Ten Stories That Worried My Mother by Winona Kent

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I’m excited to welcome Winona Kent to the blog today. I served on the board of Crime Writers of Canada with Winona. She is a great writer and has a super new anthology out. Read on to hear more about it…

TEN STORIES THAT WORRIED MY MOTHER by Winona Kent

Earlier this year I decided to release an anthology of short stories. I had two reasons: the first was that I had a few personal appearances coming up, and I wanted something new to sell. I was halfway through my next novel and I was pretty certain it wasn’t going to be ready in time. The second was that I realized I’m mostly only known for my long fiction…and that I actually do have a background in short story-writing! But, for various reasons, very few people know about that. And I really did want to share those stories with my current readers.

I chose the title Ten Stories That Worried My Mother largely because, well, she constantly worried about me being a writer. That’s a subject for a whole other blog—how to deal with a parent who brought you up not to attract attention to yourself, not to say anything that might reflect badly on you (or her, or the family), and most definitely not to write stories with interesting characters and situations, in case friends and relations might think it was about them.

Interestingly, I once took part in a creative writing workshop where the assignment was to write a story using only animals as characters, and the characters had to be based on us, ie, everyone in the workshop. None of us were able to recognize ourselves. Or each other, for that matter. Which convinced me that unless you use really specific character traits or situations that readily identify who you’re writing about, you’re probably on safe ground.

A few months before my mum died in 2021 (aged 95), I thought I might read one of my more recent stories to her aloud. Her eyesight was failing, and I really wanted to share it with her, especially because it had made the shortlist for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Awards of Excellence for Best Crime Novella. The story was “Salty Dog Blues.”

She listened patiently, but punctuated my narration with predictable Oh dear!‘s and Ohhhh‘s. I loved her dearly and I knew that would be her reaction, but I was determined to convince her (in my late 60’s!) that I really was a decent writer, after all.

When I finished, she said, “It’s very good.” I waited. I knew what was coming next. “But you can’t say those things about the cruise line your sister worked for! What if they come back and cause problems for her?”

I pointed out that the cruise line was called something else, and it didn’t have a current ship that was even remotely like the one in “Salty Dog Blues”, and that yes, I’d used my experiences sailing with my sister (who’d been a Captain’s Secretary) in the story’s details, but my sister hadn’t actually worked for them in a very long time and what, exactly, did she anticipate the problems might be?

She didn’t have an answer for that, of course. But my mother was, by nature, a worrier. And she wasn’t happy unless her thoughts were fueled by apprehension.

And so, of course, the title Ten Stories That Worried My Mother was strategically chosen to make her happy. And I’m certain she’s out there, somewhere—very proud of me—but fretting unnecessarily, and absolutely convinced someone in our family will think badly of her—or me—for writing it!

Ten Stories That Worried My Mother (four prize-winners, three mysteries, two previously unpublished works and one where the hero manages to spare-change John Lennon at the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night in 1964), with a foreword by A.J. Devlin, is published on August 22, 2023.

Winona Kent
Author of Ticket to Ride (Book 4 in my Jason Davey Mysteries)
Regional representative, BC/YT, Crime Writers of Canada
Active Member, Sisters in Crime-Canada West
www.winonakent.com

 

 

 

Welcome Melodie Campbell!

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Lynn McPherson is delighted to welcome Melodie Campbell as a guest to talk about life, writing, and her new release: The Merry Widow Murders. 

When Life Gives You Lemons…(get out the gin and start writing a new series)

By Melodie Campbell

Ah, the timeless question.  Where do you get your ideas?

I think it was Stephen King who talked about a little mail-order store in small town America…I’ve never been able to find that store myself.  Stephen keeps it a close secret (I hope you’re smiling.)

But I had reason to experience that dilemma about two years ago, a year into the pandemic, and a year after my husband David died.

Damn that covid, and what it’s done to publishing.  When Orca Books told me that they were capping the line that carried my Goddaughter series (translation: still selling the books in the line, but closing it to future books, at least for now)  I was in a tight spot.

I’d had 10 contracts in a row from Orca!  That series garnered three major awards!  How could I leave it behind?

Put another way:  what the poop was I going to write next?

The Goddaughter series featured a present day mob goddaughter who didn’t want to be one.  Gina Gallo had a beloved fiancé who thought she had gone straight.  But of course, in each book she would get blackmailed into helping the family pull off heists or capers that would inevitably go wrong.  It allowed for a lot of madcap comedy.

Some would say I was a natural to write a series about a mob goddaughter (we’ll just leave it at that.)  And I liked the serious theme behind the comedy:  You’re supposed to love and support your family. But what if your family is this one?

Issues of grey have always interested me.  We want things to be black and white in life, but quite often, they are more complex than that.  I like exploring justice outside of the law in my novels.  But I digress…

The Goddaughter books brought me to the attention of Don Graves, a well-known newspaper book reviewer up here.  He commiserated with the end of the Goddaughter series, and immediately suggested the following:

“Why don’t you write about her grandmother?  Prohibition days, when the mob was becoming big in Hamilton.”

The idea burned in me.  Except it wouldn’t be her grandmother.  (Don is older than me.)  It would be her great-grandmother!  Coming to age in the time of Rocco Perri and Bessie Starkman…

I settled on 1928, because that was the year women finally got the vote in England.  The status of women features very much in this novel.  The time frame also allowed me to use the aftermath of WW1, including men like my own grandfather, wounded by gas, and shell-shocked.  I would make the protagonist a young widow, because I knew grief – oh man, did I know grief.  My own husband had died way before his time, the year before.  I could write convincingly about that.

But I would also use bathos to lighten the tale. (I seem incapable of writing anything straight.)  The humour of the Goddaughter books finds its way into The Merry Widow Murders, and so far, has generated smiles for prepub reviewers.

The book took me over a year to write, working full time on it.  It helped me to channel my grief.  It forced me to step out of my comfort zone and write something with considerable depth.

And it taught me that – even widowed – I wasn’t entirely alone.  That ideas are beautiful things that can come from friendship, and the good hearts of readers and reviewers you are fortunate to meet along your publishing journey.

1928, At Sea
When an inconvenient dead body shows up in her stateroom, Lady Lucy Revelstoke and her pickpocket-turned-maid Elf know how to make it disappear–and find the killer. But can they do it before the authorities look into her own dodgy past?

“Miss Fisher meets Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry. The perfect escapist read!”  Anne R. Allen

Called the “Queen of Comedy” by the Toronto Sun, Melodie Campbell was also named the “Canadian literary heir to Donald Westlake” by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  Winner of 10 awards, including The Derringer (US) and the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, she has multiple bestsellers, and was featured in USA Today. Her publications include over 100 comedy credits, 16 novels and 60 short stories, but she’s best known for The Goddaughter mob caper series.

The Writer’s Juggling Act When Writing Two Series

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Hey Gang and Stiletto Gang friends, as my wrist is in the final stages of healing, I’ve invited Author Kassandra Lamb to take my spot today. Kassandra is as disciplined as they come. I think you’ll agree when you read the following. See you next month! ~ Donnell

The Writer’s Juggling Act (When Writing Two Series)

by Kassandra Lamb

Author Kassandra Lamb

Some of the most stressful, and most exciting times I’ve encountered as a career author were when I am winding down one series and starting another. This is the second time I’ve done it and I’m a little more organized about it this time. But it is still a writer’s juggling act.

I know a couple of authors who have several series running concurrently. My hats off to them (I’m lookin’ at you, Edith Maxwell 😉 ). I could never keep up the juggling act for that long.

The hardest thing to juggle is the main character’s voice. This past year, I was working on Book 2 of my new series, and also the last two books in my cozy mystery series. The cozies had a fairly young protagonist—in her early thirties at the beginning of the series—who is a bit flip at times, and sometimes downright snarky.

She’s matured a fair amount during the course of the series and is now a first-time mother (late thirties). In the last story (recently released), she is forced to face down evil in her own small town and struggles with how to protect her little family, her friends, and neighbors.

The new series’ protagonist is a tough-as-nails veteran cop. She is thrown off kilter though, when she moves to Florida to take a job as the chief of police of a small city department. She’s mid-forties, no-nonsense, and thought she had a pretty thick wall around her heart.

But she soon discovers several unsettling things. One, she’s lonely in this new place with all her acquaintances—some of whom she is now acknowledging might actually be friends—hundreds of miles away. And two, the learning curve is steep as she struggles to run an entire department, while having two major cases thrust at her in as many months. She’s used to feeling confident about her work, sure of what to do, but now she’s in uncharted territory.

So in the old series, I had Marcia, a soft-hearted, somewhat neurotic and snarky young woman who needed to grow up some. And in the newer one, I have Judith, a mature woman who needs to learn to lighten up some and let people in more readily, and not be so hard on herself when she makes mistakes.

Their voices are very different. But not quite different enough that it was easy to keep them straight. I discovered that the line between Marcia’s snarkiness and Judith’s no-nonsense approach was not always all that clear. I had to rewrite more than one scene to make Marcia a little less no-nonsense, or make Judith a little less snarky.

Part of the juggling act has been the timing, i.e., when should I write/edit which book? Most recently, I was editing and polishing Book 2 of the new series, while finishing the first draft of Book 13 of the old one. I found that if I was editing one in the early part of the day, I really shouldn’t try to write more of the other that afternoon or evening, or vice versa. It was too hard keeping the characters’ personalities and voices separate.

I also had to adjust, back and forth, to very different settings. Marcia lives in a small (fictitious) town, with less than a thousand residents. Some of her family and friends live in other small towns (some fictitious, others real), scattered across the countryside of central Florida. Judith is chief of police of a small (fictitious) city, which borders the much larger (real) city of Jacksonville.

I found I had to stop sometimes and carefully calculate how long it would take people to get from one place to another in these different locales. Plus, small towns and cities have very different vibes.

The exciting part of this juggling act is the fun of writing a new series. Nothing like new characters and new story ideas to get the creative juices flowing. I found that even when I was working on the last book for the cozy series, I was more into the writing process than I had been recently. The words were flowing easier because my muse had been invigorated by the new series.

Now the cozy series is done, and it’s been a bittersweet experience letting go of those characters and their town. But I’m relieved that the juggling act is over, for now, and super excited about writing Book 3 in the new series.

About  Fatal Escape: Two months on the job and barely recovered from a serial killer case, Chief of Police Judith Anderson is called out to the scene of what looks like a suicide—or is it? There’s no ID on the woman, and her abandoned car has been partially wiped clean of fingerprints. Judith’s search for answers leads to a human trafficking ring operating in her city…and the realization that she’s up against more than one ruthless foe, perhaps even someone on her own force. Can Judith stop the traffickers and find a killer…before more lives are destroyed?

Landing page with buy links:

https://misteriopress.com/bookstore/fatal-escape-a-c-o-p-on-the-scene-mystery/

—

Kassandra Lamb

Retired psychotherapist turned mystery writer, lover of all things

chocolate, and author of the Kate Huntington Mysteries and the Marcia Banks & Buddy Cozy Mysteries

Co-founder of misterio press LLC <https://misteriopress.com>  ~ Author

Website <https://kassandralamb.com>

 

What’s in a Character Name?

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Dear  Stiletto Gang Readers: I am pleased today to welcome Author Annette Dashofy to The Stiletto Gang blog. I’ve beta read her Detective Honeywell series and all I can say is you’re in for a roller coaster ride treat!  ~ Donnell

Annette Dashofy

Most writers I know share one common problem. Character names. Not only do we need to create a name that feels “right” for that character, we need to make sure it doesn’t break any of the “rules.”

For instance, we shouldn’t have multiple characters with the same first initial. In the real world, you might have Sharon, Susie, Stephanie, and Sandra all in the same room and be able to tell them apart, no problem. But in a book, readers tend to see the first letter and skim over the rest, causing confusion. This is one of the things my critique buddies almost always catch. The guilty party then bangs our head against the table.

The dreaded duplicate first initial issue becomes even trickier when writing a series. I’ve had a character from an earlier book…one I never planned to have show up again…return and come into close and frequent contact with another character created in another earlier book…and they both have the same first initial. And since they’ve already been established in a published novel, I can’t change either name.

Adding to the befuddlement are town names. In my Zoe Chambers series, one of my regular secondary characters is Detective Wayne Baronick. Wayne works for the county police department, which is based in Brunswick. Yes, Baronick works in Brunswick.

Why did no one point this out to me before publication? Now I have to live with it.

But I’ve upped the ante with my new Detective Honeywell series, which is set in Erie, PA. One of the main characters is Emma Anderson, a recent transplant to the city. Yes, Emma now lives in Erie. This is bad enough, but Emma has a friend from back home, named Eric. (Do you see where this is going?) Eric is a very minor character in Where the Guilty Hide. He lives back in Emma’s hometown and only appears in phone calls and texts. As I created him, I had no plans to bring him back in future books. But I’m working on the second in the series, and Eric has insisted on becoming a bigger character. So now I have Emma and Eric in Erie.

Just shoot me now.

Another issue with character names crops up when the writer discovers the name we’ve chosen is already taken by some celebrity who may not appreciate a namesake who’s a crazed killer, even a fictional one. I do my best to Google the names I choose, especially for the despicable bad guys.

I don’t think there’s a name out there that hasn’t been used.

Honestly, I had big plans to avoid all these pitfalls when I started writing the Detective Honeywell mysteries. Take Matthias Honeywell and Emma Anderson for example. Emma Anderson was my maternal grandmother. I always loved her name. And I don’t believe any of her heirs will sue me for using it.

Emma (the character) has a sister named Nell Anderson. Nell was Grandma Emma’s nickname. (Her middle name was Nelena.) So, I got two characters from one grandparent.

But where on earth did Matthias Honeywell come from, you ask?

A few years ago, I fell into the trap of signing up for Ancestry and was immediately hooked. As I researched my family tree, I discovered Matthias Honeywell was my five-times great-grandfather, who served in the Revolutionary War. Being a war hero was cool enough, but the name? Matthias Honeywell? I knew immediately I had to use it!

Even as unique as it is, I still managed to write myself into a first-initial corner. Matthias’s partner in the Major Crimes Unit is Detective Cassie MALONE.

Matthias and Malone.

I give up.

Fellow writers, do you have character name horror stories you could share? And readers, do these things trip you up when you’re immersed in a novel? (If so, I’m deeply sorry.)

About the Book: On the shore of Lake Erie, Pennsylvania, a body lays half hidden, the waves slowly moving it with the rising tide…

In the early morning mist, freelance photographer Emma Anderson takes pictures of the rocky coastline. She moved to Erie to escape a past that haunts her but the last thing she expects to capture is a dead body.

Erie City Police Detective Matthias Honeywell has been investigating a spate of home invasions but when one of the robbery victims turns up dead, his case evolves into homicide. Emma’s first encounter with Detective Honeywell leaves her shaken when he reminds her of her ex-fiancé-turned-stalker. Matthias misinterprets Emma’s anxiety and suspects she knows more than she’s letting on.

With the threat of another murder and no obvious leads, will Emma and Matthias overcome their mutual distrust and work together to capture a killer?

About the Author: USA Today bestseller Annette Dashofy is the author of over a dozen novels including the five-time Agatha Award nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic-turned-coroner in rural Pennsylvania. Her standalone novel, Death By Equine is the 2021 winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for excellence in thoroughbred racing literature. Where the Guilty Hide (One More Chapter/HarperCollins UK, January 20, 2023) is the first in her new Detective Honeywell series set on the shores of Lake Erie.

 

 

A Good Use for a Dead Darling – Catriona McPherson

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Sparkle Abbey’s guest – Catriona McPherson

 

I was at a two-and-a-half hour Zoom meeting earlier today (the UK Society of Authors’ AGM) and in the montage of the year’s highlights there was a wee tiny clip of another Scottish writer, Damien Barr, talking about how he no longer minds cutting stuff out of his drafts, now he’s published, because he can always return to the cut subject in blogs.

How, how, did that never occur to me in the course of writing thirty novels and mourning the stuff that ended up in the bin?

So, Stiletto Gang, here goes: you are the captive audience for my first resurrected-darlings blog post. Hope that’s okay.

SCOT IN A TRAP (Last Ditch Motel Book 5) is set in the present day but it concerns a time almost twenty years ago when Lexy Campbell was a school and then a university student, falling in (and out) of love for the first time. I wrote her first date, her first [billowing curtains] and the party at which her romance hit the skids. Inevitably, in the over-written first draft, I catalogued everything she wore. (I say “inevitably” because, if anyone can write about twenty years ago and not get there by visualising the fashion,  I never want to go shopping with them.)

In the first draft, however, I made a rookie mistake. I cast my mind back. When I was at school, we were in the height of  New-Romanticism. We crimped our hair, sewed brocade on shoulders and tied scarves round our legs. (Why did we tie scarves round our legs? We had necks.) By  the time I got to university, I was dressing like Bruce Springsteen: sawn-off checked shirt, tight jeans, work boots. I stole my dad’s old cardigans. He didn’t mind: he had moved on to fleeces because it was modern times.

The trouble with mining these memories for Lexy’s look is that she’s twenty years younger than me. Oops.

So, in the second draft, she had ironed hair and wore low-rise boot-cut jeans, hanky tops, and rocked many a barely-there sandal – remember those bloody things? Like a slice of toast with a single piece of string glued to it?

She also wore the ubiquitous gap-year chic of a dress and trousers. I still remember the first time I ever saw someone in a dress and trousers. It was one of my students at the University of Leeds – literally just back from her gap year. Note, I don’t mean a salwar kameez; lots of Pakistani diaspora women wore them throughout my childhood in Edinburgh and, in Leeds, men wore them too. But a western dress over wide-leg jeans? Mind blowing. That was the first time I ever felt old. I genuinely thought she’d been in a rush that morning and got mixed up about what she meant to wear. Like the time I put my skirt on the ironing board, left the iron to heat up, grabbed some toast, brushed my teeth, put my coat on and went to work.

Once I’d got used to the idea, I embraced the dress and trousers trend enthusiastically. And Lexy looked fantastic in the second draft, wearing hers. She was slightly under-dressed in the third draft and, by the time I’d got to page-proof stage, I wasn’t relying on clothes to ground the story in its time at all, which freed up her fashion choices to play a role in the plot. (No spoilers.) It was fun while it lasted, though.

Have you got happy memories of the fashions of yore? Anything you swore you’d never wear and ended up loving? Anything you still swear you won’t be caught dead in if it comes back? I’m not sure I could go round by flares for a third time, but you never know . . .

 

SCOT IN A TRAP

A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group – a bouncing baby girl.

But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it. Menzies Lassiter has only just checked in. When resident counsellor Lexy Campbell tries to deliver his breakfast the next day, she finds him checked out. Permanently.  Shocking enough if he were stranger, but Lexy recognises that face. Menzies was her first love until he broke her heart many years ago.

What’s he doing at the Last Ditch? What’s he doing dead? And how can Lexy escape the fact that she alone had the means, the opportunity – and certainly the motive – to kill him?

 

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s detective stories, set in the old country and featuring an aristocratic sleuth; modern comedies set in the Last Ditch Motel in fictional (yeah, sure) California; and, darker than both of those (which is not difficult), a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers.

Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Lefty, the Macavity, the Mary Higgins Clark award and the UK Ellery Queen Dagger. She has just introduced a fresh character in IN PLACE OF FEAR, which finally marries her love of historicals with her own working-class roots, but right now, she’s writing the sixth book in what was supposed to be the Last Ditch trilogy.

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com