The Waffle House

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by Bethany Maines

So, I forgot that I was supposed to blog today and instead used
my few minutes of writing time to write a scene where two of my characters go to
a Waffle House.  But as a west coast resident,
I’ve never actually been to a Waffle House. 
As a result, I spent way too much time looking at the Waffle House menu
on line and now I want hashbrowns and waffles. 
Sometimes we hear authors say that their characters speak to them.  My characters wouldn’t deign to do that.  They’re too busy talking to each other. And
honestly, if I left them to their own devices they would talk until my fingers
cramped up from trying to transcribe.  I
frequently have to cut off the conversations so that the story goes somewhere.  That’s part of the editing process, but these
conversations are excellent at helping me understand the characters.  When I discover what they find funny, what
they hate, what annoys them, and what their hard line stance is on Christmas
decorations after New Years, I can plunk them down in any situation and know
how they’ll react.  Which is how I know
that Jackson Deveraux would be quite happy at the Waffle House, but that he would
be shocked that his hoity toity grandmother Eleanor Deveraux knows to order Waffle
House hashbrowns scattered, smothered, and covered, but not chunked.  The Deveraux family is full of secrets and
surprises, but when I started writing about them I never would have thought
that hashbrowns would be one of the surprises.  The
Deveraux family, from my Deveraux Legacy, has become one of my favorite group of
characters.  They’re a very fractured
family that is struggling toward reconciliation while attempting to overcome the
periodic interruption of mercenaries, bank robbers, and greedy CEOs.

If you want to find out what the Deveraux family thinks
about Christmas décor you can check out book 1, The Second Shot, and
pre-order book 2, The
Cinderella Secret (both currently ¢.99). 
Or you can…

Enter to win a paperback copy of The Cinderella Secret on
Goodreads!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Cinderella Secret by Bethany Maines

The Cinderella Secret

by Bethany Maines

Giveaway ends October 17, 2020.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway


Or you can join the Bethany Maines / Blue Zephyr Press Newsletter mailing list and get a free copy of the prequel novella, The Lost Heir in October! 

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Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, San Juan Islands Mysteries, Shark Santoyo Crime Series, and numerous
short stories. When she’s not traveling to exotic lands, or kicking some
serious butt with her black belt in karate, she can be found chasing her
daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.

How to Craft a Mystery

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by Bethany Maines
Step One:  Read the paper and/or listen to your weird uncle
to learn about strange ways people have died recently.  This usually involves blurting out something
like “ooh, another dead body!” while snatching up the paper in the middle of
the busy hour at a coffee shop. 
Bonus Points: If
someone shuffles away from you at the coffee shop, collect an additional 20 Murderer Alert points!
Step Two: Having
decided on your method of death it’s time for research! Start googling all
sorts of things that will help you cover up your crime.  Also, go on a vacation to the place that you
plan on putting your dead body. 
Bonus Points: If
you can say “This is a good place to kill someone!” in an aggressively cheerful
manner to the person at the tourist bureau who just wants to help, collect an
additional 20 Walking Sociopath points!
Step Three: Sit
down and write the book.  This is the
boring bit, but it does come with fun voices in your head to talk to.
Bonus Points: If
you finish the manuscript, collect an additional 20 I Have No Life points!
Step Four:  Realize that there is a plot-hole in your
book and go back to step three.
Bonus Points: If
you don’t become an alcoholic, collect an additional 20 At Least I’m Not an Asshole Like Hemingway points!
Step Five: Get
your book back from the editor and give back your Hemingway points while you
try to get over the stupid, stupid, stupid edits.
Bonus Points: Look,
you’ve got a complete book at this points, you shouldn’t need stupid bonus
points, but hey, if that’s what keeps you going, then take 5 I Need a Cookie points.
Step Six: Release
the book into the wild and realize that you are a winner!
An Unfamiliar Sea will be available on 1.21.20
Tish Yearly just opened a wedding venue on Orcas Island in
Washington State and one of her employees just drowned in four inches of water.
Now it’s up to Tish and her grandfather Tobias Yearly, the 79-year-old ex-CIA
agent and current private investigator, to find out who could have wanted the
sweet waitress dead. 

AN UNFAMILIAR SEA:
PRE-ORDER NOW! 










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Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, San Juan Islands Mysteries, Shark Santoyo Crime Series, and numerous
short stories. When she’s not traveling to exotic lands, or kicking some
serious butt with her black belt in karate, she can be found chasing her
daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.

Literary Sadist: Make Them Suffer

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By Kimberly Jayne 


If there’s one thing I relish about writing, it’s making my characters suffer. Happy people with no challenges don’t inspire page turning. Movies operate on the same premise. When I watch Far from the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel of the same name, the most fascinating thing about it is that I can always ask, What bad thing could happen next? And after that, what bad thing could happen now? The story is fraught with suffering and disappointments and love unrequited times three. Exactly why I liked it. I try to do the same thing with my stories.


Does that make me a literary sadist? Probably, but I also enjoy seeing flawed characters reap the rewards derived from their most
agonizing struggles and spring from the ashes of their misery into some sort of transformative happy dance. The farther they fall, the more gratifying their rise.


Of course, making them suffer requires we hurl betrayals and terror and shock and shame and all manner of bad juju at them. Muuu-ah-ah-ah. I’m getting excited just thinking about it. And then, we make them survive. What that survival looks like is one of the most rewarding aspects of telling stories. It calls on us to look inside ourselves and imagine what we would think and do in those situations, how we would feel and act if we were brave or desperate determined enough. 


In my dark fantasy, Demonesse:
Avarus, my protagonist is the virtuous, empathic daughter of an excommunicated nun. After months of erotic fantasies, she awakens into her new life as a seductive killer powerless to resist the moon’s calling. This is everything she was raised not to be. Her idyll is shattered and she is thrust into a life-altering journey that will challenge everything she knows and mold her into the person she was born to be. It won’t be easy. The rubber bands of tension are consistently stretched and tested so this character’s story arc will be dramatic and, I hope, as gratifying to read as it was for me to write.


________________ 
Kimberly Jayne writes in multiple genres including humor, romantic comedy, suspense, erotica, and dark fantasy. Her latest foray into a dark fantasy released in episodes is as much an adventure as the writing itself. You can check her out on Amazon. Find out more about her at ReadKimberly.


Books by Kimberly Jayne:





Take My Husband, Please! A Romantic Comedy
Demonesse: Avarus, Episode 1
Demonesse: Avarus, Episode 2
Demonesse: Avarus, Episode 3
All the Innuendo, Half the Fact: Reflections of a Fragrant Liar