Tag: #amwriting

Life has made changes in my writing style.

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

When I started writing to get published over 30 years ago, I would sit down and knock out words for an hour or two a day. That was when the kids were in school and I’d finished all my outside and household chores. Back then I hadn’t attended more than a college class on fiction writing and a community Ed class on writing for hire.

I had one children’s story published in a parenting magazine and I was working as a freelance reporter for first the Redmond Spokesman and the the Bend Bulletin. These didn’t pay much but they showed me I could write.

The first novel I wrote was a murder mystery. I’d read the first three Kinsey Millhone Mysteries by Sue Grafton and felt I could write a mystery novel. I loved the main character and enjoyed writing about a divorced mother of two who made her living with freelance photography helping her ex-husband prove he didn’t kill someone. I used a book I’d heard about on a television talk show that would help you be your own detective. Great premise! I did my homework looking through the tombs of agents in the books you couldn’t take out of the library and thought I’d found the right one.

Back then I didn’t know you didn’t pay them to read your books. I was already working on the second book in the series when I received the rejection letter that said mystery books in first person didn’t sell. I stood open-mouthed as I read it. But the very books that had set my muse on fire were in first person and they were selling well. I changed the book into third person and resent it, without any money, and never heard back from the agent.

In the meantime, I’d heard on a television talk show ( this was back in the day when I watched television as I cleaned, folded clothes, and did all the household chores) that homemakers were writing romance books and making money. I started writing a historical romance. I attended what I realized, after the fact, was a literary writer’s event. The two workshops I wanted to take were reasonable and I could stay with my parents. I went to the first class and enjoyed learning more about writing. The second workshop was with an editor from New York. We were to read a section of our work to her. The first person started reading and I thought, wow, where is the plot in this? Then the second one read and I was completely lost. Then the third had the moon as the protagonist. I was clearly feeling like I didn’t belong in this group. Then it was my turn and I started reading from my historical romance. Everyone leaned back and stared at me. The agent stopped me and asked if I’d heard of RWA. I hadn’t and then she told me to come see her after the workshop.

From the RWA organization I learned the craft of writing. I learned to make my characters flawed and likeable. I learned how to use villains and tragedy to draw the reader in. I learned about suspense and crafting a good hook. During that time, I wrote every week day. I became published in historical Western romance. After I became published I wrote seven days a week, for three to four hours. I decided to make this a career.

Ten years ago I decided to get back to writing mystery books. That’s when I started writing the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series.

I have written at least 2-4 hours every day since I became a published author.

Until this year.

This year I decided to indulge in life more. Which had me not writing for days, weeks, even a month when I went on my Europe trip.

I take that back, I did write every day because I kept a journal of my trip. But I didn’t work or even think about the next book, which is unusual for me. I usually have two books in my head, the one I’m working on and the next one. I had neither for a whole month.

When I returned, I set a goal for myself. To finish Gabriel Hawke, book number 13, titled Wolverine Instincts, this month. The plan on my whiteboard is for it to publish in January. Right now I’m thinking late January and possibly early February. However, I am writing my 3k a day on this book since November 1st and my goal is to have it ready to go to critique partners and beta readers by the first of December.

This is the second book this year that I’ve given myself a month to get written. I was able to get that book written in the month, but there weren’t two book-selling events and a holiday during that month.

My character Dela Alvaro in the Spotted Pony Casino mysteries is a disabled veteran. The audiobook for Down and Dirty will soon be available. But today, on Veterans Day, you can download a free copy of Poker Face, book 1 in the series using this link from Bookfunnel. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/xlsrf57q4l

Thank you to all Veterans!

And don’t forget that starting November 15th through December the Ladies of Mystery have our Cavalcade of Books available for you to get deals or gift books to people on your Christmas list. Each of us is offering three books, some at special prices just for you! Ckick HERE to see what’s what, once again starting November 15th!

My Brain Is Taking a Break

~ Pamela Beason ~ 4 Comments

Ack! My post is scheduled for tomorrow, and my mind is blank. Not a single pithy idea is pinging around in my head. So, I’m just going to blather on about what’s going on while my creative brain is taking a vacation. I’ve finished the manuscript for my latest mystery, IF ONLY, which is a crossover novel between my Sam Westin Wilderness series and my Neema the Gorilla series, and trust me, it was not easy to mix those two very different settings and groups of characters, but I believe I pulled the blend off smoothly, although it took me a long time.

But then I ran into two snags. One, my editor is very busy and has been sick, so my manuscript has been held up in the final edit. Two, I planned for this book to be positioned in both the Sam Westin series and in the Neema series, cleverly eliminating the need to write another book for each series. But it turns out that Amazon will only allow me to place the book in one of my series, which then caused a need to make cover changes and dream up creative ways to make it clear that the book also fits in the other series.

I still have all the minutiae to complete after I make final manuscript changes: register ISBN numbers for both print and ebooks, make an ebook version for Amazon with links to my other books, make an ebook for Draft2Digital without those links, write the description for the book page, find appropriate keywords for the listing, etc., etc. Being a self-published author can be tedious, but at least I’m in control and making far more money than I did with a traditional publisher.

So, while I’m waiting for the final edit to arrive on my desk, I’ve been giving my brain a break with reading. I always read, and although I tend to prefer mysteries, I also read all sorts of other books, and I often read more than one at once. Right now, I’m reading two very different books, and they are both unusual picks for me. First, Jodi Taylor’s The Long and the Short of It, which is a collection of wacky humorous short stories. I rarely read short stories, and even more rarely read humorous stories, but these are much more entertaining to me than most, as the plots involve historians who travel back in time and accidentally muck up the details of historical events. Second, I’m reading Camp Zero, a post-apocalyptic story about groups of people who have been posted in the arctic for mysterious reasons having to do with discovering pristine air and livable places for humanity as the southern half of our planet devolves into climatic and political chaos. However, in Camp Zero, it’s clear that men, and not necessarily honorable men, are in charge of all these experiments, so it’s never clear what is going to happen next.

These make a great break from my normal reading. Lately I’ve been plowing through Sara Driscoll’s FBI K-9 series, which has great suspense and action as the protagonist works on life-and-death cases with her canine partner. I will definitely return to that series later. I adore stories that honor the abilities and intelligence of animals, although my cats often express the wish there were many more books that feature feline heroes.

Soon IF ONLY will be out, and my attention will then be diverted to marketing, which I am generally terrible at. But for now, my mind is having a great time in the virtual worlds created by other writers.

My Writing List

~ patyjag ~ 8 Comments

Every writer has their mantra, motto, or theme for their writing. I have a list of items I try to hit with each book I write.

The list is:

  • Character endures longer than plot.
  • Action intrigues the reader more than passive language.
  • Scenes excite the reader more than narration.
  • Dialogue interests the reader more than exposition.
  • Nouns & Verbs trump adjectives and adverbs.

I’m not sure where I found this years ago, but the saying has hung either from my monitor or as now, on my whiteboard plotting calendar by my desk. These five things are what I strive for in each book or short story I write.

I want the readers to love my characters whether they are the main characters or the secondary characters. Because if I don’t care or like them why would a reader want to read about them? From the reactions of my readers when I ended the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series, I believe they fell in love with my characters. Which makes me happy and I try to do the same with all my other series characters.

As for action, I like stories that aren’t bogged down with descriptions. I want to know what the characters are doing and have their actions and reactions move the story forward. I like books that carry me along on the ride without distracting me with mundane things.  

Sometimes I wonder if I put too many breaks in some chapters, but they are usually ones where the characters are jumping from scene to scene as they move forward to question someone or look for a clue. All the scenes whether they are long or short keep the story moving.

I prefer to write dialogue that informs the reader either about the past, present, or to show the character’s character. I try not to use too much narrative to inform the reader. It can end up feeling like an info dump. As much as I can, I try to keep information in the dialog and not do any dumps.

There have been times after I’ve written and published a book, I think, “Man, I should have described this or that better.” Then I get a review with how well I showed or revealed an area or place and I think, “I guess I did okay.” I am not a wordy person in real life. I don’t care for small talk and I like to get to the point of things. I’ve found I’m the same way with my writing. I use words sparingly and make sure the words I do use inform without having to add three words for the one. I do use some adjectives but only if they are necessary to show what I want to show, not to flower up the pages. When I read a book with lots of description, I’ll jump over those paragraphs to get to the action.

The books I like to read are ones with strong likeable characters and action that moves the story forward. That shouldn’t come as a surprise after reading this post. If a character grabs me in the first chapter, I will finish the book unless the story is slogging. I came across a book recently that the premise intrigued me but I couldn’t finish the book because I didn’t like the main character and some of the things the character did seemed dumb. I put a book like this down and start another one. I have lots of books on my TBR pile and limited time to read.

So when I read for pleasure, I want the book to make me think about it even when I’m not reading. That is a good book.

What is a good book you’ve read lately?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about my newest release.

Down and Dirty

Book 6 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries

The Spotted Pony Casino’s head of security, Dela Alvaro, receives a late-night call that takes her to a deserted walkway along the river. After confronting a woman babbling about love and bodies being buried, Dela stumbles over a corpse and discovers her knife covered in the victim’s blood.

Dela and Tribal Detective Heath Seaver find themselves working with FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce when the murder seems to be connected to a drug cartel. Dela nearly becomes the victim of a hit-and-run while someone is trying to frame her for the murder.

Proving her innocence has Dela interviewing past acquaintances and members of a drug cartel, all while trying to decide if the woman she met the night of the murder is truly crazy … or the killer.

Universal buy link: https://books2read.com/u/bagQ66

Guest Blogger ~ Lorie Lewis Ham

~ patyjag ~ 10 Comments

The Birth of My Main Character Roxi Carlucci

By Lorie Lewis Ham

The main character in my latest book, One of You, the second book in my Tower District Mystery series, had a bit of a journey before discovering where she belonged. Here is her story.

In the early 2000s, I wrote a mystery series that featured a gospel-singing amateur sleuth named Alexandra Walters. She lived in a fictional version of my hometown of Reedley called Donlyn. While writing the final book in the series, The Final Note, which came out in 2010, I started thinking about what I wanted to do next.

There is a character named Stephen Carlucci who has been with me from the very beginning. He has never had a series of his own, but he has been present in every book I’ve written. So when my last series ended I set him up to move on as well since Alex ended up with someone else and not him. The original plan was for him to move to the coast of California near Santa Cruz where his cousin Roxi Carlucci lived. First, though, I had to create Roxi.

I had decided to write a new series featuring Roxi set in a fictional town on the coast of California called Ayr. She ran a pocket pet animal rescue (hamsters, guinea pigs, pet rats) and wrote children’s books. When I first came up with this idea there weren’t any animal rescue cozies that I was aware of and it was a world I knew well having run an animal rescue for several years. It seemed like a perfect idea. I introduced Roxi in The Final Note, even including some chapters from her point of view. Done with the intention of immediately starting her series after that.

Alex had been too much like me, so I wanted Roxi to be different. I started by making her tall—I am not quite five feet. She is also braver than I am, and far more outspoken. By making her Stephen’s cousin, she automatically had a darker side as they come from a Mafia family, even though they both chose different paths. Roxi also knows how to use a sword—something I have since started learning myself.

When I finally tried to sit down and write the first book with Roxi, it just wasn’t working. I kept trying, but suddenly now the cozy mystery world was being flooded with animal rescue mysteries so it also no longer felt unique. Perhaps I wasn’t able to write it because it just wasn’t the right series for Roxi. The world I created for her just didn’t work. But since I’d already created Roxi, I didn’t want to let her go. So what was I to do with her?

While I was pondering that question, I was also creating my online magazine called Kings River Life (KRL), and that began taking up a lot of my time. But it also ended up leading to the answer to my dilemma with Roxi. While half of KRL covers mystery, the other half is all local (I live in the San Joaquin Valley of California near Fresno). We cover local arts and entertainment, food, and animal rescue, among other things. One day while in Fresno’s arts and entertainment district to review a play it dawned on me that this area would make a great setting for a mystery series! This district is called The Tower District! Hence the Tower District Mysteries came to be.

Roxi however, lived on the coast of California so I had to figure out how to get her to the Tower District. I decided that I would have her lose her book contract, and have her roommate get married and move out, leaving Roxi without a way to pay her mortgage. Mean I know, but sometimes it just has to be done.

I also decided that after being dumped by Alex, her cousin Stephen moved to the Tower District and he just “happened” to have a spare room that Roxi could stay in while figuring out the rest of her life. So Roxi closed her rescue, packed up her life, and moved to the Tower District. She may not have been thrilled at first about leaving behind a lovely coastal town for the summer heat of Fresno, but by book 2, One of You, she is settling in nicely and discovering that living in the Tower District isn’t so bad. She’s made friends, started an entertainment podcast, and she is even helping to put on a big mystery event called Mysteryfest during Halloween at the local bookstore.

As to the rest of how she came to be, well oddly enough Roxi shares a lot of my interests, even if she isn’t as much like me as Alex was. Just a different assortment of them than Alex did—with a few exceptions like Frank Sinatra—come on she’s Italian!

I hope you will want to get to know Roxi in the first two books in this series, One of Us and One or You, and that you will come to like her as much as I do.

Lorie has a Giveaway of an ebook copy of One of You or One of Us winner’s choice. Just leave a comment and she’ll pick a winner

With her life on the California Coast behind her, Roxi Carlucci is beginning to feel at home in the Tower District—the cultural oasis of Fresno, CA—where she now lives with her cousin P.I. Stephen Carlucci, her pet rat Merlin, a Pit Bull named Watson, and a black cat named Dan. She has a new entertainment podcast, works as a part-time P.I., and is helping local bookstore owner Clark Halliwell put on the first-ever Tower Halloween Mysteryfest! The brutal summer heat is gone and has been replaced by the dense tule fog—perfect for Halloween!

She just wishes everyone would stop calling her the “Jessica Fletcher” of the Tower District simply because she found a dead body when she first arrived. But when one of the Mysteryfest authors is found dead, she fears she jinxed herself! The Carlucci’s are hired to find the killer before they strike again. Will Mysteryfest turn into a murder fest? How is the local gossip website back, and what does it know about the death of Roxi’s parents?

Buy links-

Ebook amazon https://tinyurl.com/83befuae

Amazon print https://tinyurl.com/tb79uukj

Barnes and Noble.com ebook https://tinyurl.com/4trwukbb

Barnes and Noble.com print https://tinyurl.com/yf3kyhxj

Kobo https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/one-of-you-3

Universal Buy Link https://books2read.com/u/m0eWAy

Lorie Lewis Ham lives in Reedley, California and has been writing ever since she was a child. Her first song and poem were published when she was 13, and she has gone on to publish many articles, short stories, and poems throughout the years, as well as write for a local newspaper, and publish 7 mystery novels. For the past 14 years, Lorie has been the editor-in-chief and publisher of Kings River Life Magazine, and she produces Mysteryrat’s Maze Podcast, where you can hear an excerpt of her book One of Us, the first in a new series called The Tower District Mysteries. Book 2, One of You, was released in June of 2024. You can learn more about Lorie and her writing on her website mysteryrat.com and find her on Facebook, BookBub, Goodreads, and Instagram @krlmagazine & @lorielewishamauthor.

I See Characters

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

Every writer puts a bit of the people around them into their characters. We can’t help it. A friend has a quirk that we like and we give it to a character. A relative has a situation that would make for a great subplot, we use it. Even though we are writing fiction, bringing in the bits of real life that we see brings those fictional characters to life.

Last month while working at a NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) booth selling my book and those of other authors in the organization, some unusual characters came by and talked to us. One of my strengths is being a good listener. Only there does come a point with some people when even I started getting antsy and wish the person would move on. Either physically or with their topic.

One person who has stopped by our booth the last two years that I’ve been there is a man who likes to discuss how the government is listening into everything that is going on and how he believes the aliens will soon return to save the planet. He gets very adamant about why he lives off-grid and how we are all being tracked. I’m thinking someone with his perspective on life will show up in one of my books.

Another young man, well, young to me, I believe he might have been late twenties or early thirties. He had a British accent, wore his hair in a shoulder-length bob, and had on a typical t-shirt a male his age would wear and then he had on a skirt that was tight enough across his hips that you could tell he was male if his voice hadn’t given him away. He had a dog on a leash. As he talked to us, he constantly pushed the hair away from his face, adjusted his glasses, and kept his dog from wrapping the leash around his legs. He was quiet, talked a little about the books and how he’d thought about writing, but he didn’t have a clear vision of what he wanted to write.

The third person who captured my attention and sent a chill up my back was a woman. She walked up to the booth dressed in a long flowy skirt, matching sweater, and a silk scarf around her neck. She looked like the wife of a businessman or a professional herself. Her smile was wide, her eyes lit up with the smile and she said, “Hello. I’m here to spread love. Elon Musk and I are building a world filled with love. Come join us and together we can make the world a better place.” I smiled and said, “That’s nice. The world could use more love.” She asked about a couple of the books, then reiterated that she and Elon needed help to spread the love. I nodded and smiled and then- the creepy part. Her eyelids started fluttering, her eyes kind of rolled up, and her smile disappeared. When she stared at me anger simmered in her eyes and she said, “I know where the bodies are buried. I do. I know where the bodies are buried.” I had no words for that response from her. Then as quickly as she’d changed, the smile was back and she said, “I have more love to spread, ” and walked away.

I was speechless for a few minutes. The other member of NIWA who was in the booth with me had been on the phone while I was talking to the woman. I sat down, grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, and wrote down everything she said and how she looked.

And that woman is a secondary character in my September release, Down and Dirty, book 6 in the Spotted Pony Casino mystery series.

It is encounters like this that give writers the fodder for their stories.