Two Publishers, Two Series

Today my guest, Judy Penz Sheluk, talks about her experience publishing her first two mysteries.

When I signed the contract with Imajin Books for SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC, the first book in my new Marketville Mystery series, several people asked me the same questions: Why didn’t I go with Barking Rain Press, the publisher of my first novel, THE HANGED MAN’S NOOSE: A Glass Dolphin Mystery, would there be a sequel, and if so, who would publish it?

The answer is that in the world of publishing, anything can happen, but Sheri Gormley, the acquiring editor/publisher at Barking Rain Press, has expressed interest in publishing the sequel, as well as any other books in the Glass Dolphin Mystery series, and I couldn't be happier. BRP is a terrific small press based out of the Portland/Vancouver, Washington area, with author-friendly contract terms. Sheri and her team are also extremely collaborative, which makes them a pleasure to work with. I
anticipate publication in late 2017 or early-mid 2018.

As for part one of the question, recently I've had several author friends impacted by recent changes with their respective publishers. Knowing that, it seemed only prudent not to put all my books in one publisher’s basket.

Becoming an Imajineer:

In 2014, while I was looking for a home for NOOSE, I decided to start another book. After all, it’s easy to get out of the writing habit, and darned hard to get back into it. But try as I might, I just couldn’t bring myself to write a second book in a series I hadn’t sold. I decided to try something completely different: a first person, single POV mystery without a true “sidekick.” (NOOSE is third person, multiple POVs, and there is a definite sidekick).

Coming up with the concept:
The idea for Skeletons came to me while I was waiting in the reception area of my lawyer’s office. I was there with my husband, Mike, to change our very outdated wills, and my lawyer had been delayed in court. While Mike read the newspaper, I started scribbling notes for the book that would become SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC. The opening scenes are actually culled from that experience.

Once I’d finished SKELETONS, I started looking for a publisher. It’s important to me, as a writer and a reader, to have read and liked at least some of their books (since no one can read an entire catalogue of books…) I had read, and thoroughly enjoyed, books by several Imajin Books authors, including Melodie Campbell, Rosemary McCracken, and Kristina Stanley. I decided to submit to Imajin when they opened for submissions on March 15, 2016. It meant waiting a couple of months for that window to open, but I was willing to wait for what I believed would be the right publisher.
I sent in my manuscript on March 15th (no flies on this writer!) and did a very happy dance (the champagne helped) when Cheryl Tardif, the acquisitions editor at Imajin, emailed me with a contract just a few days later. With an August 2016 publication date, it’s been a whirlwind ever since. First, I had to create a PDF ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) and ask authors I’ve read and respected for cover blurbs if they read and enjoyed the book (thank you Jeff Buick, Ellen Byron, Annette Dashovy,

Catriona McPherson and Diane Vallere for saying yes!) to the three rounds of editing before going to the proofreader, to working with Ryan Thomas Doan, an incredible cover artist, to setting up blog hop opportunities like this one.
Like Barking Rain Press, Imajin is also interested in book #2 in the Marketville mystery series. It looks like I’m going to be busy!
Two series, two publishers. The dream continues…

Book blurb for SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC:
What goes on behind closed doors doesn’t always stay there…

Calamity (Callie) Barnstable isn’t surprised to learn she’s the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, though she is shocked to discover she has inherited a house in the town of Marketville—a house she didn’t know existed. However, there are conditions attached to Callie’s inheritance: she must move to Marketville, live in the house, and solve her mother’s murder.
Callie’s not keen on dredging up a thirty-year-old mystery, but if she doesn’t do it, there’s a scheming psychic named Misty Rivers who is more than happy to expose the Barnstable family secrets. Determined to thwart Misty and fulfill her father’s wishes, Callie accepts the challenge. But is she ready to face the skeletons hidden in the attic?

About the author:
Judy Penz Sheluk’s debut mystery novel, The Hanged Man’s Noose, was published in July 2015. Skeletons in the Attic, the first book in her Marketville Mystery Series, was published August 2016. Sequels are planned for both series in 2017.

Judy’s short crime fiction appears in World Enough and Crime, The Whole She-Bang 2, Flash and Bang and Live Free or Tri.
Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada, International Thriller Writers and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.
Find Judy on her website/blog at www.judypenzsheluk.com, where she interviews other authors and blogs about the writing life.

Find Skeletons in the Attic here: http://www.imajinbooks.com/skeletons-in-the-attic

SKELETONS IN THE ATTIC is now available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle for the special introductory price of .99 (reg. $4.99). Find it here :http://getbook.at/SkeletonsintheAttic

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And Real Life Returns

by Janis Patterson

If you’re like me, this past month or two has been a fairly dizzying round of parties and dinner parties and cooking and quick meals snatched while shopping and wrapping. Calories have been whizzing around (and sticking more than we would like, darn it) like mosquitoes on a hot, humid day.

Well, it’s all over, and I say thank goodness! Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are over, the parties are finished and we are stuffed to surfeit. All that lies ahead of us in the near future is Valentine’s Day, which is usually awash with chocolate and, if you’re lucky, a nice dinner out.

Real life is back. Now we clean up the drifts of tissue paper and wrapping paper scraps, put away the holiday china for another year, take down the tree and pack away the ornaments. If you had a real tree, you have the joy of vacuuming up the dried needles that seem to be able to hide in your carpet until July.

Oh, and work. I’ll admit my work tends to suffer during this intense holiday season. It’s hard to sit at the computer making up tales and trying to get all my clues in line when a big chunk of my mind is trying to remember how far along I am on gift buying and worrying if we’ve forgotten someone and trying to decide on what dish to take to the family potluck on Christmas Day and… well, you know. So I pretty much quit writing. It is, I delude myself, better not to spend the time screwing up my story with a bunch of stuff that will probably have to be pulled out later in favor of something more rational.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

But now the holiday season is over. New Year’s is never a big deal in our house. We don’t like to go out and celebrate on that night – too many irresponsible revelers out after drinking too much making the streets dangerous. Like last year, like almost every year, we went to eat Mexican food at our favorite neighborhood café in the early evening, then went home and watched television while we split a bottle of champagne at midnight - or earlier. The quiet times with The Husband are the best.

As the cold days of winter set in, though, and the holidays are just a memory, it is time to concentrate on work again. I have two standalones to finish and several completed books to get into the publishing pipeline. The most exciting thing, however, is I have a new series to write. I personally dislike series, or at least most of the series I have read. Just how many times can an amateur sleuth fall over a dead body in a small town, after all? Plus, I’m very tired of the current trend of cutesy and relentlessly perky amateur sleuths (female) who obsess over shoes, who either cook or do some sort of craft, who brainlessly charge into danger and who always manage to avoid being arrested for impeding a police investigation.

My sleuth is Dr. Rachel Petrie (no relation to the famed Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, a fact that is a running gag) a contract archaeologist who works all over the world, giving her a chance to stumble over a body in a different place each time. Hey, if she didn’t find a body it wouldn’t be a mystery series, would it? There does have to be a certain amount of suspension of disbelief.

Currently I’m working on the first book, A KILLING AT TARA TWO, which is set in Alabama on a dig excavating a plantation house burned during the War of Northern Aggression. It’s great fun.

Now I must get to work writing on it. I hope all of you had a very happy holiday season, and wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

A Very Private High School

I wish I felt more enthusiasm for the launch of my new Dave Mason mystery. For me, once I’m finished a book, that is, the revised revised final final version, I’m really done with it. And by then I’m onto to the next book and all its problems and challenges.

I want to leave behind the elitist world of private education, car theft, and hit-and-run tragedy.

A Very Private High School, coming soon, is the fourth in the Detective Dave Mason series. Dave Mason, my fictional homicide detective with the Santa Monica Police Department, has been living inside my head for fifteen years and we know each other well.

I want to see him make a splash and get some attention but oh, the work that lies ahead. The only reason I wish I were 25 again is all the energy I had then. I marvel at Marilyn Meredith and her pace of accomplishment.

Coupled with a natural shyness is the realization that I can’t do it all anymore, and need to portion out my energies in a sensible fashion. I wish I could also say that writing is the only thing I do and I beaver away at it eight productive hours a day. But life is interesting.

I’m working in a small group spearheading the startup of a community radio station in the area where I live. I’m on the board of the LA chapter of Sisters-in-Crime, and meeting next week to discuss the startup of a chapter of Sisters-in-Crime in Bakersfield. And next week is the California Crime Writers Conference in Los Angeles where I’m heading a panel on blogging.

I love Dave Mason, and A Very Private High School is a good book, but I’m daunted I must admit. Any other mystery writers who have felt this way?

Where do you draw your energies from at this point in the launch of a new book?

Are You Listening?

Kathleen Kaska (Fifth Saturday Blogger)

Do you listen to friends, family, or readers who give you ideas for your next mystery?

            I have a long list of historic hotels, recommended by folks who read my series, for my next book. I’d have to live way into the next century to write a Sydney Lockhart mystery about every one of those hotels. But I still love hearing about these places. Each one has a unique story to tell: the ghost who lives in room 315; the infamous gambler who was murdered in the lounge; the blockbuster movie that was filmed there back in the fifties.

            Occasionally, an enthusiastic fan or friend will suggest a plot for my next story, and some trouble my wacky protagonist could get into. Though I always take note, rarely do these suggestions find their way into my books. I’m a Pantster and planning what will happen doesn’t work for me—usually.

            Early one recent morning, I received a phone call (yes, a real phone call—no text; no email) and by chance I actually had my phone on. It was my dear friend, talented wildlife photographer, and fellow birder, Wendy McSwain. Right away, I could tell she was excited about something. I figured she’d spotted a least bittern. Background: we’d just spent five days in Texas, birding along the coast searching for that illusive bird, which had recently been seen at a local birding haunt. If you’re a birder, you know that much of the time is spent quietly watching and waiting. While staring into the cattails one morning, Wendy wanted to know what trouble I had in store for a recurring character named Ruth in the next mystery I was currently working on. Ruth is the wacky sidekick who gives my protagonist, Sydney, nightmares. So far, all I’d come up with was a new boyfriend who was a pilot. He was teaching Ruth to fly. A little seed must have sprouted in Wendy’s brain, ergo her phone call just mentioned. While Wendy talked, I took notes. Her ideas were brilliant. I’m going to use them. They even spill into my next next mystery, which works wonderfully in a series. Murder at the Menger is only twenty-five percent complete, but the dedication page is already written.