Harder than the whole book? Amber Foxx on the Battle of the Blurb

July 25, 2019July 24, 2019 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 9 Comments

I know the title. I know the plot, finally, after pantsing my way through it twice. Now I’m cutting, cleaning, and clarifying. A lot of work, but manageable. I have possible cover images, all by Donna Catterick, the photographer whose work graces the covers of Death Omen and Small Awakenings. My cover artist will help me choose among them. (Your feedback is welcome, too.) I know I want Turtleback Mountain, because key scenes take place on the mountain and on the banks of the Rio Grande with a view of the The Turtle.

The hardest part now is the back cover or blurb. Or so it seems when the time comes to write it.

How do I get it to intrigue readers without giving away the plot?

I like this line:

An old flame, an old friend, and the ghost of an old enemy.

All of the above are featured in the plot. The old flame and the old friend show up right away. But the ghost of an old enemy? Much as I love the sound of it, he doesn’t play a role until further into the book. (No one kills him, by the way, although his ghost claims otherwise. I haven’t changed my approach. Still no murder.) My protagonist’s confrontations with him are part of a major subplot that contributes to solving the mystery, but the main plot revolves around family secrets. Does a subplot have a place in the blurb?

The instigating event belongs in a blurb. (And series fans will want to know that the ongoing romantic story is integrated into the mystery. My readers get very involved in Mae Martin’s personal life.) The lead character’s goal, an obstacle or conflict, and a hook are the other necessary ingredients. The formula is simple, but applying it isn’t easy.

This is my blurb draft.

Shadow Family

The Seventh Mae Martin Psychic Mystery

Mae Martin goes into the holidays thinking the choice between two men presents the biggest challenge in her life. Reunite with Hubert, her steady, reliable ex-husband? Move forward with Jamie, her colorful, unpredictable not-quite-ex-boyfriend? Then, on Christmas Eve, two trespassers break into Hubert’s house to commit the stupidest crime in the history of Tylerton, North Carolina. On Christmas Day, a stranger shows up in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, looking for Mae’s stepdaughters, bringing the first news of their birth mother in seven years—news of her death.

Through psychic journeys, road trips, and risky decisions, Mae searches for the truth about the woman whose children she raised. The girls are finally ready to learn about her, but she was a mystery, not only to the husband and children she walked away from but also to friends in her new life, running from secrets that could come back to haunt them all—in the form of her brothers.

*****

My assessment of it? Meh.

What I like: I have material from chapter one, the instigating events. I indicate the main mystery plot and why it matters to Mae. I’m not sure about the strength of the hook, though. It feels weak. In needs more of a punch, more danger. And the middle is missing, the conflict. There’s so much—with Mae’ s ex, with her former in-laws, with her old high school friend, Deputy Yolanda Cherry, and Yolanda’s cousin Malba, herbalist, seer, and trickster. Not to mention Mae’s old enemy, Joe Broadus, the gossip king of Tylerton, who still stirs up trouble after he dies. Conflict in Mae’s mind and heart. And with those shadowy, questionable brothers and even the stupid criminals who get the ball rolling.

I can’t fit all that into a blurb, though. Really, it’s easier to get back to work on the book.

Bad Actors

February 22, 2018February 21, 2018 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 3 Comments

Mysteries, even the lighter ones, touch on the darker side of human nature. There is a wrong to be righted, not just a puzzle to solve. Since I don’t write about murder, I alternate between what I think of crimes of the spirit and actual crimes. The antagonist is usually based on someone who made me angry, created a sense of outrage, or gave me the creeps. In The Calling, Mae Martin encounters a professor who appears to be unethical in his relationships with female students and colleagues, and there’s a dark spiritual power around him as well. Shaman’s Blues starts with missing people, one who may be connected with a ghost, and one who claims to read auras and gives strange advice. She was inspired by someone I met many years ago in Santa Fe and never forgot—because people seemed to believe her, despite the dubious nature of her guidance. The exploitation of others’ spiritual longings and desire for healing is a theme I explore often. Living in New Mexico, where alternative medicine and spiritual seekers are a big part of the scene, I’ll never run out of material. There are many excellent practitioners here, but there are some questionable ones as well.

Because of the hot springs, the land where my home town, Truth or Consequences, is situated was a healing place for the Apaches long before Europeans arrived. Visitors come here now for retreats and to recover their health and peace of mind. I set my most recent book, Death Omen, here, for that reason. Some of it takes place in Santa Fe and on the road, but much of the third act takes place in one of Truth or Consequences’ hot springs spas. The antagonist claims to be a healer and a visionary who can see past incarnations. If she’s not what she says she is, her followers may be risking their lives.

*****

Shaman’s Blues, book two in the Mae Martin series, is currently on sale for 99 cents.

Location, Location: Using Real Places in Fiction

March 24, 2016 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 2 Comments

When I read books set in cities I know well, I enjoy recognizing familiar locations. It makes me feel like I’ve set foot inside the story. There are good reasons, however, to invent addresses, businesses, even entire towns. The usual rule seems to be that if you say something bad about a place or set a disturbing event in it, make it fictitious. In Sacred Clowns, Tony Hillerman gave New Mexico an entire new pueblo, the fictitious Tano Pueblo, because he had a murder take place during a ceremony. He used real reservations for his other books. Every city, town and reservation has its problems, so it’s not maligning the entire place to write about a crime there, but he felt that the particular one in Sacred Clowns would be objectionable. He included spiritual ceremonies in a couple of other books, but not as crime settings, and only shared what was open for non-tribal members to know. Based on Hillerman’s wisdom, I’m setting a number of scenes in my work in progress at a Mescalero Apache ceremony, but the misdeeds take place in private homes or in other towns.

In my first book, The Calling, I “invented” two entire towns, even though they are intimately based on real places, because my protagonist doesn’t like living there. (I had fun coming up with the name Cauwetska. I looked up words in the Meherrin language that would make good place names, since many Southern towns’ names come from local Indian words.) I actually loved the little town that I turned into Tylerton, but the way its fictitious residents treat Mae wouldn’t reflect well on it. I invented Coastal Virginia University, too, because I wouldn’t want to attribute a professor like Charlie Tann to any real college.

I’ve sometimes invented houses or businesses because I needed specific architecture to suit the plot rather than because I was avoiding insulting anyone, but in certain cases real locations are the best.

How could I imagine anything as remarkable as Sparky’s Barbecue and Espresso in Hatch, New Mexico? It has crazy local color and live music, and I needed a setting where my protagonist encounters two musicians in a key event that ties three plot lines together in Soul Loss. The eccentricity of Sparky’s décor struck me as a perfect background to frame one of the characters. The establishment’s owner, who knows me as a regular Sunday afternoon blues fan, was happy to let me set a scene there.

In my work in progress (Ghost Sickness, book five in the Mae Martin Series) I set several scenes in Truth or Consequences’ popular coffee shop, Passion Pie Café, with the owner’s enthusiastic permission to employ a character as a barista there as well as to have a little drama take place during the busy breakfast hours. She even gave me a great idea for that scene. I needed Passion Pie because of their wonderful local artist table tops. The mystery revolves around an artist with a secret, and my plot required that his work grace one of those tables. Rio Bravo Fine Art’s owner also let me set scenes there and allowed me to have a fictitious artist exhibit in his gallery. One of T or C’s best-known artists, Delmas Howe, gave me permission to use one of his paintings in the story. It’s great having my New Mexico town come to life in this book.

I had to give Santa Fe a new exotic bird store, though. The owner of Feathered Friends of Santa Fe helped me with my research, and we agreed that I should invent some fictitious competition for her shop, a new and less well-run parrot store, because, well, something happens there. I can’t say what it is. But it involves parrots, two pueblo potters, an Apache cowboy and a struggling photographer, and something illegal. Stay tuned. Ghost Sickness will be released this summer.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious to get started on a mystery series without murders, you can go to Northeastern North Carolina and Norfolk, Virginia in The Calling, Santa Fe and Truth or Consequences in Shaman’s Blues, on a road trip across the country in Snake Face, and back to Santa Fe and T or C (and Hatch) in Soul Loss. Just for fun: Mae and Hubert’s house in Tylerton, Bernadette’s tiny Norfolk apartment, and Mae’s pea-soup-green converted trailer in T or C are all places I’ve lived in.

The Calling is on sale for 99 cents through this weekend on all e-book retail sites.

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On the Trail of Inspiration

July 23, 2015 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 1 Comment

Some of my friends here think I’m crazy. Not because I’m any more peculiar than most people in Truth or Consequences—that would be more difficult than the odd thing they question, which is running at noon. In the desert. In July.

It’s much more pleasant than it sounds, though it would have been hell in June before the rains came. Now the temperatures are in the upper eighties or low nineties, with a few little storm systems flirting with the mountains, and no one around except the quails and jackrabbits and lizards. Snakes are hiding from the midday sun, and all the humans are out on the lake. That’s the way I like it. Not that I have anything against snakes, but I prefer not to meet them—or my own species—while I run. I want to be alone. It may look as if I’m only exercising, but actually, I’m writing.

With my train of thought taking a crooked path between lizard sightings and admiration of quail chicks, cacti and the rain-promising sky, I get creative. At the beginning of the run I pick a plot problem and turn my mind loose to play with it. Something about the free flow of running breaks mental dams. Key lines of dialog and important character goals arrive, ideas that refused to show up at my computer the night before. Snake Face has a lot of music in it, and all of those songs came to me on my favorite trail in Elephant Butte Lake State Park, complete with melodies no one will ever hear.

Over the past couple of years, someone has had the urge to make art along that trail. First, there was the miniature Stonehenge. Now there’s a spiral of pebbles presided over by a bulbous lava rock that looks like the Venus of Willendorf with a few too many endowments, and another that looks remarkably like a fluffed-up bird. The bird rock faces out, with its clutch of egg pebbles nearby. The fertility goddess squats on a large flat rock overlooking the spiral. All along the trail I keep noticing additional smaller arrangements, such as a square white rock placed in the center of the square red patch on a larger white rock. I find light green on dark green, bright yellow on dark brown and gold, all sorts of little rocks arranged on shape-and-color-compatible members of the community of stones marking the trail’s boundaries. These creations required time and thought and close observation.

As I wondered how long they took and try to picture the person behind them, a plot puzzle I was struggling with resolved itself. These little henges and heaps are going to find their way into the book in progress, perfectly suited to a certain character and his needs. Art meets art on the trail of inspiration.

Amber Foxx Interviews Amber Foxx

May 28, 2015 ~ Amber Foxx ~ 5 Comments

On my other blog, I enjoy doing interviews and coming up with questions for the authors whose books I’ve reviewed. So, when it came time to write this introduction, I knew what I had to do: talk to myself.

Q: How did you decide to become a writer?

A: It never occurred to me not to write. I grew up in a word-loving environment. My parents owned—and often played—audio recordings of Shakespeare’s plays, and they frequently brought my sister and me to live theater as well. As a child, I wrote stories influenced by Nancy Drew and poems inspired by Dr. Seuss, and had a short story published in a teen magazine when I was twelve. I think I got paid twenty-five dollars for it.

Q: Do you write full time or do you have a day job?

A: I have two day jobs. I’m a college professor and a yoga teacher. Those jobs overlap, since I’m in Health and Exercise Science, and I teach yoga as part of my course load as well as off campus.

Q: One of the characters in your first book, The Calling, is a professor from New Mexico who practices yoga. Is Bernadette Pena based on you?

A: No, though I do have some things in common with her. When I was working at a college in the South a few years ago, I taught some courses on alternative medicine and non-Western healing traditions. For many of my students, it was their first opportunity to explore scholarly research on things like shamanism, Ayurveda, herbal medicine, energy healing, and other practices. One of those courses on made its way into The Calling. Its potential to disrupt assumptions about the nature of reality fit perfectly into the plot.

Q: Is your protagonist, Mae Martin, based on you?

A: Mae is modeled after a good friend I met through my work as a fitness director and yoga teacher in northeastern North Carolina. Aspects of The Calling were inspired by some of her life experiences. I admired her combination of practicality and spirituality, and her intense determination to be herself in a situation where few people supported her.

Q: Did you set out to write genre-blending mysteries? You’ve had favorable reviews in which reviewers seem to have a hard time finding the right genre label for your work.

A: When I decided to write mysteries without murder, I wasn’t thinking about stretching the genre so much as being true to the stories I wanted to tell. I’d tried writing a mystery with a dead body in it but half-way through, I realized I couldn’t keep putting Mae in that situation. It didn’t feel right for the character or for me. There are ways people hurt each other, short of killing, that lead to layers of secrets in families and friendships. Phenomena such as psychic ability fill life with mystery as well. As long as there’s something that the protagonist doesn’t understand and neither does the reader—and solving for that X in the equation is central to the plot—then the story is a mystery.

Q: You mentioned psychic ability as if it were a real thing. Do you think it is?

A: Yes. I could take up pages with my personal experiences, and at every college where I’ve taught, students have confided some remarkable psychic events. And then, I’ve lived in Santa Fe and in Truth or Consequences. In both places, not only are art, music, dancing, and eccentricity part of everyday life, so are psychics and alternative healers.

Q: Is that why you moved the series from the South to the Southwest?

A: That’s one reason. In the new location, Mae “fits in” better because she doesn’t have to try to fit in anymore. It’s hard to feel like a nonconformist in New Mexico. There’s not much to conform to. The other reason is to move the plots in new directions. Living in a place where her gift is more readily accepted, Mae encounters new kinds of mysteries, as people ask her for answers only a seer could find. The setting also lets me bring in some of the stranger aspects of “the woo-woo,” with a questionable health-nut psychic in Shaman’s Blues and everyone from a celebrity modern shaman to an artist who claims she channels angels to a medium who speaks with dead in the upcoming June 15^th release, Soul Loss.

Q: Thanks. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: Just this:

http://amberfoxxmysteries.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amber-Foxx/354071328062619

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7554709.Amber_Foxx

http://amberf.booklikes.com/

https://twitter.com/AmberFoxx4