Writing a Series—It’s All in the Protagonist by Saralyn Richard

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Writing a Series—It’s All in the Protagonist

by Saralyn Richard

 

A man wearing a hat photo – Free On Image on Unsplash

 

I never planned to write a series. My first mystery novel, MURDER IN THE ONE PERCENT, set in the lush landscape of Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania, centered around a birthday party where old college buddies were reunited for a weekend retreat. Old flames, old rivalries, old resentments resurfaced, and one of the party-goers ended up dead.

Enter Detective Oliver Parrott, young, ambitious, and Black, an outsider in this ritzy community—the better to see through the closed ranks and subterfuge. Undazzled by materialism, Parrott keeps a dogged focus on the people who have had it in for the victim, and readers have responded to Parrott’s character in ways that surprised me.

“We want more Parrott,” I kept hearing, and I found myself wanting to stay with the well-grounded detective, as well. Since that time, I have written a three more Detective Parrott books. I’ve seen Parrott mature and marry. He’s made a name for himself in Brandywine and beyond. He’s tackled challenging cases, faced dangers, stood up for the innocent, and hounded the guilty.

Parrott and Tonya, his fiancée and then wife, make a remarkable duo. Their relationship isn’t perfect (whose ever is?), but whenever one of them needs support and a listening ear, the other is there to give them.

One of my readers leaned over the space between her seat and mine at the theater and said, “Please, please don’t ever let Parrott and Tonya divorce.” Remarks like that let me know that others are invested in my series characters as much as I am. I love spending time with Parrott and his family, as well as the recurring characters in Brandywine Valley and in the West Brandywine police department. It’s like visiting old friends and catching up on their lives.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never run out of things for them to say or do, experiences they need to have, lessons they need to learn. As in real life, there are always surprises, secrets, challenges, and joys. There are always new issues to be confronted, new insights to be gained.

In the next few months, the fourth Detective Parrott book, MURDER OUTSIDE THE BOX, will launch. Parrott is sharper than ever as he deals with an abandoned baby and the murder of a postpartum woman. Parrott’s relationship with Tonya spills over into his case, and vice versa, until the two bits of life are woven into a single fabric.

After more than seven years and twelve hundred pages spent with Parrott and his wife, I’m not sure what path their lives will take next, but one thing I am sure of—they’ll never be bored. And with so much trouble going on in the world, it’s good to have good people like Detective Parrott around to find the truth and right the wrongs.

Who is your favorite fictional protagonist?

Award-winning author and educator, Saralyn Richard writes about people in settings as diverse as elite country manor houses and disadvantaged urban high schools. She loves beaches, reading, sheepdogs, the arts, libraries, parties, nature, cooking, and connecting with readers. Look for her latest Detective Parrott mystery, MURDER OUTSIDE THE BOX, coming soon.

Visit Saralyn at http://saralynrichard.com

Guilty About Reading Genre?

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Have you ever felt guilty for reading a cozy, a mystery, or a romantic novel instead of delving into one of the great books, like Homer’s Iliad or Proust’s Swan Way or a classic like Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own?

I grew up in northern Mexico and I attended a fantastic high school that was accredited in both Mexico and the US, giving students the opportunity to attend the university in either country.

The school offered a two-semester English literature class. The teacher was a dynamic, talented woman who instilled in her students the love for the classics and the great books. She also encouraged us to shun genre and to avoid soap operas, quite popular at the time.

I moved to the US in my mid-twenties and soon discovered romance novels. After devouring a romantic story with a happy ending, I’d run to the library to borrow books by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky to balance my reading guilt. Compare the fun of reading genre to the lessons of the great books. It’s very different reading! The great books represent the foundations of Western Culture’s ethics, social norms, values, and ideas that stem from the Greco-Roman tradition. Genre, on the other hand, is pure entertainment.

Fast forward a few years when I was working in international finance and traveling the world for my corporate job.

On a flight between New York and Buenos Aires, Argentina, I missed my connection in Miami. I window-shopped airport stores in search of something to do until the next flight. A bookstore, displaying mountains of books set on tables that stretched down the hall, caught my eye.

The year was 2001 – the year I discovered the mystery novel. I purchased Tell No One by Harlan Coben and I was immediately hooked on mysteries. My new-found love in reading would disappoint my wonderful literature teacher back in Mexico, yet for the rest of my international finance career, I carried a mystery or two to read on long flights.

Mysteries became an important part of my life. So important, in fact, that I left the corporate world to write the Nikki Garcia mystery series, setting my stories in a few of those international locations where I traveled. Do I still feel guilty? Not at all!

At a book signing four years ago, I met Harlan Coben. I told him his novels influenced me to write mysteries.

And my former teacher says she loves my novels and she’s thrilled that one of her pupils became a writer. Instead of feeling like a wayward former student, I’ve converted her to reading genre.

***

About Kathryn

Kathryn Lane writes mystery and suspense novels usually set in foreign countries. In her award-winning Nikki Garcia Mystery Series, her protagonist is a private investigator based in Miami. Her latest publication is a coming-of-age novel, Stolen Diary, about a socially awkward math genius.

Kathryn’s early work life started out as a painter in oils. To earn a living, she became a certified public accountant and embarked on a career in international finance with Johnson & Johnson.

Two decades later, she left the corporate world to create mystery and suspense thrillers, drawing inspiration from her travels in over ninety countries as well as her life in Mexico, Australia, Argentina, and the United States.

She also dabbles in poetry, an activity she pursues during snippets of creative renewal. In the summer, Kathryn and her husband, Bob Hurt, escape the Texas heat for the mountains of northern New Mexico.

Stolen Diary

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSHFRD11

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Diary-Kathryn-Lane/dp/1735463833/

Photo credits:

Girl Reading by Camille Corot, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harlan Coben and Kathryn Lane by Bob Hurt

Bethany Maines drinks from an arsenic mug

Alekos!

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Alekos Now Available!

Whew!  I’ve made it to summer and the final (for now) book of my Rejects Pack trilogy.  Alekos wraps up the storyline started in the books 1 and 2 (Hudson & Killian) in what I hope is a satisfactory conclusion.  Hint: I’m trying to tell you there’s a Happily Ever After without giving away any spoilers.

Challenges

This series tested my creativity in quite a few ways.  I actually started Alekos first and then went back and wrote the first two installments.  This created a challenge in that the first two books were therefore more honed in to their themes and where they had to end up in order for book three to make sense. But that also meant that I had to a fair bit of editing on Alekos in order to make all the little plot jigsaw pieces line up.

I also started it during the pandemic and then was faced with the decision to include or not include the pandemic in the text. I ended up choosing to include it but with only light mentions rather than as a plot point.  One of the most curious things about the 1918 Influenza epidemic is that it seemed virtually unmentioned in fiction of the time.  It was certainly influential as a theme, but most of us haven’t ever read a story that features masks or other remnants of that outbreak.  When that was first pointed out, I couldn’t understand why.  It seems notable and worth a short story or two to try and capture the moment.  I did write one Covid piece of short fiction based on the drag races that sprang up during the lock downs (Fireball Rolled a Seven – Crimecucopia Funny Ha Ha edition), but writers have seen very sharp opinions from readers about mentioning the pandemic in novels mostly they don’t like it.  Reading is for escape and bringing Covid back into the escapist fantasy isn’t always wanted.  However, it was one of the hurdles my heroine had to overcome, so I left it in without dwelling on it. Hopefully, readers now have had enough distance that seeing a mention of a mask in fiction won’t send them scurrying for the door.

What to Expect

But I think I rose to meet the challenges of crafting a Indiana Jones / The Mummy inspired series that gives magical new worlds, globe trotting adventures, and mythological beings, archaeological mysteries, and one very pissed off ancient Egyptian mummy(ish) person. And I can’t wait for readers to be able to share the complete (for now) adventures of the Rejects Pack.

Pre-Order / Buy Now: https://amzn.to/3l32CAL

Learn more: https://www.bethanymaines.com

About Alekos:

Alpha wolf, Alexander Ash has forged a family dedicated to finding a cure for the magical wasteland that has stretched across Greece since the devastating Night of 1000 deaths. But on the brink of finally being able to right the wrongs fate has dealt, Alex meets translator Eliandra Smith and finds himself called to her in a way he can’t explain. But as Lia is swept into Alex’s world of mystical beings, magic, and deadly ancient wars, they soon discover that she is tied more closely to his past that she could have imagined. And Alex discovers she might also be the one thing that can kill them all.

**

Bethany Maines is the award-winning indie and traditionally published author of romantic action-adventure and fantasy novels that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind-end. She can usually found chasing after her daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel or screenplay.

The 5-Letter Word that Sends a Shudder of Anxiety Through Most Authors

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By Lois Winston

By nature, many authors are loners. We spend a good deal of our lives sitting in our writing caves, pecking at our keyboards. Survey any group of authors, and most will tell you the worst part of being an author is having to do promo. That’s the infamous 5-letter word of the title in this post.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an indie author, published by a small press, or with a major publishing house. Unless you’re one of the very elite (think Janet Evanovich, Nora Roberts, or James Patterson), you have to do most or all of your own promotion. Even the big names need to promote their books, but they do it through book tours with PR reps managing all the details and doing the heavy lifting.

I’m someone who has vowed to be the last person on the planet not sucked in by most social media. You’ll never find me on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. I do have a Twitter account, only because my former publisher insisted, but I rarely remember to tweet anything. When I do remember, it’s never anything controversial, political, or personal, so chances of one of my tweets going viral and resulting in new fans and increased books sales is as unlikely as a rose bush growing at the North Pole.

However, back when I was traditionally published, I used to enjoy giving talks to library groups, book clubs, and other organizations. Covid put an end to that but ushered in the age of Zoom talks.

I’ve participated in several of these Zoom events, and I’m participating in another at the end of the month. On Tuesday, May 30th at 7:30-9:30pm EDT, grab your favorite beverage, settle into your comfiest chair, and hop online for a fun evening of laughs, Q&A, games, prizes, and more with some of your favorite mystery and suspense authors. All are welcome. And best of all? It’s FREE! All you have to do is register.

During this fun event, you’ll be able to Zoom around the various “rooms” where you’ll find dozens of authors happy to chat with you. I’m pairing up in one room with my fellow Booklover’s Bench blogger Maggie Toussaint (appearing under her new Valona Jones pen name for this event.) You can find a list of other attending authors here. Scroll down the page for the registration form. Hope to see you there!

Post a comment for a chance to win one of several promo codes I’m giving away for a free download of the audiobook version of Decoupage Can Be Deadly, the fourth book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series.

A Crafty Collage of Crime, the 12th book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, will release on June 16th. Learn about Anastasia’s new adventure, read the first chapter, and find pre-order links here.

~*~

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Hudson!

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Hudson is Released into the Wild!

It’s release day for Hudson, book 1 of the Rejects Pack.  This archaeological thriller / paranormal romance melds all the booby trapped tomb adventures of Indiana Jones with some shifter wolves, flirtatious banter and tosses in some evil warlocks and a mysterious mummy for good measure.  So in some ways today is the day that I find out if everyone else finds that as fun as I do.

What Readers Are Saying

Part of book marketing is to send “Advance Reader Copies” or ARCs to individuals who will read and review a book–hopefully early, and hopefully with something quotable.  When I first got into publishing I had no idea what an ARC was and spent weeks scratching my head until someone actually used the entire phrase. Fortunately, for Hudson, the advance reviews are looking quite positive. I can only hope that they continue on the same trend. All of the Rejects Pack boys have been fun to write and I’m even thinking about keeping the series going, so I hope that it’s well-received.

The Inspiration for Hudson

In case you haven’t guessed, I like action-movies and sparky couples who serve up quips and flirt their way through dangerous escapes. And for the Rejects Pack series I definitely set out to write a series with those kind of main characters.  So, if you like action-packed romances, angry Egyptologists, shifter wolves, and ancient booby-trapped tombs, then you will also love Hudson, book 1 of the Rejects Pack.

Learn More or Buy Now:

Hudson on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3l32CAL

Enter to Win a Print Edition of Hudson: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/365402

Watch the Promo Video: https://youtu.be/S7u4J8J9WWE

**

Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of action-adventure and fantasy tales that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind end. She participates in many activities including swearing, karate, art, and yelling at the news. She can usually be found chasing after her daughter, or glued to the computer working on her next novel (or screenplay). You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.

Researching Retirement: Starting a New Series

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By Sparkle Abbey  

Spring is here! Trees are blooming, tornadoes are popping up throughout the country, and we’re knee-deep in the first book of our new series. Last month we shared our adventures in researching retirement communities and how we landed on our own fictional 55+ community, Shade Palms. This month we wanted to talk about retirement challenges both fictional and in real life.

You’d think with one of us recently retired, we wouldn’t need to research retirement life. But we didn’t want to rely on just our experiences. We want to write authentic, multifaceted characters that our readers can relate to. While chatting with other retirees and hanging out in Facebook Groups, we quickly realized our real-life retirement challenges were mirroring our fictional characters.

We don’t know about you, but in our thirties and forties, talk about retirement life was typically filled with thoughts of long lunches with friends, bucket-list vacations, and taking up all those hobbies we never had time for. Turns out, it’s not always that simple. Don’t misunderstand us. We are having those long lunches, (Well, one of us is. The other one is still working toward retirement.) and we are taking those vacations (Look out Scotland, here we come!), but somehow all that time we thought would magically appear…well, it just isn’t there.

Establishing a new routine has been tough. Committing to regular exercise, spending more time with family and friends, writing, road trips, home projects, decluttering, and fitting in a new business venture hasn’t been as easy as it seemed. More to come next month about our newest business and how it fits perfectly with our new series!

Anyway, we’ve decided the secret to a successful retirement transition is to create a routine, remember what’s important, and adjust everything! It sounds so simple, but in practice, it’s been a learning experience. Sometimes frustrating, mostly fun, but always a work in progress.

At this point, we have characters at Shady Palms who are recently retired and are struggling to switch off the work mode. We have others who are struggling to find a purpose and are looking for ways to re-invent their life. And of course, our characters want meaningful activity to fill their time. And tracking down killers is certainly one way to fill up their day!

Because what’s life without a little adventure!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us and get updates about the new series, please sign up for our newsletter here: SparkleAbbey.com

sparkle and abbey

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people: Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mysteries series. They are friends as well as neighbors, so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)
They love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. You can also follow them on BookBub to be notified when there are special offers.

Two Things, Two Places, All at Once

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Glitz and glamour. Politics and power. Winners and losers. Millions of people tune in to watch the spectacle that appears on our television screens once a year: The Academy Awards.

As with almost everything else these days, the entertainments we each choose to watch have become more and more disparate. Also, movie stars rarely awe us in the same way they used to do. What was once a common annual viewing ritual seems to have lost its place as a shared social and cultural experience.

Back in my Hollywood days, I walked the red carpet. After leaving my acting career behind, I began work at AFI (The American Film Institute), where I learned what good movies are made of. So last Sunday, as always, I watched the Oscars, even though I hadn’t seen any of the nominated films.

A popular game begins immediately afterward, when the critics—amateurs and professionals alike—have their say about the bests and worsts of the broadcast. Most vocal among them are the grumblers who debate the worthiness of the winners. Coming in a close second are those who critique the female attendees’ fashion choices, which put me in mind of the dress I once wore to the Oscars.

The morning after the broadcast, I dug deep into storage to search for it, and also for the printed program from that night, both of which I thought I had stored together. Found the dress, and a couple of old Polaroids of me wearing it, but I didn’t find the program. I don’t remember the exact year it was, or who the nominees and winners were. (I’m sure selective memory is at fault here. Those years were not among my favorites.)

But here’s the dress: a flowered silk jacquard overlaid with gold thread in a Paisely pattern. Still looks new, though I no longer weigh the ninety-eight pounds required to fit into it.

I am late to the party in seeing this year’s nominated films, but I do want to see them, hopefully in a movie theater, the way the are meant to be seen. Though the trailer for the big winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, looks somewhat headache-inducing, I’m willing to brave it anyway, because I’ve heard that it portrays life in multiple universes, a subject that intrigues me.

Which brings me back to the dress I wore on the red carpet, long ago. When I peer into the photos of me in it, I feel lightyears and multiple universes removed from the person who wore it. Still, I want to find that missing Oscars program, if only to confirm how far I’ve time-traveled beyond those show biz days.

When did you last watch the Oscars? Did you see any of the winning films and performances this year?

Gay Yellen is the award-winning author of the Samantha Newman Mystery Series, including The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and the upcoming Body in the News!

 

 

 

Focus by Debra H. Goldstein

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Focus
by Debra H. Goldstein

Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash

Focus. From a writer’s perspective, the word embraces a simple but necessary concept – concentrating on the task at hand. It sounds easy: pay attention and the idea will be conceived, executed, eventually published, and promoted. But, that’s not how the real world works. Life offers each of us major distractions. How we handle them and retain our focus determines if an individual will be a wannabe or an author. Have you had things or issues disrupt your focus?  How were you able to get back on track with your writing?

 

Judge, author, litigator, wife, step-mom, mother of twins, and civic volunteer, are all words used to describe me. My life and writings are equally diverse. I’m the author of Kensington Press’ Sarah Blair mystery series. Sarah, like me, is a cook of convenience who might be scorched if she gets too close to a kitchen. One Taste Too Many, published in January 2019, was picked as a Woman’s World Book of the Week. The next three books, Two Bites Too Many, Three Treats Too Many, and Four Cuts Too Many were each named as Silver Falchion finalists. The fifth book in the series, Five Belles Too Many, released on June 28, 2022.

I am an active civic volunteer in Birmingham, Alabama and have served on the national boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, as well as being past president of the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and Sister’s in Crime’s largest chapter, The Guppies.

Fences
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by Saralyn Richard

 

Do good fences make good neighbors? In the past few months, I’ve gained new neighbors on either side of my house. There’s a brand-spanking-new fence between my yard and that of the neighbor to the north. There’s no fence between my yard and that of the neighbor to the south. I love both sets of neighbors. We’ve shared lots of visits in our front yards, several barbecues and parties, baked goods, pets, children, home improvement advice, and more. They may be pine, and I, apple orchard, but I enjoy spending time with them and being part of their community.

Robert Frost’s MENDING WALL is one of my favorite poems. His last line is the source for my opening question. I find a lot of wisdom in this poem:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

The same analogy applies to my relationships with fellow authors in The Stiletto Gang. I may be police procedural and they cozy writers, but we have much in common, and we can help each other every time we meet to walk the line and re-build the wall (which might just be the website). I’m grateful for my neighbors, my Stiletto Gang colleagues, and everyone who reads this post. May all your walls be mended, and may all your neighbors be good.

Galveston Author Saralyn Richard

Award-winning author and educator, Saralyn Richard writes about people in settings as diverse as elite country manor houses and disadvantaged urban high schools. She loves beaches, reading, sheepdogs, the arts, libraries, parties, nature, cooking, and connecting with readers.

Visit Saralyn and subscribe to her monthly newsletter here, or on her Amazon page here.

 

Valentines, Shmalentines

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an email that opened with this: “Not interested in Valentine’s content?” It continued, very sympathetically: We understand this time can be tough. If you would prefer not to receive Valentine’s Day emails this year, you can opt out by simply clicking below. With love, your Etsy friends.

The whole thing made me wonder. Are American consumers so delicate that we can’t deal with Valentine’s Day if we’re without a valentine of our own? Will retailers now follow suit and spare people who are sadly bereft of a mother from the onslaught of Mother’s Day marketing? Or offer non-holiday shoppers relief from the five months-long Christmas advertising blitz?

Valentine’s Day has murky origins. Apparently, there were three different men named Valentine who achieved sainthood. Their individual stories differ, and are not particularly romantic. However, regarding the celebration of love on February 14, there’s this: In the Middle Ages in England and France, that date was commonly believed to be the start of mating season for birds, and thus, a day for romance. Somewhere along the way, those sexy Greek and Roman gods, Eros and Cupid, added their classical spice to the mix.

The oldest known valentine still in existence is a poem written in 1415. I haven’t been able to find the original text, so it may or may or may have gone something like this: Roses are red, violets are blue, thou hast the face of an olde cockatoo.

Times have changed, and romantic love has taken a beating in the past few decades. While I understand the yearning for a knight in shining armor who gallops across the moat carrying a dozen perfect red roses and a two pound box of Godiva, most princesses have moved on toward the notion that true love comes in different flavors, and doesn’t always arrive in the form of a macho man on his high horse.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

More and more women are celebrating Galentine’s Day. Marketers have picked up on the vibe, offering “Cupid is Stupid” specials at taverns, restaurants, and entertainment halls. At least one establishment in town advertises a special axe-throwing night for women only. Makes me wonder what shape or form the axe’s target resembles. Also turns my imagination toward a great plot idea for a Rom-Com Crime story.

This year, the Houston Museum of Natural Science invited its members to contemplate the mutual attraction of our Earth and Moon (above). They also encouraged those of us among the Valentine- or Galentine-perplexed to “Take a Bite out of Love” by giving our special someone this: a cockroach that can be cherished, or squished like a bug, according to your heart’s desire.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

Valentine’s and Galentine’s Days have another sibling. It’s called Palentine’s Day and it gives us all a chance to tell our best buddies that we love and appreciate them. I like this choice the best.

So today, I wish everyone—my readers, friends, family, and colleagues alike—a very Happy Palentine’s Day!

What’s your favorite thing to do on February 14th?

Gay Yellen is the award-winning author of the Samantha Newman Mystery Series, including The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and the upcoming Body in the News!