Get On With It

~ Janet Dawson ~ 5 Comments

My work-in-progress is a historical novel. It’s a first draft and I’m working on it in fits and starts, given the interruptions that life throws at me.

Lately I’ve been thinking about transitions. Now, the dictionary describes a transition as the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another. That could mean transitioning from one place to another. Or in the case of a character, looking at how that person is changing internally or emotionally.

Both these definitions are appropriate in terms of the novel. My protagonist does have some internal and emotional changes in store. But right now, she’s changing from one location to another. So, I need to move her, and two other characters across the landscape from point A to point B—and not take forever doing it.

The book takes place in the late 1870s. My protagonist, Catriona, is the daughter of an officer in the frontier army. In the early chapters of the book, she leaves Fort Garland, Colorado, heading to New Mexico to join her father at Fort Stanton, his new post. With her are two companions, a young woman named Martha and a man named Eusebio. I’ve been writing scenes describing these three people on the road to Santa Fe, where they will make a stop before heading farther south again and arriving at their destination.

Agonizing over minutiae is part of my writing process. On the other hand, describing the journey is useful information to help me visualize what I’m writing about and want to convey to readers.

So lately, I’ve spent lots of time thinking about the route, which doesn’t always follow the asphalt roads of the present day. These people are traveling on dirt roads and trails, which sometimes cross streams by going through the water rather than clip-clopping over a convenient bridge. I’m visualizing the terrain, which involves mountains, rivers and high plains. And pondering how many miles a horse-drawn wagon can cover in a day, given the terrain and the condition of those roads.

After mulling it over, chewing on it, and examining it every which way, I finally decided to get on with it. Readers don’t need to follow along on every dusty mile of that journey, taking in the sights during the day, cooking over a campfire, and sleeping under the stars at night. One day and one night, that’s really all that’s needed to give the appropriate information.

Besides, I want my characters to get to their destination so I can move along with the plot.

Jump ahead, already.

I’ve done this with other books, of course. When I was writing Witness to Evil, a Jeri Howard novel, I had Jeri down in Bakersfield. She was stumped and so was I. What happens next? I jumped ahead and put Jeri on the freeway, heading to Los Angeles. Next think I knew, after finding clues and interviewing people in LA, she was on the road again, this time to San Luis Obispo and then Fresno, before returning to Bakersfield with lots of fresh clues. And me, lots of new chapters.

I also write the Jill McLeod series, featuring my sleuthing Zephyrette back in the early 1950s. Much of the action in those books takes place aboard the train known as the California Zephyr. And I must work within the framework of the train schedule. When writing the first book, Death Rides the Zephyr, I had timetables all around me. Not just the timetable for the train passengers, but the timetable that showed the work rotation of the crew, which was different. Again, it wasn’t necessary to write about every mile of that train journey. It was enough to give readers a glimpse of the changing scenery and the feel of the train rocking along the rails. After a long day seeing to the passengers’ needs, Jill is entitled to go to bed in her Zephyrette’s compartment and wake up the next morning, miles down the track and ready for a plate of railroad French toast in the dining car.

Guest Blogger ~ Kate Michaelson

~ patyjag ~ 5 Comments

Why Mysteries?

When I set out to write my first novel, I knew without question that I would write a mystery. As a teen, I remember coming home from the library with stacks of Agatha Christie books and tearing through them within a week. Part of me loved escaping to the far-flung settings of the Golden Age mysteries, but I also enjoyed the way the investigation brought me into the story—not only as an observer, but as an active participant. I got to look over the shoulder of Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple as they interrogated witnesses and checked alibis. 

But even more than the cognitive challenge of who did it, I’ve always been drawn to the psychology of why they did it. Like the detectives, I searched for motives. I wanted to understand why people would commit such seemingly illogical acts. What series of events brought them to that point? As an adult, it’s a question I still find myself asking on a daily basis. 

As much as I tell myself not to, I can’t help but watch or read about the twisted crime stories that make the news. I promise I’m a happy, fairly positive person, so what draws me to this darker side of life? I think it’s the need to understand the ugly realities most of us would like to keep at bay. Judging by the popularity of mysteries, suspense, true crime, and crime dramas, I’m not alone. Michael Connelly once advised authors to “write about what you never want to know.” Whether we’re reading or writing it, crime fiction gives us the opportunity to have the best of both worlds. We delve into aside of the human experience that we want to understand but would prefer to view from a healthy distance. It’s like seeing a shark—exhilarating, as long as we’re watching safely from the other side of some nice, thick aquarium glass.

Along with giving us a day pass to the seedier side of life, mysteries present character studies in disguise. Beneath the layers of intrigue and suspense lie complex characters, driven by greed, revenge, love, or twisted rationales. And, often, the detectives are nearly as troubled by the criminals. Whether it’s a hopeless, hard-drinking private investigator or the cop haunted by a cold case, the job takes its toll. Unlike the reader who can put the book down, detectives must immerse themselves in the morass of a psychopath’s logic and, thus, take the brunt of the damage. Through the detective, we make controlled contact with the taboo and explore the sides of people’s personalities they’ve spent their lives concealing.

My own mystery, Hidden Rooms, contends with the inaccessible sides of people’s personas and the secrets they keep hidden even from close family and friends. Although my book is set in a small town where everyone knows their neighbors, the drama centers on the characters discovering how little they actually know about one another. My protagonist, Riley, has spent her life quite happily accepting the shiny surfaces her friends and family present. It’s only when a disaster tears their lives apart, that she’s forced to question what they’ve kept hidden beneath their idyllic exteriors. 

My mystery—and the genre as a whole—is about trying to understand the people around us, and that’s why I love them. Crime fiction captures the thrill of the unknown and reveals it to us page by page.

Hidden Rooms

Long-distance runner, Riley Svenson, has been fighting various bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.

As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.

Buy Links

Amazon, Gathering Volumes, Bookshop.org, or CamCat Books

Kate Michaelson’s debut novel, Hidden Rooms, won the 2022 Hugh Holton Award for best unpublished mystery by a Midwest writer and was released in April of 2024. As a curriculum developer and technical writer, she has created educational content on everything from media literacy to cybersecurity awareness. She is active in several writing groups and participates in causes that support those with disabilities and chronic illness. In her free time, she loves hiking, traveling, napping and anything else that takes her away from her laptop. She grew up in Greenwich, Ohio and now lives in Toledo, Ohio with her husband and pets.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kate.michaelson/

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

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/40269182.Kate_Michaelson

Website: http://www.katemichaelson.com

Adapting Agatha and Other Greats by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 6 Comments

Several days after returning from the Left Coast Crime Conference, I came down with one of those upper respiratory bugs that are sent to try us. After making sure it wasn’t Covid or RSV, I accepted and dealt with it. Medicated up the wazoo, bored out of my mind, and feeling sorry for myself, I turned to what I always have in times of trouble – murder and mayhem.

One to never let me down in that department is Agatha Christie. I think I’ve read everything she’s written and loved them all. I even liked The Big Four, considered one of her worst. Frankly, I’m convinced that even her worst novel is better than a lot of other writers’ best, but maybe I am prejudiced.  Whatever, it was Agatha Christie Chicken Soup time.

Assessing the situation, I realized the Kindle was being charged and any reading materials in the bedroom were aaaall the way across the room on bookshelves. Doped up and lazy, I reached for the remote. I managed to stream in a collection of several versions of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple done throughout the years. I glommed onto Joan Hickson, who I feel is the quintessential Miss Marple, sharp but seemingly befuddled, all-knowing but not pushy about it. And here she was, in one of my favorite Christie stories, Nemesis. I blew my nose, settled in, and went back to jolly old England during the fifties aboard a week-long motorcoach of historic homes and gardens.

Before long, everyone aboard the bus winds up to be a suspect, of course, having either won the tour or offered hard cash to join. Most damning of all, each was a player in a past … secret. But nothing throws Miss Marple for long. She’s there, complete with godson companion, in accordance to the wishes of a recently deceased friend and millionaire, to right some horrible wrong from the past, no matter what the consequences. Thus, the name Nemesis. Guided by a biblical saying “Let Judgement run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream,” the story moves forward and pretty much follows the original, Christie plotline which is chilling, fiendish, unique, and satisfying.

I got greedy. Right next to this episode was yet another Jane Marple thespian, Geraldine McEwen, appearing in the very same mystery. I thought, well, why not? The comparison of both might be fun, and Lord knows I’m not very busy. So, hubby brought me a cup of herbal tea, a scone, and I settled in again. Okay, not a scone. It was actually a chocolate croissant but munching on a chocolate croissant doesn’t sound quite right for the occasion.

Ms. McEwen presents an intelligent, twinkling Marple, as if she knows whatever she is saying is clever and important and you’ll catch on in your own good time. I found her Marple charming. I liked her. The storyline, not so much. In fact, I was completely at a loss as to what was going on. It still took place on a bus tour of historic homes and gardens, a few years after WWII, and there were a host of odd characters showing up with familiar character names, but they were nothing like the original ones. In short, there was no similarity on any level to the book or even the 1989 Joan Hickson version.

This version involved missing airmen, whackadoodle nuns, scarecrows, and a bust of Shakespeare used for nobody’s good at all. Even the villain was different and once revealed, was an unsatisfying one, at best. I couldn’t blame the budget. It looked to me as if the same amount of money and attention to detail went into making the 2007 version as it had the one done twenty-years earlier. But this 2007 Nemesis made no sense. I became cynical. Some hotshot somebody or other, under the guise of transporting the work from one medium to another, thought they could do a better job of Agatha Christie’s story than Agatha Christie. As Puck says, “What fools these mortals be.”

Not-so-cleverly segueing over to Shakespeare, here is someone else whose stories are often played with as fast and as loosely as Agatha’s. They have cut, added, rewritten, edited, obliterated, updated, melted down, puffed up, refined, and poured over brine everything he has written. It is rare to see his work performed in any of its original form, especially the same historical period. Too old hat. Others need to put their stamp on it. So if you’re off to see the latest version of Macbeth, it might have a Polish circus or a Macon, Georgia, WWII prisoner of war camp as a backdrop.

Back to Agatha. I remember one horrible adaptation of And Then There Were None in 1989. They called the movie Ten Little Indians. This particular novel has had many titles throughout the years. Namely, different forms of Ten Little Somethings Or Other. Not much worked until they came up with And Then There Were None, which might seem to give the plot away but apparently doesn’t. And it’s PC.

Regarding the plot, the scriptwriters changed the location from an island along the Devon Coast and plopped it amid an African safari at the bottom of a ravine, their idea of remoteness. Here, the roar of a surrounding pride of lions can often be heard but are never seen. I suspect the big cats were too embarrassed to be caught on-camera. Even Donald Pleasance and Brenda Vaccaro could not save one single moment of this dreadful interpretation. And yet I watched every frame, hoping against hope it might save itself. After all, it was Agatha’s work. Maybe somebody in charge got a clue and reverted back to what worked in the first place. Maybe somebody saw the rushes. Maybe the Serengeti rose en masse and took back its own.

Nope.

One reason for the wild takeover of someone else’s work could stem from filmland’s past history. From 1930 until 1968 every single movie, including adaptions, had to follow the guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also called the Hays Code. The Code was a strict master and you’d better believe it. It didn’t mess around, it didn’t compromise. If the code found one scene didn’t meet those standards, the entire movie could be scrapped. Goodbye production, cast, and crew. Hello breadline. Below is a link to what a studio had to deal with: https://cinecouple.hypotheses.org/files/2017/07/Code_Hays.pdf. That’s still no excuse for some of the stunts adapters pulled throughout the years, even though sometimes rewriting had to be done. Unfortunately, it did give those with power, money, and ego a chance to play around with a genius story until it resembled the original work in title only.

Here’s an interesting fact, though, in the it-pays-to-be-good category. No matter what a screenwriter, actor, producer, or director does – and they can make all the idiotic versions they want – the reality is nothing can diminish the author’s original WRITTEN words. Anyone who wants to know the talent and timelessness of the Bard or the Queen of Mystery and others like them, have but to sit down and read their books. The power of the word. It never goes away.

Guest Blogger ~ Terri Maue

~ patyjag ~ 4 Comments

Knife Edge is a traditional murder mystery. The entire story is told from the point of view of the amateur sleuth protagonist, Zee Morani. I knew very little about Zee when I wrote the first draft of Knife Edge about ten years ago. Basically, I knew I wanted her to be a writer, but she needed to have more freedom than a reporter with regular hours or an assigned beat. And because I also wanted her to comment current events, I ruled out making her a book author. So, Zee became a successful columnist.

As I worked my way through early drafts, I learned a lot about Zee. In her job, she was free to pursue whatever interested her, as long as she could turn it into a column on deadline. I decided Zee should use satire in her column, which allowed me to indulge my own penchant for pointing out social, cultural, and bureaucratic idiocy, incompetency, and callousness.

It was fun to sprinkle column topics throughout the story. They provided a bit of comic relief from the escalating tension of the mystery, and I enjoyed researching topics that piqued my interest or aroused my ire. Showing Zee at work also helped me clarify how she could use her particular skills to solve the murder: her skepticism, her attention to detail, and her ability to put information together in different ways—what she called seeing the world sideways.

Also, giving Zee a human-interest focus for her column meant she would not be at home in the world of crime and criminals. I certainly was not. Drawing on my own naivete (as in what might I do next?), I put her into dangerous, and sometimes humorous, situations.

I entered a new stage of relationship with Zee after Knife Edge was accepted by Camel Press. One of the early tasks my editor gave me was to write a history of Zee’s parents. Using Zee’s age at the time of the story, I backtracked to discover that her parents came of age in the 1960s.

That decade exerted a great influence on my own maturation. Coupled with research into that tumultuous time, my experience helped shape Zee’s moral compass. She is driven by a deep need to see justice done. This drive impels her to use her column to defend the ordinary human being who struggles against the mindless workings of a machine-like organization. It also gets her involved in the murder.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in Zee’s character tuned out to be the extent to which her persona was influenced by my two previous careers. I didn’t realize this until after the book was completed.

I spent twelve years in public relations before I quit, unable to continue to spin facts to create a misleading picture. I actually looked in the mirror one day and realized that if I didn’t leave, I would get to the point where I no longer recognized the truth. Though I did not see it at the time, I made Zee a satirist specifically so she could point out the ways in which people use language to distort and misdirect, to adhere to the letter of the law while violating the spirit.

My PR experience also provided the seed for Zee’s dream to write what she considers serious journalism, which she viewed as using her talent for greater good. After my PR disillusionment, I switched careers and became a university professor. I spent 18 years teaching students how to use language ethically and responsibly and showing them how unscrupulous writers and speakers deceive their audiences.

Writers are always encouraged to write what they know. My experience with Zee would seem to indicate that I’m not always aware of what I know, at least not consciously. But then, discovering what lies beneath the surface is a big part of the fun of writing—and life—for me.

KNIFE EDGE

An unwitting columnist. A shocking murder. A devious killer.

Is Zee Morani tracking clues or playing a role orchestrated by a murderer?

When Zee Morani discovers the bloodied corpse of a disgraced medical researcher, the accused killer begs her for help. But Zee is not a cop. She’s not even a PI. She’s a regionally syndicated satirical columnist who dreams of breaking into serious journalism.

Zee believes the suspect is guilty. After all, he staggered into her as he fled the scene of the crime. But she’s made a career of challenging bureaucracy. The drive to defend the underdog, or at least give him a fair chance, pulses in her veins. Unfortunately, everything she learns only strengthens the police case.

Even as the facts pile up against him, Zee’s instincts argue for his innocence. Her friend Fontina’s finely tuned intuition concurs. But while Fontina supports Zee’s investigation, Rico, a seasoned crime reporter, balks at her interference in the case. Despite their recent breakup, he wants to protect Zee from the world of violence he knows all too well. He also wants to win back her heart. Tempting as that is, Zee resists him, her heart shackled by the pain of past betrayals. They agree to work together as professional colleagues and friends, but it’s an uneasy alliance. 

As Zee digs deeper into the researcher’s murder, her involvement makes her a target. Her inexperience tempts her to back away from investigating, but her commitment to truth won’t let her quit. When Rico suffers a vicious attack, her fury burns the last vestiges of hesitation. Gritting her teeth, she tackles a nasty thug, a suspicious police lieutenant, and in the end, the barrel of a gun—all to unmask a stone-hearted killer. 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Knife-Edge-Terri-Maue/dp/1684922003

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/knife-edge-terri-maue/1143420718?ean=9781684922000

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=Terri+Maue

Target: https://www.target.com/p/knife-edge-by-terri-maue-paperback/-/A-89152528#lnk=sametab

Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Knife-Edge-Paperback-9781684922000/2756992774?from=/search

Terri Maue is a retired professor emeritus from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After she retired, she decided to pursue a life-long dream to write a mystery novel. The result is Knife Edge: A Zee & Rico Mystery. In addition to offering a challenging puzzle, it reflects several of Terri’s interests:

  • martial arts—she holds a first-degree black belt in TaeKwon Do;
  • spirituality—she has studied many forms of religion, including Christianity, Wicca, Buddhism, and Native American and African practices;
  • the intuitive arts—she reads Tarot cards and has taught dream interpretation.

Terri is a member of Henderson Writers Group, Sin City Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. She is working on the second book in the Zee & Rico series. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with Eddie, her personal photographer and husband of 55 years.

You can visit Terri’s website at https://www.terrimaue.com, find her on Facebook at Terri Maue Author, find her on Instagram @terrimaueauthor, and write to her at terri@terrimaue.com

The Blank Page

~ susanoleksiw ~ 5 Comments

Like many writers before me, I get a deadline for an assignment and spend the days, weeks, or even months leading up to it thinking about what I’ll write. If I pick something lighthearted, I have to consider just how far to go in the humor direction. If the topic is serious, I worry I’ll sound earnest (Oh, the shame!). Either way, I let my mind wander, make a few notes as I go along (and try to keep them on the same pad of paper), and sit down to write with ample time to revise and edit. And then on the day when I’m supposed to post, I plan to finish the essay with a light and quick rewrite, just to keep it fresh. I open a new page, and there it is. The blank page. I’m catatonic.

What is it about the blank page that makes my brain go blank as well? I look at that white sheet which now has the vastness and strangeness of the Sahara covered with a blanket of snow, and I haven’t a thought in my head. Not even an idea that I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper on a computer screen. Nothing. 

I had so much to write about this morning at 5:30 a.m. I woke up to the morning sun lightening the New England sky, reminding me that today was supposed to be a nice day, upper 50s along the coast, possibly even hitting 60 degrees. A good day to be outside tackling the weeds and cleaning things up for spring planting. I had the luxury of just lying there thinking about all that I could do today after I posted my blog for the fourth Saturday, my regular day for Ladies of Mystery.  But by the time I got to my desk and laptop, something unbeknownst to me was draining my brain of every idea I’ve ever had.

I’ve thought about ways to cheat the blank page of its power to cripple me. It’s possible that pulling up a page from an earlier post will stimulate my tired synapses to get popping, but then I have to make a decision and choose a page. Nope. Still crippled. I could pull up a page from the novel I’m working on (and have been since last summer—what’s with that?) but then I’m liable to fall right into my usual funk of trying to figure out what’s wrong that scene or the other one in the same chapter. Not good for morale, which I need right now.

If you, reading this, are also a writer, you’ve probably already shut your eyes hard against a painful memory of a blank page, the one that just wouldn’t let you get started on what you hoped would be your greatest ever WIP. This experience drives me to question, what is the purpose of the blank page? And I’ve decided it’s the Universe’s way to test us, to make sure we know what we’re doing. If I pulled up a new page and started tapping out advice for ingrown toenails, the Universe would be telling me I’m in the wrong business—I’m not a writer; I’m a frustrated podiatrist. Perhaps I decide to explore the drawing or designing function on my computer. Okay. Problem. No words. 

The blank page is the test for me every time. I don’t know what I’m going to write. Even if I think I do, I don’t know what’s going to come out. No matter how much I plan, no matter how much energy I waste on sample paragraphs or opening lines, the minute I look at that blank page, I go blank, white, empty, nothing. And then something comes up, something not planned, not expected, not even understood sometimes. There it is, and a wonder among wonders, For me writing is like breathing. I don’t really know how it works, but I know that it does and that’s enough for me. I thank the Gods of Desperation and go on typing.

Facing the blank page forces me back on myself every time—challenging me to trust that whatever shows up, making my fingers wiggle and stretch, spreading those black squiggly things across the white space, has to be what matters to me at that moment. On this I have no questions, which is good because I also have no answers. I take it all on faith.

I write because I have to, and I accept what comes also because I have to. It’s me.