Untreed is even offering a special deal.  More on that below.

But first, I have to tell you why this story is special to me.  Here goes.

When my wife and I left the cold winters of Maryland behind and moved south, I made two decisions. One, I would retire from full time employment and, two, I’d do something I’d always wanted to do: become a mystery writer. The first step was to sign up for a writing class at the community college.

“By the end of this class, each one of you will have written a short mystery story.”

The instructor made that announcement the first night.

Gulp.

When I signed up for a class called “Writing Mystery,” I thought someone was going to teach me how, not make me do it right away. Okay, I reasoned, she’s a professor of literature at the college, so if she says we can do it, I suppose we can. I had no idea where to start, but not knowing how had never stopped me from doing anything before.

My protagonist, I decided, would be a former FBI agent who is now a private investigator. That would give him the training and expertise to pursue the bad guys. But I wanted him to offer something different from the other PI’s out there. It happened there was a Psychic Fair in town that week. That reminded me of a fascination I’d always had with psychic phenomena. I went to the Fair and talked with several psychics. These were not the storefront psychics who put on a bizarre show or who will tell you everything you want to know over the phone for three dollars a minute. They were ordinary people who lived ordinary lives when not using their gift. When they did use their gift, it was to assist law enforcement agencies solve crimes.

Yes! That’s what I wanted for my guy.

He wouldn’t see or talk with ghosts or dead people. A medium does that, not a psychic. When he visited a crime scene or touched an object related to a crime, however, fleeting images would flash in his mind. Sometimes, those images would steer him in the right direction. Other times, they would only leave him confused because he didn’t understand what they meant. That’s the way it is with real-life psychics. It’s not an exact science. For the most part, my guy, Adam Kingston, would rely on his FBI experience and old-fashioned police work.

With a lot of help from the instructor and feedback from others in the class, I finished the story. I called it “The Missing Sniper.” I was so proud of it I decided to send it out to a few magazines, then wait to see which one offered me the best deal. Instead of deals, they all offered rejection letters. I was crushed. So crushed, I stuffed the story in a drawer and forgot about it.

I didn’t stop writing short mystery stories, however, and within a couple years, was fortunate enough to have several of them published. One day, I remembered that first story and dug it out. When I looked it over, I saw many reasons why it had been rejected. I suspect I’d learned a lot about writing by then. I decided to rewrite it.

When I sent the story out this time, two magazines wanted it. Wow! One was a print magazine and one was an ezine. What to do? Incredibly, they both agreed to publish it simultaneously. I’d never heard of that happening before then or since and I was thrilled.

When “The Missing Sniper” appeared, response to the character and the premise was so enthusiastic, I decided to put the same guy into a full novel. I did, and a couple years later, MEMORY OF A MURDER featuring Adam Kingston was published and is still doing quite well. (Click on it at the top of this page and read Chapter One.)

That’s why I’m excited that this special story has a new life.  To make it even more special, Untreed Reads has put together a great offer.  If you buy “The Missing Sniper” you can also order “Where Billy Died” at 40% off.  That’s two of my best stories.  Also two of my longest. They both run a little over 9,000 words, so when you settle down to read them, have a snack and a tall drink handy.

Here’s where:  http://tinyurl.com/7nxafun

A terrific collection by a master of story telling!, January 25, 2012

Told with wit, pathos and, lucky us, even some humor. Derringer Award winner, Earl Staggs has published numerous short stories over the years in a variety of magazines, and this is an anthology of his best crime stories.

In my mind the best authors are those who can whittle a story down to a few pages, giving us just enough background and setting so we know what’s about to happen. Then, our hearts are pounding along with the protagonist, mostly the underappreciated good cop as in “Battered”, and “Brother-In-Law” and sometimes from the perspective of the bad guy as in “Dead Wife Walking.” So, which were my favorites? I thought, by the end of the collection, I could tell you that… but I don’t think I can. Try “Room Six” for clever twist or “Fig Newtons and Heavy Bags” for humor, or “Caught on Christmas Eve” for a heartwarming story that will bring a tear to your eye.
All of these stories are worthy of a complete novel and many of them will live in your head long after you finish the book.

I guarantee that if you like police procedurals these short stories will leave you wanting more of Earl Staggs books.

Long, long ago, a bunch of us were sitting around the cave telling stories to each other and a guy we called Hiero came up with an idea.

“Hey,” he said, “we should preserve these stories on rocks.”

So Hiero came up with a bunch of symbols for animals and fish and birds and people and other things. We invented a hammer and chisel and started chiseling our stories on rocks using the symbols. Since Hiero made up the symbols, we called them Hieroglyphics.

I was just a kid then, but I studied hard and became a chiseler.

Then one of the women fell on a basket of grapes and squashed them into liquid and one guy said, “Hey, we can use that to draw our stories on the cave walls.” We took some hair from a mastodon’s leg, tied it to a stick, and used it as a brush. Soon we learned to drop women on other fruits and berries and came up with other liquids. We named it ink, and soon were drawing our symbols all over the cave walls.

That went fine for a while until some guy invented something he called paper. He said, “Hey, let’s paint our stories on paper.”

A guy over in the corner named Webster said, “Hey, that’s fine, but enough with the symbols. Let’s use words. I just made up a whole lot of them and someday everybody will be using them.”

So we invented pencils and pens and started drawing words on paper. That became very popular, once you got the hang of picking the right words.

Now, some people were better than others at picking which words to use. Webster came up with a word for what we were doing. He called it writing. The ones who were good at picking the best words became known as writers. I was tired of chiseling, so I studied hard and became a writer. It was tedious work doing one page at a time, though.

A few months later — and you’ll notice I’m condensing the time frame to make this move a little faster – a guy named Gutenberg invented a machine he called a printing press. What a boon that was! Put words in a flat plate, smear ink on it, and print thousands of pieces of paper. Oh, my. We were on a roll.

Then another guy had the idea of putting those pieces of paper in a pile and gluing them together. His name was Booker, so we called them books.

About the same time, a couple of guys named Royal and Underwood invented gadgets called typewriters. That made it a lot easier for writers to write books.

That was great. Soon we had stacks and stacks of books. Remember Webster, the guy who came up with all those words? Even he got into the act. He gathered up all his words, put them in a book, and called it a dictionary.

But what to do with all those books? A guy named Barnes said, “Hey, I have an idea. I have a friend named Noble. We’ll go in together and open a store to sell the books.”

Before long, we had huge companies called publishers cranking out books, and we had bookstores all over the world selling them. The whole system needed more people to make it work, so editors, distributors, shippers, and warehousers were born. Another group of people said, “Hey, we’re agents. You writers send us your stuff, and we’ll sell it to the publishers.”

Yes, a lot of people were involved in the system, but it worked. Everybody was reading books.

Meanwhile, up in Seattle, a couple of kids named Jobs and Gates were putting things together called computers. Not the huge things big companies were using. These were small enough to sit on a desk and soon everybody had one. This made it even easier for writers to write. These machines could even communicate with each other over a web that covered the whole wide world called the Internet. Wow! Talk about progress.

Things were about to change, though. A guy named Amazon started selling books over the Internet. You didn’t even have to go to the bookstore. Just order them through your computer, and they’d be shipped to your door. This Amazon guy went one step further. One day, he said, “Hey, look what I invented. I call it a Kindle. I don’t have to ship the books to you anymore. I’ll just send you the words and you read them on this thing. We’ll call them ebooks”

Remember those guys named Barnes and Noble? They said, “Hey, we have one of those, too. We call it a Nook. Soon, there was a bunch more of them. A lot of people weren’t reading printed books anymore. They were reading ebooks in the palm of their hands. Talk about change!

More changes were coming, though. A bunch of writers were sitting around one day and one of them said, “Hey, we don’t need agents and publishers and distributors and all those people. Let’s publish our ebooks ourselves. Since all those other people won’t be getting any of the pie, we can sell them for only a couple bucks and still make more per book than before.”

And that’s how it all happened and that brings us to where we are today. Writers have a choice of going the traditional way through agents and publishers or we can publish our own ebooks.

No one knows what changes the future will bring. It could be the entire publishing industry will crumble, and we’ll go back to preserving our stories on rocks. If that happens, I’ll be okay. I still have my tools and I can be a chiseler again.

If you’ve read all the way to here, you now know everything I know about publishing.  If you’re still in the mood for reading, here are some things you can read right here.  Just click on them at the top of this page.

MEMORY OF A MURDER.  A mystery novel with a long list of Five Star reviews.  Click on it above and read Chapter One.

SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS.  A collection of 16 of my published short mystery stories in an ebook. A variety of stories ranging from hardboiled to soft to humorous.  Click on “Earls Short Stories” above for more information.  Now on sale for .99 for all ereaders.

Click on “THE DAY I ALMOST BECAME A GREAT WRITER” and read the story some say is the funniest one I’ve ever written.

There’s also “WHITE HATS AND HAPPY TRAILS” about the day I spent with a boyhood idol, Roy Rogers.

Thanks for visiting.  Good reading and good writing to you, and let’s make 2012 the best year ever for all of us.

Earl – Please tell us something about yourself that might surprise us.

Anne – I majored in political science at university. I also graduated from an art college, but can’t paint or draw. The sound of jingling coins drives me crazy. I’m afraid of big dogs. I love to travel so much I suspect I may have been a nomad in a former life!

Earl – Where have you not yet visited, but want to?

Anne – Ireland. Newfoundland. Australia. They’re all on my bucket list.

Earl – If money were not an object, where would you live?

Anne – Remember that nomad thing I mentioned? My dream would be to spend three months in one locale and then move on! There are so many places I’d like to visit…temporarily!

Earl – Tell us about FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL.

Anne – Frank, Incense and Muriel is book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. It takes place the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with a sexy private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award to the mix and things can only get worse. This cozy, comedic mystery is recipient of the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit.

Earl – Would you share an excerpt?                                                        

Anne – I thought you’d never ask!

…………

“Why are you here, Frankie?”

“My client wants you to help with the investigation.”

“Who’s your client?”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I’d rather not say until after you make up your mind.”

“Ah. Client confidentiality. I get it. So tell me about Rachel.”

“She didn’t show up for work this morning and my client hopes you’ll be able to shed some light on what happened to her.”

“Me?”

“You knew her.”

So did most of the football team, but I kept that to myself. “Forget Rachel. I’m curious why you’d agree to let me–someone you haven’t seen in fifteen years, as well as a complete novice–work on one of your investigations?”

He fixed me with a level stare but before he could reply, the outside door, that lead from the kitchen to the backyard, swung open.

“You-hoo, Muriel.”

“It’s my Aunt Val,” I explained. “We’re supposed to go to the mall after we drop off her dog at-”

Loud, frantic yowls drowned out the remainder of my sentence. The massive, furry creature galloped toward us. Long legs a blur, its claws scraped the ceramic tile like fingernails on a blackboard. Thick blobs of drool splattered in all directions. I braced myself for the inevitable gooey assault, but the animal bypassed me completely.

Frankie bolted to his feet. “What the–?”

The dog pinned him against the kitchen counter. Prancing on hind legs with uncontrollable delight, it plastered his snout against Frankie’s crotch. A damp spot spread out from the zipper of his trousers and slowly stretched across his groin.

Oblivious to the confrontation between man and beast, my aunt ambled inside the kitchen, and handed me a round cookie tin. A rosy-cheeked Santa smiled up at me.

I gave the tin a gentle shake and asked, “Day two?”

The dog made yelping sounds. At least I think it was the dog. It was hard to tell with his muzzle embedded beneath Frankie’s thighs.

“You bet,” Val said, referring to her gift. “I made a dozen mincemeat tarts. Each decorated with two of the cutest little ceramic turtledoves you’ve ever seen.” She shrugged off her coat and gloves, and then spun in a circle as she patted her hair. “What do you think?”

I wasn’t certain if neon red curls coated with multiple layers of hairspray until each strand glistened like polished brass suited a short, plump Caucasian woman nearing her sixty-fifth birthday, but I decided to throw caution to the wind. “I like it.”

“Me, too.” With that, she turned her attention to Frankie. “He doesn’t bite, you know.”

“That’s reassuring.” P Placing his hand between his fly and the calico-colored dog, he nudged the animal away. It refused to take the hint, and wedged its nose deeper. The yelping sounds continued.

Yeah. It was the dog. I was sure of it now.

I watched the process repeated three more times. Nudge, nudge. Sniff. Sniff. Yelp. The damp spot on Frankie’s slacks now stretched all the way to his knees. A thick layer of mucous coated his hands. I might have laughed out loud, but I’d been on the receiving end of that goop more times than I cared to recall.

Val strolled over to Frankie. “Hey, Big Boy.”

He grinned. I rolled my eyes.

“That’s the name of the dog,” I told him.

………………….

To read more of Frank, Incense and Muriel visit my website http://www.AnneKAlbert.com/ and blogs http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com/ and http://muriel-reeves-mysteries.blogspot.com. I’m also on Facebook www.facebook.com/annekalbert and Twitter www.twitter.com/AnneKAlbert.

Thanks so much for featuring me, Earl. Happy writing, and of course, happy reading!

……………….

The Mystery We Write Tour was a wonderful experience, and I want to say Thank You to everyone who participated.  A special Thank You to the other touring authors who allowed me to be a part of it.

Now it’s time for the drawing.  The names of all those eligible were dropped in a hat and two were drawn.  Here are the winners:

The first name drawn:  Jacqueline Seewald

Jacqueline, you’ve won a signed print copy of MEMORY OF A MURDER.  Please send me your home mailing address and I’ll get it off to you right away.  Send it via email to earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

The second name drawn:  Sharon Shafer

Sharon, you have a choice of a print or ebook version of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of 16 of my published short stories. Please let me know which you prefer.  If you want a print copy, I’ll need your mailing address.  If you prefer an ebook, let me know if it’s for Kindle, Nook, or other type of reader. Write me at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

I hope Jacqueline and Sharon enjoy their prizes and I hope everyone else enjoyed this tour as much as I did.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Raised in the jungles of Haiti and Thailand, with returns to Texas in-between, Jinx followed her father’s steel-toed footsteps into the Construction and Engineering industry in hopes of building dams. Finding all the good rivers taken, she traveled the world defacing other landscapes with mega-projects in Alaska, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Like the protagonist in her mystery series, Hetta Coffey, Jinx was a woman with a yacht—and she wasn’t afraid to use it—when she met her husband, Mad Dog Schwartz. They opted to become cash-poor cruisers rather than continue chasing the rat, sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, turned left, and headed for Mexico. They now divide their time between Arizona and Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.

Jinx’s seventh book in her award-winning series, Just Deserts: Book Four of the Hetta Coffey mystery series, was recently released. Her other books include a YA fictography of her childhood in Haiti (Land of Mountains), an adventure in the Sea of Cortez (Troubled Sea) and an epic novel of the 30 years leading to the fall of the Alamo (The Texicans).

I asked Jinx to tell us about The Best Thing She’s Ever Written. She was happy to do that but, first, I had to ask why she calls herself an “Accidental Author.”  Here’s what she said:

I did not set out to be a writer. Not once, even though I have been an avid reader my entire life, did it occur to me to write a book until I found myself afloat with no television, no job, no phone, nada. .

Over twenty years ago, my new hubby and I decided to take our boat from San Francisco to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a three-month voyage. Much like the crew of the Minnow, we never returned. No, we were not shipwrecked, we just decided we liked Mexico and since all we owned was the boat, we would opt out for awhile. It turned out to be a very long while.

During the summers, when the Sea of Cortez is hotter than the hinges of Hell, we returned to Texas, my native state. Okay, so it wasn’t any cooler there, but we have fantastic air conditioning.

As a ninth-generation Texan, I knew some of the family history, but that first summer back home I spent many hours in frigid libraries, putting faces to that boring genealogy chart. Of course, I had to make up my own faces, as many were around before photography and not rich enough for portraits. Why, oh why, hadn’t someone, when I was slogging through those same History books back in school, tell me these people were my relatives?

I made my own charts, wrote small stories about each of these people with information gleaned from Texana sections all over the state, and finally focused on one couple I found especially interesting. Next thing I knew, I had written The Texicans.  Actually it took three years of research and another year of writing and rewriting and editing before I had to pull on my big girl panties and search for a publisher. Like that was going to happen.

With spectacular naiveté, I sent a copy of the manuscript, unsolicited, to Elmer Kelton, the premier Texas writer, and since God protects fools, he actually answered and gave me great advice. (SHOW, DON’T TELL, being the best.) Still unable to find a publisher for my GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, I dug into the coffers and self-published The Texicans. In hard cover. I do not recommend this.

Again, someone was watching over my shoulder. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) Books in Motion picked it up as an audio book, which they rented out at truck stops all over the U.S. I was written up in Trucker Digest!

Finally, I found an Indie publisher for the paperback. Since 2002, I have published six more books with the same publisher. Most are in audio and print, and all are in some e-book format.

* * * * *

 And now, here’s Jinx’s answer to the question of the day:  What’s the best thing you’ve ever written?

One of the favorite lines is from Just Add Salt, Book 2 in the Hetta Coffey Mystery Series:

Five months into the voyage, rats took over the ship and the ship’s cats fled for their lives.

Pretty dramatic, huh? Problem is, I stole it from the journal of an unfortunate Spanish monk aboard an ill-fated Spanish Galleon in the 1500’s. It wasn’t his exact wording, so I’m not so sure this constitutes blatant plagiarism, but if so, mea culpa; it just fit my story so well.

One thing for sure, that rat thing gets the readers going. I’ve had more comments about this one sentence than just about anything I’ve almost written.

Just to prove, however, that I can make ‘em cry on my own, here is a passage from Just Add Water, first in the Hetta Coffey mystery series (which, by the way won the 2007 Eppie Award for Best Mystery):

I carefully carried RJ down the stairs that last morning, placed him gently on his warmed electric blanket on the couch and covered him with a throw. His tail thumped weakly as I kissed him on the nose.

The knockout pill I’d given him earlier had kicked in and he soon drifted into a drugged doggy dream world where, judging from his movements and noises, he was still a pup chasing an elusive postal employee. I made a note to get the name of those pills for myself.

Jan brought in coffee and we sat quietly, each lost in our own grief, until Dr. Craig let himself in the front door.

“Is he asleep?” Craig asked.

I started to say yes, but the sound of Craig’s voice roused RJ enough for a tail thump. Craig sat down on the couch with RJ between us, gave him an ear scratch, and my dog went back to sleep.

“Rough night?” Craig asked.

“No, he slept real good for a change.”

“I meant you, Hetta.”

I nodded numbly. “Pretty bad.”

 Jan burst into tears and headed out the back door.

“Are you ready, Hetta?” Craig asked. At the sound of his voice, RJ stirred again and licked his vet’s hand.

Tears sprang into Craig’s eyes. “Do you want to leave?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He quickly tied off RJ’s back leg with a length of surgical tubing, slipped a preloaded syringe from his pocket, removed the casing, and inserted the needle into a large vein in RJ’s leg.

RJ sighed, and it was over for him.

His humans, however, were left with a big empty space he had filled in our lives.

Dang, I went and made myself cry. Again. The day I wrote this, I was alone on our boat and glad for it. Years later I saw “Something’s Gotta Give” and there was Diane Keaton’s character doing the same thing: bawling and writing.

Sad as it was, this passage set the scene for the plot of Just Add Water.  When her yellow lab dies, Hetta, too grief-stricken to live in the house without him, buys a yacht and moves aboard.

Four books later, Hetta Coffey remains dog-less, and in the latest of the series, Just Deserts, boat-less. With her yacht in dry dock in Mexico, Hetta needs a place to live and pesos for boat repairs. She takes on a project in northern Mexico and, typically for her, lands smack dab in a dustup at the tumultuous Arizona/Mexico border. Just Deserts, Book Four in the Hetta Coffey mystery series, is available in both print and Kindle on Amazon.com, and all other e-book formats on Smashwords.com.

Buy link for JUST DESERTS:

http://amzn.to/pYo4tT

To learn more about Jinx and all her books: http://jinxschwartz.com

Jinx’s Blog: http://bit.ly/qpLEeY

A FINAL NOTE FROM EARL

While you’re here, please leave a comment and you’ll be entered in my drawing on December 9.  The first name drawn will receive a signed print copy of my mystery novel, MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of a print or ebook copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of 16 of my best short mystery stories.

You’re also invited to Chapter One of Memory of a Murder while you’re here. You can also read “The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer,” which some say is the funniest story I’ve ever written. There’s another one there called “White Hats and Happy Trails,” about the day I spent with a boyhood idol, Roy Rogers.

Beth Anderson is a multi-published, award winning author in several genres including romance and mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, she now lives in Washington state. She has appeared on Chicago’s WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University, Moraine Valley College, and many libraries and writers’ conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz.

Here’s mischievous Beth stealing

dolls from a house she broke into.

I was asked by Earl to give an example of “The best thing I’ve ever written.”  Or at least what I think was the best.  Below is the opening page of my most recent novel, RAVEN TALKS BACK. This might not be the best ever, I don’t know. But it’s the scene that took me the longest, and also took the most work to get it to the point where I was finally happy with it:

THE FOG

The spirits of my ancestors live in the towering Chugach Mountains that surround my world in Valdez. I know they are there. I can see them most mornings, great cottony masses of gray fog rolling down the mountains, sinister characters in a black and white movie, shivering and mourning their disintegration above the marina before they disappear over Prince William Sound.

They call to me through that fog, whispering my name. I hear them, soft, desolate sounds you can only hear if you’re really a part of this beautiful land.

My people will tell my story to future generations of Athabascans, and tourists from the lower forty-eight who come to walk through our villages and see for themselves how little is left of what we were. We have no written ancient history. Everything known about our past has evolved only because of stories told in the dark of night before our children go to sleep, when wind screams over the mountaintops and roars down through the passes, bringing the icy chill of our glaciers spiraling into our homes in spite of insulation invented by modern man. The wind is still bitter and we know it.

Even so, we lead a lovely, slow-paced life in this part of Alaska, where flowers burst with fragrant beauty everywhere in the summertime, and deep undercurrents of love and laughter seem to hover beneath the surface of our daily lives.

At least to me it had always been that way, until the Saturday morning in early June, when my world of gentle laughter disappeared and violent death entered the soft space I had occupied all my adult life.

* * * * *

You’ve just had a peek into the heart and soul of my lead character, Raven. She first came to me, along with the opening sentence about the fog, early on my first full day in Valdez, Alaska, where I had traveled to do some contract work. I was standing alone in the back yard, looking up at the majestic Chugach Mountains and watching the fog roll down the mountainside exactly as I’ve described it above. Suddenly I heard those words in my mind. At the time, Raven didn’t have a name and I knew very little about the Athabascan culture, but she had come to me and announced herself in this most unorthodox way, so I couldn’t shake the voice or the feeling that I was definitely going to tell her story. I couldn’t not tell it.

This took me several years and many revisions—two at the request of an agent—but I wasn’t really happy with the whole book for quite some time until my final revision, when I decided once and for all that I was going to do it my way: tell it in alternating point of view chapters. Raven’s in first person and Jack’s in third person. The revisions were always difficult because of the length and the different subplots running through the main plot—that of a family torn apart by murder.

Murder always affects other people besides the victim and the killer. It always has far-reaching, unimaginable repercussions for anyone who even knows either the victim or the killer. Dark, hidden secrets, some held for decades, emerge during any murder investigation. This was, I think, a big part of the story for me, that the murders in this book affected so many people who weren’t expecting to have to deal with it. But they all did.

I hope you like the excerpt. This book is available in both print and e-book versions. The links are below, and by the way, if you’d like to take a look at the first four chapters, you can easily find them at my website. Just click on the book cover there. It’s waiting for you.

RAVEN TALKS BACK by Beth Anderson    

Krill Press, ISBN 978-0-9821443-9-8

Website:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com

Blog:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com/blog

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/bethanderson43

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Beth-Anderson/e/B000APMRR4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Barnes & Noble:  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Raven-Talks-Back/Beth-Anderson/e/2940012515407/?itm=1&USRI=beth+anderson#MeetTheWriter

Also available at your favorite independent bookstores nationwide.

==================================================================

A FINAL NOTE FROM EARL

While you’re here, please leave a comment and you’ll be entered in my drawing on December 9.  The first name drawn will receive a signed print copy of my mystery novel, MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of a print or ebook copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of 16 of my best short mystery stories.

You’re also invited to Chapter One of Memory of a Murder while you’re here. You can also read “The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer,” which some say is the funniest story I’ve ever written. There’s another one there called “White Hats and Happy Trails,” about the day I spent with a boyhood idol, Roy Rogers.

Ron Benrey writes cozy mysteries with his wife Janet. Ron has been a writer forever—initially on magazines (his first real job was Electronics Editor at Popular Science Magazine), then in corporations (he wrote speeches for senior executives), and then as a novelist. Over the years, Ron has also authored ten non-fiction books, including the recently published “Know Your Rights — a Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers” (published by Sterling). Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a juris doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law. He is a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Some of The Best Thing(s) I’ve Ever Written

By Ron Benrey

Earl gave me a fascinating assignment: talk about the best thing I’ve ever written. I immediately revised his request to “some of” the best “things” I’ve written. The truth is, I’ve been a professional writer long enough to have stopped picking absolute favorites.

After some reflection, I decided that some of the best things in the cozy mystery novels I co-write with my wife Janet can be found in the galleries of The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum—the fictional institution we created as the central setting of our Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries series.

The stories take place in a museum full of antiquities and artifacts, the hero and heroine are the museum’s acting director and chief curator.

One of our toughest challenges was the “challenge of authenticity.” We had to create credible, imaginary antiquities that will past muster with readers who are more knowledgeable about museum-quality artworks than we are. We were especially concerned about accidentally creating “serious un-authenticities”—the kind of egregious errors that prompt some readers to throw a book against the wall, and then warn their friends not to read it.

I took the time—and invested the effort—to invent dozens of artifacts that might have been real, but weren’t. On the one hand, I didn’t want to bore readers with unnecessary detail. On the other hand I had to invent fictional artifacts that would seem plausible to readers who have more than a passing interest in art. Our paintings, sculptures, antiquities, or whatever had to pass the “they could have been real!” test in a reader’s mind. Simply put, each piece could exist and be worth the price described in the novel.

I’m proud of the results — and Janet and I are especially proud of “Dead as a Scone,” the first novel in the series:

Murder is afoot is the sedate English town of Royal Tunbridge Wells … and the crime may be brewing in a teapot!

Nigel Owen is having a rotten year. Downsized from a cushy management job at an insurance company in London, he is forced to accept a temporary post as managing director of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Alas, he regrets living in a small town in Kent, he prefers drinking coffee (with a vengeance), and he roundly dislikes Flick Adams, PhD, an American scientist recently named the museum’s curator.

But then, the wildly unexpected happens. Dame Elspeth Hawker, the museum’s chief benefactor, keels over a board meeting—the apparent victim of a fatal heart attack. With the Dame’s demise, the museum’s world-famous collection is up for grabs, her cats, dog, and parrot are living at with Flick and Nigel—and the two prima donnas find themselves facing professional ruin.

But Flick—who knows a thing or two about forensic science—is convinced that Dame Elspeth did not die a natural death. As Flick and Nigel follow the clues—including a cryptic Biblical citation—they discover that a crime perpetrated more than a century ago sowed the seeds for a contemporary murder.

Ron Benrey
www.benrey.com
www.fictionafter50.com

A FINAL NOTE FROM EARL

While you’re here, please leave a comment and you’ll be entered in my drawing on December 9.  The first name drawn will receive a signed print copy of my mystery novel, MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of a print or ebook copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of 16 of my best short mystery stories.

You’re also invited to Chapter One of Memory of a Murder while you’re here. You can also read “The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer,” which some say is the funniest story I’ve ever written. There’s another one there called “White Hats and Happy Trails,” about the day I spent with a boyhood idol, Roy Rogers.

Her globetrotting in the 1970s led her into the travel business, first as a travel agent, then as a correspondent for TravelAge West, a trade journal published in San Francisco. In the 1990s, she signed on fulltime as a newspaper reporter and columnist, first at The Selma Enterprise and then at The Hanford Sentinel.

Pat’s articles on the writing life have appeared in The SouthWest Sage, the monthly journal of SouthWest Writers, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her web site at http://patbrowning.weebly.com is under construction.

The Best Thing I’ve Ever Written

It has nothing to do with mystery writing, except – well, the mystery may be why I’m writing mystery novels instead of folksy books about my family tree. Real crowd pleasers, those folksy columns.

This old newspaper column about my father was written for The Selma (California) Enterprise, March 17, 1993. For Father’s Day this year I reprinted it on my blog, Morning’s At Noon. My brother Tom, now a district judge, e-mailed it to a high school football buddy he stays in touch with. I call that the ultimate in reader satisfaction.

I reprint it here with some minor cuts.

Coach Lucas And The Family Tree

The mail brought a copy of my mother’s family tree – the McElhannon family on her father’s side. Our common ancestor was John McElhannon, a will of the wisp who kept appearing, disappearing and reappearing in 18th and 19th century records. We know that he came from Ireland about 1767. He fought in the Revolutionary War. Years later, he surfaced as a Georgia landowner when he applied for his veteran’s pension, which eventually got the attention of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

My sainted mother would have worn membership in the DAR like a feather in her cap.
My father, I think, would laugh about all this, but with no offense intended. Different as night and day, my parents were. Mother went through life making waves. Dad just tried to go with the flow.

Mother was upwardly mobile before anyone knew what that meant. She dreamed, schemed and worked like a plow horse to make things happen. Dad seldom broke a sweat. If he ever worried, it didn’t show.

Maybe he already knew that life’s ups and downs come with the kit, along with a little pair of boxing gloves to hang on your key ring and a note that says, You can’t win ‘em all.

In today’s parlance, Dad was a jock. An old newspaper clipping attests to his pitching arm, and he played semi-pro football for a while. After he got married and started a family, he switched to Plan B and became a high school coach. Whatever the job called for, he coached – football, basketball, baseball, track.

Today when I see coaches kicking dirt and bellowing into walkie-talkies, I remember my father standing quietly on the sidelines, arms folded, watching the action with no apparent angst. The way he figured it, if a team didn’t know how to play when the game started, it was too late to teach them.

For him it worked. He had good teams and became upwardly mobile in spite of himself. The map of Oklahoma is dotted with small towns where we lived because he got a better offer. When he was in his eighties, middle-aged men and women still called him “Coach.”

Dad was half-Irish and half-(Muscogee) Creek Indian. When he died, we took him back to his hometown of Wetumka for burial. Tom thought it would be nice to have the service done by a preacher who could speak the Creek language. There was no such person within a country mile.

But an old cousin remembered the Creek words to “Jesus Loves Me,” so we said goodbye with that. A slow rain had been falling all day and the cousin told us that rain is a good sign because it washes away earthly footprints.

It did seem fitting. The lovely man who was my father walked lightly in this life. Maybe his kit also came with a note that said, You’re just passing through. Have some fun.

***

Pat’s first mystery, FULL CIRCLE, was set in a fictional version of Hanford, and published through iUniverse in 2001. It was revised and reissued as ABSINTHE 0F MALICE by Krill Press in 2008. An extensive excerpt can be read at Google Books:

http://tinyurl.com/23pojdm.

The second book in the series, METAPHOR FOR MURDER, is a work in progress. ABSINTHE takes place on a Labor Day weekend. METAPHOR picks up the story the week before Christmas. Log line: Small town reporter Penny Mackenzie tracks an offbeat Christmas story and finds herself in the middle of a murder and the mysterious desecration of an old Chinese cemetery.

ABSINTHE OF MALICE can be ordered through any bookstore or online from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Barnes and Noble, print and Nook:

http://tinyurl.com/43lgk5u

Amazon, print and Kindle:

http://tinyurl.com/3ry9gya

John M. Daniel was born in Minnesota, raised in Texas, and educated in Massachusetts and California.  He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University and a Writer in Residence at Wilbur Hot Springs. He has taught fiction writing at UCLA Extension and Santa Barbara Adult Education and was on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for nearly twenty years.  He now teaches creative writing for Humboldt State University Extended Education.

OPEN WITH A BANG

Earl threw down the gauntlet with a challenge to display here, in front of fellow writers, “The Best Thing I’ve Ever Written.” I reached for the gauntlet, but it was too heavy, too fearsome, to pick up off the ground. Earl, I snivel, I just can’t do this.

Why? Three reasons. One, as a rule my best, most focused, strongest scenes happen at moments of choice and change, where the plot of the book shifts gears and things really start cooking in earnest. To give them away might be to give away surprises. Who likes a spoiler?

Second, I’m so gol-darned proud of my best scenes that I’d have a devil of a time choosing among them. I won’t want to hurt any of my characters’ feelings.

Third, I’m always haunted by the advice handed down by Faulkner: “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” He meant that anytime you are so enamored of a particular gem you’ve written, beware. You may be fooling yourself. I would hate to display one of my “darlings,” just to have one of my colleagues say, “Huh?” or worse: “Duh.”

So instead, with Earl’s permission, I’ll present here something else instead: the brief opening scene of my brand new mystery novel, Behind the Redwood Door. I think beginnings are important. They have to hit the ground running. They have to introduce characters and setting and in some subtle way they have to hint at some of the themes in the plot.

In the passage I’m about to quote, I’ve tried to describe the weather and some of the scenery of the North Coast of California, the setting for my novel. I introduce the protagonist and narrator, Guy Mallon, and his wife, Carol, showing that they’re partners in business and also lovers and laughers. And out there over the ocean I show a pair of mating ospreys, who show the reader that love and sex can be dangerous, but glorious. That lesson will pay off big-time in the course of Behind the Redwood Door.

Thank you, Earl, for giving me this chance to introduce the book, or I should say thanks for letting my book introduce itself. Here goes:

Just as the sun was coming up on the morning of Friday, June 18, 1999, there was a break in the clouds, and Carol and I went out for a walk along the nature trail by the ocean, down the road from our house. The rising sun lit up the waves and brightened the snow-white egrets wading in the lagoon. The band-tail pigeons had come back to roost on the skeleton of their wind-whipped tree. And out there, over the ocean, we saw a pair of ospreys mating in the air, doing their circle dance for what seemed like ten minutes, then coming together high in the sky and clasping each other’s claws as they went into a downward spiral, breaking their bodies apart just before they hit the water, then flying up and away together, heading for the forest to the south. “God,” Carol said. “I want to do that!”

“Why not?” I said. “We don’t have to be at the store till ten.”

“I was hoping to get some weeding done in the garden this morning.”

“Aw c’mon. You’d rather weed than—”

I was interrupted by a giant crack of thunder out over the Pacific. The sun disappeared behind clouds, and the rain began falling again. Hard.

“Well, so much for gardening,” Carol said.

We grinned together and held hands as we ran back to the house and up the stairs.

* * *

John, I like that opening so much I’m willing to let you slide for not following the guidelines. Who knows? Someday, you may come back to it and realize it IS the best thing you’ve ever written.

Here’s where to learn more about John and his new book, Behind the Redwood Door:

john@johnmdaniel.com

www.johnmdaniel.com

blog.johnmdaniel.com

amazon.johnmdaniel.com