Actually, that was the old me. The new me would rather do a downward dog.

I’m not sure which came first – not being good at sports or not being interested in sports. They are indelibly intertwined, like chicken and egg or the yoga pose eagle arms and legs (which I can do).

Regardless, here I am, sports unenthusiast. I want to be healthy. What I’ve never wanted is to work at being healthy because it’s boring and hard (so I had come to believe). Yet, periodically I would propel myself to some gym, some piece of equipment, or even some yoga mat to get my body in shape.

In the case of yoga, that lasted for a full 240 minutes over 30 years. (In the case of lifting weights, running on the treadmill, aquacise, the number is much, much lower.)

The turning point in my yoga journey, it turned out, was around the corner from where I live. An instructor started renting studio space in a new building, and my aunt and I decided to give it a try. We liked it. We really liked it.

I’m not sure why. It may be the variety of poses we learned, that each class was new and different, that we got to know participants. But I had all that before. The reason, I discovered, is not important. The reality is.

At some point, actually several points, my body responded in ways it never had before. My feet touched the mat, both of them, when I did a downward dog; my hands (both of them) held each other doing a bound side angle.

I also noticed a marked improvement in my knee. My doctor had diagnosed a tear in my meniscus and wished me well. When I couldn’t complete a yoga pose because of it, an instructor recommended putting something like a sock between my knee and my bent leg. It worked. As I spent more time on the mat, I used the sock less and less. Today, I get no complaints from my knee, and use socks only to cover my feet.

It wasn’t only my knee that got better. My strength, my balance and my flexibility improved.

Perspective changes on the mat. There is a common yoga pose called child’s pose. You put thighs on calves, buttocks on heels, and fold yourself into a ball. It’s supposed to be a resting position, one you come to after other poses have offended your body in ways you didn’t know existed. For most of us, child’s pose is, at first, the farthest thing from a rest primarily because there is a wide gap between our bottom and our heels. Most of us accommodate, as yoga teaches us. We shove bolsters, blankets and blocks under our rear to close the gap. Still a faint wisp of failure lingers.

I’m in an extended child’s pose during one class and realize I’m enjoying this fetal shape. I am relaxed, breathing deeply, and feeling something new: contentment. I tried to figure out what had shifted and realized, in part, the answer was physical. My rear end was not pointed heavenward; it was nestled on my feet. I was a ball without the need of a bolster.

There are those poses that continue to confound. My legs refuse to rearrange themselves into a lotus, although they are inching closer. Crow pose eludes me. Both feet refuse to come off the floor, but one will, so I’m making progress. And there are those poses I have yet to attempt. Their names will tell you why: formidable face pose, handstand scorpion, destroyer of the universe.

Overall, however, I find a sense of peace and contentment in many poses and in my practice. Indeed, I find more than this. Yoga has taught me that practice is about more than positioning the body. It is about body, mind and spirit. It is about connecting with yourself. It is about finding balance. It is about going to the edge, but not over the cliff. It is about acknowledging growth and recognizing limitations. It is about joy. The joy that comes from sitting on a mat with your heels stuffed into your bottom and your heart soaring.

Ultimately yoga has taught me patience and acceptance. The fundamental reality of any practice is this: yoga teachers cannot count. They put you in a pose, say warrior II, then they suggest you place your right shoulder against your inner thigh while extending your left arm toward the ceiling, bending your elbow, bringing your left arm behind you, and clasping your right hand. It’s like scrubbing the floor while looking at mold on the ceiling.

I can actually do this. And I can hear my yoga instructor saying, “Hold for three breaths,” just before launching into a tale about their morning drive to work. Three minutes later – not three breaths – we unbind and unbend. All yoga teachers are trained to do this.

When instructors tell you to hold for five breaths – a lifetime when your hips are squared, your shoulders flexed, and your legs interwoven – they are lying. Admittedly, they are well intended. Some even come with timers, beacons of false hope.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. I am on the mat, moving in sync with my breath, finding my body moving with me (or against me) and I’m okay with that. I have learned the challenging poses – lizard, dolphin, fish – are friends. We meet here on this rectangular piece of vinyl, and I take pieces of them with me when I roll up my mat, put away my straps and head out the door.

The joy of having been for a time an aquatic animal infuses and informs. It is so much more than legs splayed, ankles nestled, arms extended. And holding for five delicious breaths.

Ish.

Guest Blogger ~ M.E. Proctor

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

Pretty as a Picture and Far from Innocent

By M.E. Proctor

Catch Me on a Blue Day, Book 2 of the Declan Shaw mystery series, takes place in Old Mapleton, a postcard-perfect town on the Connecticut coast.

It comes with Queen Anne cottages, a yacht club, a bakery-chocolatier, an art gallery, several cafés, including one next to the marina that serves delicious crab cakes and lobster rolls. The police station is in the Tudor style, and its dark beams and stained glass windows give it the appearance of a tavern, or an inn—Ye Olde Copper’s Nest, Declan Shaw muses when he first sets eyes on it. The old Customs House, restored, is a private residence on a point next to the commercial fishing harbor. The camp of a lesser robber baron is now a B&B, and art afficionados can visit an artist colony on the outskirts of town, by appointment.

Families flock to the beaches from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Dogs are not allowed on the beach. Other things are not allowed. The list is long; it includes ‘horsing around’.

Doesn’t it look like the perfect setting for a cozy mystery?

Before you settle down in a comfortable armchair with grandma’s Delft teapot in easy reach (I just read that Delft is fashionable again), I must warn you: I don’t write cozies.

Bad people do nasty things no matter the landscape. There are homicidal maniacs in Neverland. And all the notices painstakingly posted by the city council won’t stop mischief. Violence is even uglier in an ideal setting because nobody expects it.

But you, readers of Ladies of Mystery, have consumed metric tons of crime fiction and you’re already making guesses about what comes next.

  1. Small towns have secrets, buried deep.
  2. The detective has a good shovel.
  3. A love interest delivers inside information.   

I’ll try to stay away from big spoilers, I don’t want to ruin the fun, but I’ll knock down a few hypotheses.

Old Mapleton, CT, has a dirty past. Not in a Stephen King kind of way—it isn’t built on a burial ground, and it doesn’t suffer from recurring murder sprees—but it went through a traumatic episode of collective hysteria. A horrible murder happened there thirty years ago. A little girl, Ella, was killed. The town tore itself apart in a frenzy of suspicion, denunciations, anonymous letters, and recanted confessions, with the media stoking the fire. To this day, the case is still open. Lives were destroyed, and long-time residents remember. None of this is secret. Ella and Old Mapleton made headlines far and wide.

The detective, Declan Shaw, doesn’t come to town to poke in the trash of the past. An old friend, Carlton Marsh, asked him to help with research for his book. Marsh was a war correspondent and he’s gathering his articles on the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s. Declan is recovering from a severe leg injury and intends to take it easy. Learning, upon arrival, that Marsh committed suicide throws him off kilter. Nothing in his last conversation with the reporter indicated that he was in any kind of trouble. The Old Mapleton chief of police agrees … even if he’s not eager to have a PI sniffing around. No fisticuffs and roughing up, the two men get along. In the claustrophobic town, they’re both outsiders. The chief calls himself ‘the token punk’, he doesn’t belong to the local elite and has a lot more in common with the rough trade on the wrong side of the tracks.

The love interest. Ha! The title of this post applies to her as much as it applies to the town. Isabel is in her late twenties, smart, pretty, not too hindered by morality, and bored out of her skull. When Declan walks into the art gallery she manages, her first thought is that maybe her summer isn’t a complete waste of time. This would be a meet cute if the lust thermometer wasn’t stuck in the high nineties. I had a lot of fun writing Isabel’s point of view. Let’s say that she has very, very, little self-control … and no, she doesn’t know anything about the cold case, or Marsh’s suicide, which will not keep her out of trouble.

I like complex narratives. How does a little’s girl death in New England connect to political upheaval in Central America? Carlton Marsh knew but he’s no longer around to make Declan wise. The path to the truth will be sinuous and dark. Through the woods where Ella was found, many years ago.

—-

Catch Me on a Blue Day

A Declan Shaw Mystery

“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.”

It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide.

A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut to help him with research. He looked forward to Declan’s visit: “See you at cocktail time, a fine whiskey’s waiting.” They talked on the phone a few hours before the man put a bullet in his brains.

Now Declan stands in the office of the local police chief. The cop would prefer to see him fly back to Houston. He’s never dealt with a private detective, but everybody knows they are trouble. If only there weren’t so many unanswered questions around Marsh’s death … the haunting first three chapters of his book, and that dedication to Ella, a girl whose murder thirty years ago brought the town to its knees.

In Catch Me on a Blue Day, Declan is far from his regular Texas stomping grounds. He’s off balance in more ways than one, and the crimes he uncovers are of a magnitude he could not foresee.

Between the sins of an old New England town and the violence of 1980s El Salvador. And the links between the two.

Buy Links:

Catch Me on a Blue day is available in eBook and paperback

On Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Blue-Declan-Shaw-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0FR3DWYGD/

From reviews:
“In Catch Me on a Blue Day, she combines the strengths of the best of the best mystery writers, writers like Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, and Janet Evanovich, to create a mystery novel that will have you saying, where has this terrific mystery writer been all my life?” —John Guzlowski, author of Suitcase Charlie, a Hank and Marvin mystery

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, came out from Shotgun Honey. Catch Me on a Blue Day is the next installment in the series. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer short story nominee.

Social Links

Author Website: www.shawmystery.com

On Substack: https://meproctor.substack.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martine.proctor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEProctor3

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/meproctor.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proctormartine/

Best Laid Plans

~ lanamfox ~ 2 Comments

This has been a busy month for me. I launched Her Last Breath, my third book in the Hood River Valley Mystery/Thriller series a couple of weeks ago. It took longer than I thought it would, but it’s now out on Amazon. I think it will be available to bookstores and libraries on October 19th.

I’ll be selling my books at our local Fall Craft Show on the 18th and 19th. And I have an upcoming book signing in Pendelton, Oregon at Brett’s Books New and Used on November 1st.

I’ve been getting ready for those events and trying to finish the edits on another book. This one is a Christmas Romance. Several years ago, I wrote about 80% of this book and never finished it. It had always been on my bucket list to write a Christmas Romance. For some reason, I just didn’t know how to end this one. Maybe it’s because I’m normally a mystery writer and the ending is typically the solving of the crime.

There were no crimes in my Christmas Romance. There’s a little intrigue, but crime doesn’t take a leading role. So, I talked to my friend and fellow author, Cassie Moore, and we brainstormed until I had the idea for the ending, and I was able to finish it.

The premise of this book is: What do you do when the man you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with dies, and you’re certain you’ll never love anyone else again? And then a stranger comes along and turns your world upside down?

While Brynn Cummins fights her attraction to mystery author Jack Andrews, she finds herself embroiled in two family problems that seem insurmountable. Her son’s ex-wife is trying to take their two-year-old son away from him while he’s being deployed. and after she has given up all parental rights. And Jack’s ex-wife is needing his help because she’s going through cancer. Then her crazy brother gets involved and complicates Jack’s life even more.

As love blooms between Brynn and Jack, can they navigate their way through their problems and find their way to each other? Or will the problems be more than their fledgling relationship will bare?

I’ve been editing two books, trying to get one formatted and into production, while setting up book signings. Then one of our dear friends died unexpectedly. He had been having cognitive issues for the last few years, but I thought he was strong physically. He wasn’t, and dealing with his death has been so hard. He was such a good man, and he will be missed.

His Memorial Service is next weekend. Last weekend I was supposed to go to my cousin’s funeral. Instead, I ended up in the hospital. I’ve been here two days, and they are planning to do surgery today. When you think you are already too busy, and life drops something like this on you, it’s like, how am I supposed to get everything done when I was already overwhelmed, and now I have a hospital stay?

I’ll be glad when today is over and I can get well and move on. I had warning signs. For the last few weeks, I kept having chest pains that moved into my abdomen and back. But they didn’t last long, and I was in denial. I didn’t want to take time out for health reasons.

Then last Saturday the pain came and wouldn’t go away. I tried lying down and getting up and walking around, all things I’d done in the past to alleviate the pain. It just got worse and worse, so I called my husband and said, “I think you need to take me to the hospital.” It’s probably a good thing I came. I will be fine, I just have a few days of recovery, and I’ll be up and around again.

I’m determined to make it to the Memorial Service for our friend this weekend, and to the Craft Show. Someone will have to carry my books in, but hopefully I can arrange that.

Fast forward a couple of days, and I’m home. Surgery went well and I should heal nicely. I’ve learned that no matter what plans I have that I feel can’t be changed or shelved, life has a way of changing those plans sometimes.

I still plan to make my friend’s memorial. But I may have to bow out of the Craft Show as much as I hate that. Amazon doesn’t plan to get my new book to me until the day after the show closes. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll come early, but I just checked tracking, and it doesn’t look good.

I could scream, but I know that won’t do any good. The books will come when they get here. There will be other opportunities to sell my books. I just need to chill and let life do what it’s going to do.

Characters, where do they come from?

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

Shandra Higheagle Mystery, this month.

After my post last month about Getting to Know my Character, I had a reader ask me to write about how I create, develop, and name characters.

I guess I’ll start with my Shandra Higheagle series. In the case of this series, my brother gave me the idea for a unique murder weapon. He is an artist and was working at a bronze foundry, welding bronze statues and putting the patina on them. He told me about a large statue of a warrior with a spear and how the spear from the warrior’s hand up could be removed. It was made that way for transportation.

Once that idea was in my head, I knew the first book had to be set in the world of art to have the statue come into play. I decided my main character would be an artist. Since I am captivated by Indigenous culture and have a friend in that world who was willing to help me understand things I would need to know, I made Shandra a potter who made vases that are sold in art galleries. She is also half Nez Perce from the Colville Reservation and half Caucasian. To make it easier for me to write from her perspective, I had her Nez Perce father die when she was four and her mother took her away from that side of her family. She grew up off a reservation on a cattle ranch in Montana with a stepfather who kept her Nez Perce origins hidden.

That gave me a good way to reacquaint her with her Nez Perce heritage as I learned things. I didn’t try to appropriate her culture, just share her learning and experience. I had the help of my friend, who lives on the Colville Reservation, to help me with the books that are set there and how the people there live.

I set the books in a fictional ski resort area in Idaho. We had traveled through Kellogg, ID, a few years earlier, and I thought it was a wonderful place for an artist to reside. It gave Shandra a mountain where she would gather clay and purify it to make her vases. I had learned about an artist who made his own clay in Wallowa County from my brother. He set up a time for me to meet with the artist and learn all about the gathering and purifying of the clay. While I was there, he showed me several of his pieces that were in various stages of the processes he used.

Once I had all about Shandra settled, I started working on secondary characters. Her dog, Sheba, who is large and scared of her own shadow. A woman who helps her with her clay and taking care of the land that she purchased. Crazy Lil came with the ranch like a stray cat. She grew up on the ranch, lost it when her parents died, and went to work for the person who bought it. When they sold to Shandra, Crazy Lil didn’t move on and became Shandra’s right-hand woman. She’s a bit on the cantankerous side and is leery of Ryan, the detective who takes a shine to Shandra.

Then I added friends. A woman who owns an art gallery in Huckleberry. Naomi is married and she and her husband, Ted, sell Shandra’s vases and know a good deal about her. Ruthie is a Black woman who owns a diner in Huckleberry. She and Shandra bonded over Shandra’s love of cheeseburgers and caramel shakes. Her other good friend is Miranda Aducci, whose family owns the Italian Restaurant in Huckleberry. There are several other unique characters like the albino doctor who is trying to find a cure for the disease that killed all the males in his family in their 50s, and Maxwell Treat whose family owns the local mortuary.

When Shandra is considered a suspect for the death of a gallery owner in the first book, she butts heads with Ryan Greer, the detective for the county. This brings in a man who was a cop in a large city and came back to where he grew up because his large Irish family all live in and around the county. His cultural beliefs about little people help him to come to terms with Shandra’s dreams with her deceased grandmother before she realizes that they are helpful.  

Detective Ryan Greer came to me as I was building the beginning scene in my head. I made him Irish and gave him a good Irish name. His mother is Irish and taught her family all about her homeland. His siblings all have Irish names.

My vision of Shandra

Shandra’s name just came to me as I was putting together what she looked like to me. Of course, I wanted a last name that sounded Native American. Sheba’s name came from a big black fluffy dog my daughter had while growing up. Crazy Lil, was just something I typed the first time I brought her into the book. That’s the way all the secondary characters’ names come to me in each book.

As I type a scene and add a new character, I have in my mind what they look like and I add a name that seems to suit them, or the purpose they have for the story. That sounds kind of vague but that’s the way my mind works.

I always have the main character, the victim, and the suspects fleshed out when I start a book, but the secondary characters that are new to the series pop up as they enter my head.

I’m sure readers are interested in how I came up with my Gabriel Hawke and Dela Alvaro characters in their series. I’ll tell you about them in next month’s post.

I wanted to give you the info about my new Cuddle Farm Mystery Series. There will be a blog tour for the first book, Merry Merry Merry Murder, from October 10th-23rd. there will be character posts and posts about how I came up with the series on multiple different blogs if you want to hear about the book from Cocoa, the border collie, Cupcake, the pygmy goat, Lulu, the chiweenie, and Betty, a secondary character who is one of the main character’s best friends.

 You can purchase Merry Merry Merry Murder ebook from the usual vendors or you can purchase the ebook from my website.

“Where comfort and cheer meet scandalous secrets—A holiday mystery set in a small town.”

In the close-knit town of Auburn, Oregon, Andi Clark’s therapy animals bring comfort to the community, especially during the holiday season. When a young girl seeks solace from Athena, Andi’s therapy dog, after witnessing an unsettling scene behind the sleigh, it marks the beginning of a much darker holiday.

As the town gathers for the Tree Lighting Ceremony, a scream shatters the festive atmosphere. Cocoa, Andi’s loyal Border Collie, pulls her toward a chilling sight: a woman standing over the lifeless body of the girl’s mother, strangled with Christmas lights.

Determined to help the grieving girl and her town recover from the shock, Andi, her therapy animals, and her niece, a county deputy, take it upon themselves to investigate. As they uncover secrets and untangle clues, they stay one step ahead of the new sheriff and worry that the killer lurking in their midst could be someone they know.

Purchase now from my website: https://www.patyjager.net/product/merry-merry-merry-murder-ebook/

Purchase from a universal buy link: https://books2read.com/u/mZ6qpJ