August Is and Always Has Been My Favorite Month

Even more so this year, as it started with our family reunion, a most special reunion. My grandson whom I hadn't seen since he was three and now 42, came all the way to join us from Nebraska and brought his wife Jeff is the child of our eldest son who died from cancer. And no, he never got to see his son again. You can't imagine how wonderful it was to hug Jeff, and hear all about him. Emotions ran high all weekend. We also had a lot of fun. All my daughters were there with some of their family members, plus cousins galore.

This is also my birthday month, and at the reunion my eldest daughter did a This is Your Life presentation, with comments from people from my past, like the superintendent of schools (I was PTA president four times and knew him as a friend), several of my Camp Fire Girls,and  three of my cousins. That was fun.

My daughter celebrated her birthday and she and her daughter both celebrate anniversaries, we have other family birthdays this month too.

But enough about family, onto writing business. Usually I have a new Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery coming out this month, but I haven't quite finished writing it. Had too many re-edits to do of both the earlier books in that series and the ones in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series.

Because I don't have any new books at the moment, I haven't done much promotion. However, I still have plenty of copies of my older books and have presentations and other venues lined up in the coming months to hopefully sell some.

I went to Nightwriters in San Luis Obispo to tell about where I got the ideas for my books.This is always fun, and a great group of people.

Next I went to Visalia to the Tulare/Kings Writers group to talk about writing description of  people, places and things. This is a small group and so enjoyable as we can easily share back and forth.

I'm always ready and willing to give talks about different aspects of writing, and I love going to book and craft fairs.

Hopefully, in the next month or so, I can finish my Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery. I think you'll like this one, it's set in Tehachapi where all the wind machines are, and of course Tempe will be dealing with ghosts and spirits as well as a murder.

Marilyn

How to Bake a Murder Was a Pleasure to Read

Now that I'm part of the older generation, I find it difficult to discover books containing heroines with whom I can relate. Many books seem to be about younger people. 

However,  I did stumble upon a great cozy mystery called How to Bake a Murder by K.J. Emrick. In it, the older heroine is actually depicted as savvy and kindhearted, not a feeble woman who does dumb things. 

If you'd like to read my review, you can find it at this link.

This ebook is available on Amazon and worth checking out.

Morgan Mandel

http://www.morganmandel.com

What About Subplots?

by Linda Thorne

I’m on two panels this year at Killer Nashville’s 13th Annual International Writers’ Conference that runs from August 23rd to August 26th. My first panel is this Friday on Writing Effective Subplots. My second is this coming Sunday on The Differences in Men and Women Sleuths. In preparation for the first panel on subplots, I thought I’d use the subject for this August Make Mine Mystery post.

I love subplots in books for a million reasons. Subplots have their own story arc but take up less of everything: action, impact, significant events. Many intertwine with the main plot, but they don’t have to. They can be a sub-story of interest with a beginning, middle, and end and they can be short.

In my books (one published and one completed but in editing stage), I use a main subplot that knits in and out of my main story line. In my first book, Just Another Termination, the subplot is an unsolved double homicide 25 years earlier. In my second book, A Promotion to Die For, yet to be published, I use an unusual and dangerous situation my lead character experienced 30 years earlier. In both books, the subplot runs parallel with the main plot and comes together at the end with a bang.

Do any of you, readers and/or writers, want to add information about subplots? I love the subject and I’m definitely interested.

http://www.lindathorne.com/

Just Another Termination on Amazon

An Embarrassment of Riches

by Janis Patterson

I've done it again. I didn't mean to, but I've done it again.

Every time I get buried by unfinished books - and that means more than the four or so I am always writing on at once - I swear I will not plot/plan another one until I've finished up everything I'm already working on.

I really mean it, but I just can't help myself. Book ideas keep hurling themselves at me with the density and rapidity of a snowstorm, and they're too good just to ignore.

For example - when The Husband and I went to Illinois for his high school reunion earlier this summer I was trying not to think of anything writerly, wanting just to have a good time seeing his old hometown and the kids he grew up with. No such luck. As we are both rabid historians, we spent a grey and lovely morning in the rain exploring an historic cemetery there. It was deliciously spooky, with clouds so low you could almost grab a handful if you reached up over your head, and lots of examples of over-the-top Victorian mourning cemetery art, and a dense, dark forest choked with sinister-looking underbrush hovering at the edge.

One thing that I find tragic and infuriating is that so many - especially of the older stones - have been vandalized. Pushed over, scored to illegibility, parts broken off - what kind of person would damage the stones of the long-dead? I do hope there is a special part of Hell for these savages, and that they get there soon! I mean, what kind of mentality would get pleasure from breaking the head off a baby lamb on the gravestone of a two year old child who died over a hundred and thirty years ago? They're sick - just sick!

While we were walking through the oldest part of the cemetery, looking for some of his relatives and Civil War casualties who were buried there, within twenty minutes I had a complete book - the second in my Rachel Petrie, Contract Archaeologist series - completely plotted. (Rachel's first book is A KILLING AT TARA TWO, and will be out this fall.) The main characters had walked in, introduced themselves and told me their function in the story. Later that afternoon, I sat down at my laptop and made a new file with a couple of pages of notes and a gaggle of photographs so everything will be fresh when I finally am able to write it. The title is A KILLING AMONGST THE DEAD.

Okay - that makes five books in my to-be-done queue. That's enough, I thought. I'll quit plotting for a while.

Yeah. Sure. Right now I'm almost finished with a Mindy McMann book called A WELL-MANNERED MURDER. She's a researcher for a non-fiction writer who always manages to get herself into trouble. I guess Mindy was jealous that Rachel was getting a new book, because while The Husband and I were in historic Jefferson Texas at a (fantastic!) symposium on the War Between the States a new Mindy book popped into my head, complete with action, setting and characters. It's about revisionist history, radicals and long-held grudges. While The Husband napped after the seminar, I pulled out my laptop and made another file, complete with storyline, character sketches and photographs. This one isn't titled yet, but it will come to me.

Note - I never go anywhere without my laptop. Do you? Sometimes on short trips I never take it out of its case, but I have to have it near me. The Husband calls it my security blanket, and I guess he's right, though so far I have resisted taking it along to the grocery store and my nail salon.

So - now you see why I sometimes get so steamed when people ask in all seriousness how I get my ideas, as if it's some special rare talent that must be learned. I would really like a place where for a week or two at least I DIDN'T get viable ideas. I can't tell you how many 'ideas' both complete and fragmentary I have tucked away on my computer, most of them good enough to be turned into or at least used in books. Don't these people think? Don't they have some sort of rudimentary imagination? How can they NOT get ideas from just about anything? I don't understand. I just don't understand.

It Happens Every Time!

At least this is what happens to me.

Everytime I go out of town I get important emails. Emails that I need to respond to, but often there are those that I have information I either need to send or check but am unable to because I only have my phone and my iPad with me.

This past few days were no exception.

We went to our family reunion--was exceptionally wonderful, emotional, and fun! A grandson who lives in Nebraska and I haven't seen since he was 3, recently made contact, and he and his wife came to the runion. But that's a whole other story.

While we were at the reunion I heard from someone I'd done a job for and sent it as an attachment to her email. She didn't receive it.

The publisher of my Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery series found a problem in the latest offering, and of course I don't have that manuscript on my iPad and couldn't even try to find what he had discovered, much less fix it.

The publisher of my Deputy Tempe Crabtree series, didn't receive a manuscript of one of the early books that I'd re-edited. I felt sure I had done it and sent it, but again, no way of checking.

Fortunately, I was able to put that all out of my mind and enjoy the time with family.

First thing when I got home, I started working on all these problems.

Anyone else have that happen?

Marilyn

First meeting since grandson was 3,  a true family reunion!

Make Mine Mystery

August  5, 2018

Linda Kane

Best-seller lists are fantastic, but I think there are so many different definitions of what makes a successful novel, and I believe that most of them have one common thread.

In publishing, people often talk about the importance of a hook; a fantastic hook can make a book a best-seller. But I think a successful book has more than just a fabulous hook. A hook is what gets a reader to pick up a book and turn the pages, but the heart is what makes a reader feel, and heart is also what I believe makes a book successful.

I actually think most books have a heart—a sole idea that guides the story and feeds blood into its veins. However, some books have more powerful heartbeats than others. Some heartbeats are so weak you don’t notice them, while other heartbeats are so bold you don’t stop feeling them even after you’ve finished reading.

The heart is more difficult to define than hook. But I think one way of finding your novel’s heart is by asking: What is the question this story is asking? 

This question and the depths you go to answer it will define your novel’s heartbeat.

What qualities are readers longing for?

I think readers want to feel when they read. Readers may initially pick up a book because it’s in a genre they enjoy, it has a pretty cover, or they’ve seen it all over Instagram. But I don’t think a reader is really going to love a book unless it makes them feel something—wonder, suspense, love, fear, longing, wanting, wishing, anger, empathy, amazement, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise. I don’t know if the feelings matter so long as they are there in the book that you wrote and they are now sharing with you.