Start the Year with a Cover Reveal!

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Presenting a new cover to the reading public is like sending a baby announcement!

It takes me nine months to write a fictional story unless research is required. Then it can take longer, like in the case of Stolen Diary.

For most of my stories, ideas simply come to me. Ideas can come while I’m fully conscious or they can reveal themselves in my dreams. Once an idea captures my imagination, I do research and start writing.

Jasmin, the young protagonist in Stolen Diary, first came to me while I was enjoying lunch at a graceful old hotel in Budapest. Classical music wafted through the lobby and restaurant. When I looked for the source of the music I saw a solitary, gray-haired gentleman playing a grand piano in the lobby.

Given that one moment of reality, fiction took over. The image of a young girl playing the piano with her grandfather came to me, which was unusual since there were no children in the restaurant or lobby. The image kept recurring for several months and that’s when I knew Jasmin’s story needed to be told. You would think that Stolen Diary would be set in Budapest, yet when I started writing, the story kept taking me back to North America – to Mexico, the US, and Canada. The closest the story gets to the image of the Budapest hotel is a scene set in the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-Lake in Canada.

The storyline of this coming-of-age novel:

  • Jasmin is gifted, but her inability to relate to others creates enormous challenges between her and her mother, so Jasmin escapes into a world of music and science. Her grandfather, who encourages her genius, becomes her closest friend and ally.

  • Stolen Diary contains family secrets and Jasmin feels compelled to uncover them. She steals her mother’s diary thinking it will reveal the secrets she suspects keep her mother emotionally distant.
  • When the diary fails to reveal its secrets, Jasmin hides it, bringing unforeseen and fateful consequences.

Jasmin’s story represents, in fictional form, a few of the struggles gifted yet socially awkward children encounter in the real world. That’s why I wrote this novel.

About Kathryn

Kathryn Lane is the award-winning author of the Nikki Garcia Mystery Series.

In her writing, she draws deeply from her experiences growing up in a small town in northern Mexico as well as her work and travel in over ninety countries around the globe during her career in international finance with Johnson & Johnson.

Kathryn loves the Arts and is a board member of the Montgomery County Literary Arts Council. Kathryn and her husband, Bob Hurt, split their time between Texas and the mountains of northern New Mexico where she finds it inspiring to write.

Photo Credits:

Stolen Diary cover by Tim Barber

Astronaut robot – “File: Experiment for studying how robots can help children learn – Shall We Play a Game? – Honda Research Institute, 2009-01-12 19.09.17 (by Steve Jurvetson).jpg” by Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

It’s A New Year With New Goals

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By Debra Sennefelder

Happy New Year!

On behalf of the Stiletto Gang I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday season and a wonderful start to 2023.

I’m coming off the holidays, a book release, hitting the halfway mark of a first draft while preparing for the release of book one in a new series. Oh, and add in goal planning sessions for the new year. Yeah, it’s been hectic.

I enrolled in an online course last month to help shore up my goal setting and time management for this new year. I’ve been doing a pretty good job the past few years but I have to admit that the past two years have been rough for numerous reasons. That’s why I decided to seek outside help. And so far, I’ve been really happy with the course and the shift in mindset of how I look at my day and how many hours I have to devote to writing and the business of writing. I also made the decision to pair down my commitments and the number of goals I set for the year and for each quarter.

While reviewing my goals, business and personal, I realized that there was something missing not only in the list for 2023 but had been missing from 2022 also. Reading. I’d let that habit slip away and I realized that I missed reading. I missed the ritual of regularly sitting down with a book I’d been dying to read with a cup of tea and Connie curled up next to me. So many nights were spent watching one too many reality shows or re-runs of Hallmark mysteries. Mornings were a rush to get the day started so I could hit my word count goal. I want that to change in 2023.

In order for that to change I’ve made a personal goal to read 24 books. That will be two books a month and I think that’s doable. I’ve even bought a journal to document my reads this year. This is a first for me and I’m looking forward to journaling about the books I’m going to read. I want to read books from: my current TBR collection (physical and e-book), my local library and there are some new releases I’m interested in. So, I want to make sure that the 24 books I’ll read this year are a mix from those three lists. Having this plan is definitely making me excited about reading this year.

Have you set a goal or resolution that you’re really excited about? If so, please share in the comments.

SLEUTHING IN STILETTO is the latest Resale Boutique Mystery series and is available from your favorite retailer.

Debra Sennefelder is the author of the Food Blogger Mystery series and the Resale Boutique Mystery series. She lives and writes in Connecticut. When she’s not writing, she enjoys baking, exercising and taking long walks with her Shih-Tzu, Connie. You can keep in touch with Debra through her website, on Facebook and Instagram.

 

They Can’t All Be Red Herrings, Right?

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By Lois Winston

I’m currently writing my 12th Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery. This one is tentatively titled A Crafty Collage of Crime. As some of you may remember, I moved from New Jersey to Tennessee a year and a half ago. Since then, many people have asked if Anastasia will eventually make the move south. My answer is an emphatic, “No!” Anastasia is a diehard Jersey Girl and will remain firmly planted in the Garden State.

However, I have decided that in this book, Anastasia and Zack will take a trip to Middle Tennessee wine country. Yes, there are wineries in Tennessee. Who knew? Certainly not me until I moved here, but it turns out that there were quite a few wineries in the area before Prohibition, and after Prohibition ended, the wine industry slowly began to revitalize. It’s now once again thriving.

Anastasia and Zack find themselves in Tennessee because Zack has accepted an assignment to photograph the local wineries for a spread in a national wine publication. Anastasia travels to Tennessee with him. Of course, she immediately discovers a dead body. (Doesn’t she always?)

Now, here’s my dilemma: I have a basic plot and characters fleshed out, but I have so many potential suspects, that I’m finding it difficult to choose which will be the killer. Any one of them would work. I’m thinking I may have to write the book several ways, with a different killer for each version, before I settle on the real killer. That’s a lot of extra work. So I’m hoping that as I continue to work on chapters, the killer will eventually reveal himself to me.

If you’re a reader, have you ever read a mystery where you thought one of the other characters should have been the killer? If you’re an author, do you always know right away who your killer will be, or does the killer sometimes change as you write the book?

Death by Killer Mop Doll, the second book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, is now available as an audiobook through Audible, iTunes, and Amazon. If you’d like a chance to win a promo code for a free download, post a comment.

~*~

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.

Happy Holiday!

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A Husband’s Tale —by T.K. Thorne

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Yes, I am Jewish and don’t “officially” celebrate Christmas, but well, I’ll let my husband tell it [except for my added comments, of course.]:

“She had me at Dickens. You need a bit of backstory to understand that.

During some of my wife’s travels earlier this year, she discovered a Dickens festival in some far away world called California. Being a wonderful wife, [this is my favorite part] and knowing my deep affinity for anything related to Charles Dickens, Mrs. Thorne started formulating a plan to get us to that festival as a way to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and my birthday. I choose not to release the number of anniversaries of the day I made my appearance on this planet, but suffice it to say this year was a milestone.

Saying I sorta like Dickens’ writing is like claiming Elmer Fudd sorta likes to hunt wabbits. I’ve read everything Dickens wrote (more than once) especially all the works regarding Christmas. Yes, there is more than A Christmas Carol, but I’ll spare you the list. I also love to watch the many, many, many versions of ACC that have been produced on film. I dare not tell you my favorite for fear of influencing you, but suffice it to say I watch them all, every year. My darling wife  [Why doesn’t he talk like this the rest of the year?] flees in distress when she hears the opening line, “Marley was dead, to begin with.” I can “hear” her eyes roll even though she may be in another room when she realizes what I’m watching.

The problem for her was to get me to the mystical land of California and keep it a surprise. I suppose after discarding the idea of using a baseball bat and burlap sack, she decided the best course of action was to just ‘fess up; she told me about the event and asked, “Would you be interested in going?” My heart skipped a beat and I tried to contain my joy. I replied, I think in an even voice, “Yes, but why don’t we go to the one here in Alabama?”

You see, I knew that just up the road in Tuscumbia, they’ve had a Dickens festival for the last eight years. It’s called “It’s a Dickens Christmas Y’all!” I discovered it in a North Alabama tourist booklet last year, but knew my wife would never want to go immerse herself in my Dickens fantasy, so I stuck the information in a drawer.

Here is where this little story reminds me of another favorite writer. Do you remember O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi? In it both husband and wife give up something important in order to buy Christmas gifts. The wife sold her long, lovely hair to buy a chain for her husband’s prized pocket watch; he sold the watch to purchase the jeweled hair combs she had long admired. The story is about sacrifice in the name of love.

In our case, my sacrifice was stifling the desire to check out Tuscumbia’s festival by tucking the brochure away and hers was a bit of her sanity in offering to go.

This story has a happy ending because we did go and both had the jolliest of times. It was the best gift I have ever received. Not only did we attend, we went in costume, which is not a requirement, but enhances the experience.

[These photos are from our return trip this year-2022.Left to right, with ghost Marley and Christmas Future, with Tiny Tim, and carriage ride.]

Thorne

There were plenty of events that catered to kids. Even though I felt like a youngster, we didn’t go to those. Instead we went to a feast on Friday night and the light and water show in the park on Saturday night. Between those two, we packed in a snack of scones, a reading of ACC, a canine costume contest, poetry, music, a carriage ride, and wandering around the town enjoying the food, the shops, and most of all, the people.

The volunteer Tuscumbia Retail Development group organizes the festival with the help of the city council. If you’re interested in going next year, give the folks there a call at 256-383-9797. They are the most sincere, friendliest, fun-loving group of ladies it has been my privilege to meet. From the moment we met, they treated us like old friends, and now we are. [Indeed!]

We will not be waiting until the Christmas season to visit Tuscumbia again though. There’s plenty to do and see anytime including the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Belle Mont Mansion, Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve, Railroad Depot Museum, and Ivy Green, the birthplace of Helen Keller. As for the Dickens festival, we’ll be there next year. Hope you will join us.

Merry Christmas, y’all!”* [And Happy Hanukkah!  …You didn’t think I’d let him get the last word, did you?]

T.K.Thorne is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her curiosity and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com

*Originally printed in The Blount Countian (Dec 25, 2019) by Roger Thorne

 

The Best Thanksgiving Movie Ever?

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By Barbara J. Eikmeier

The Last Waltz was showing at the Sunrise Theater at 730 pm on Thanksgiving night. Our hostess attends every year. I was intrigued. What movie can possibly be so great that a person would go to see it every year?

As it turns out, The Last Waltz isn’t an ordinary movie, and the Sunrise Theater experience is far from ordinary.

I was in Southern Pines, NC on Thanksgiving for the second time ever. Our friend toured us through the historic downtown, with the railroad running right down the middle of Broad Street! When we turned the corner near the Sunrise Theater, I noticed, “The Last Waltz, Thurs 730” on the marquee. I remembered seeing the movie in my previous visit, so naturally I asked, “Are we going to the movie tomorrow night?”

Southern Pines, NC 2022

The Last Waltz released in 1978. If you aren’t familiar with the story, it’s about the farewell concert performed in 1976 by The Band. After 16 years of touring, The Band had decided to retire from live performances. For their last concert they wanted something special – a celebration. They chose the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco as the venue, because that’s where they got their first big break. Then they invited other Rock and Roll legends to perform with them.

The Last Waltz, The Band – Image from wikimedia

As we filed into the Sunrise Theater with others in the 60-70 yr old set, I was amused to also see thirty-somethings and elementary school kids in the crowd. The old, refurbished theater, closed after the economic downturn of the 70s and 80s, had been saved by the community and now operates as a non-profit bringing live theater and film events to Southern Pines. Next door is an outdoor stage with a large grassy area for summer programs.

We found our seats as the lights dimmed. When The Band took the stage (in the movie) and shouted, “Happy Thanksgiving!” The crowd (in the movie and in the present-day movie theater) cheered wildly! That was my first clue that this was not going to be an ordinary movie going experience.

The audience held nothing back, hooting, hollering, cheering and whistling as their favorite singer appeared in the movie. When the camera panned in on drummer, Levon Helm, from the back of the theater a deep, masculine voice bellowed, “Yeah! Leeeeeevoooon!”

From the clusters of audience cheers we could tell where the Neil Young fans were sitting. And Joni Mitchell’s. When Van Morrison took the stage, the man two rows behind us yelled “Van the Man!” As Morrison spiked the air with his arm and kicked one more time, loud clapping and cheering filled the theater. Enthusiastic appreciation continued for Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters and Dr. John. Fans sang along with Eric Clapton and Neil Diamond. When Bob Dylan sang “Forever Young” I sensed the end nearing.  I dabbed at my tears, caught up in the moment, cheering just because those around me were cheering. It was fantastic!

When asked how long it’s been a Southern Pine Thanksgiving tradition my hostess said, “Maybe five years.” But I knew that wasn’t right because when I saw it five years ago it was “at least ten years.”

A bearded man holding his sweetheart’s hand said, “Well, I’m 30 and I’ve been going since I was a kid.”

An attractive older woman, her grey hair pulled into a long braid, said, “Pretty much forever.”

Each year the showing is free to the public thanks to sponsorship by local business, Howell Masonry. During 2020, in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, the show went on, playing on a screen at the outdoor stage.

There’s something heart-warming about being in a crowd of jubilant people. These are people who love Rock and Roll or holiday traditions or just being a part of a community. They were little kids, who had become adults and now attend with their parents and their own children.

Small town rituals are rich with material for writers. While I don’t have plans to write the Sunrise Theater into a novel, I can harvest the memory of this event for character traits (“Yeah! Leeeeevooon!”), dialog peppered with dialect, a hometown setting and a unique holiday tradition. After all, in Southern Pines they say The Last Waltz is the best Thanksgiving movie ever!

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Let Us Eat Cake

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Read more

Advent Ghosts or Who Can Write the Most Frightening Drabble?

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by Paula Gail Benson

For thirteen years, Loren Eaton has hosted an event called Advent Ghosts to celebrate the tradition made famous by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which is to entertain readers and listeners with holiday stories featuring the paranormal. Scary, spooky, or simply speculative fiction is welcome — with one required element — each story must be a “drabble,” or exactly one hundred words.

I joined the fun in 2016 with “Ever Here,” about a spouse lost in a flood who is commemorated by the remaining spouse at Christmas. During 2019, I experimented with a number of fairy tale drabbles. In 2020, I contributed “Tribute,” where an undecorated tombstone is pitied by the living and adorned by the dead. For 2021, I relied upon Icelandic legend with “The Yule Cat’s Fury.” This year, I dealt with family loss and a neglected Advent calendar in “Traditions.”

Moriah Richard’s Writer’s Digest article, “What is a Drabble in Writing?” explains: “The term itself is said to come from Monty Python’s 1971 Big Red Book, which describes a game called Drabble where players compete to write a novel. In the 1980s, the Birmingham University SF society is credited for setting the story’s length at 100 words.”

Richard goes on to note that other short forms have developed from drabble, including the dribble (55 words), the double drabble (200 words), the trabble (300 words), and the pentadrabble (500 words). She also directs readers to 100wordstory.org to read excellent examples of drabbles.

Meanwhile, I recommend that you go straight to Loren Eaton’s ISawLightningFall.blogspot.com to read a series of delightfully sinister holiday drabbles. Contributors may publish their drabbles on their own blogs and Loren will provide connecting links, or they may send their stories for Loren to post.

Reading these terrific shorts is a great way to spend an evening curled up with some hot chocolate and cookies. You can even gift the authors by providing some immediate feedback in the comments!

Better yet why not join the fun by offering your own drabble next year!

Happy holidays!

Bethany Maines drinks from an arsenic mug

Battery Life

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My battery life be like…

Whew! I rolled into November like I thought I was Rocky and I’m hitting mid-December like I’m Rocky after going the distance with Apollo Creed.  I caught the flu over Thanksgiving weekend and that took me down right when I wanted to be hard charging into Christmas decorating! Combined with my efforts to wrap up my NaNoWriMo manuscript and a couple of work projects cropping up with some deadlines and I’m now a few bars short of a full battery.  Is it possible for a human to get some sort of extended battery life?  Because that would be great.

Plug-in and Recharge

So what do I plan on doing about this flat feeling?  Well, you know what they say… It’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakatomi Towers.  So I’ll be putting on my Nakatomi Towers Christmas Party shirt and watching a few Christmas classics like Die Hard and White Christmas and then maybe eating a bunch of chocolate.  And oh yeah, doing all my last minute shopping online.  I want to shop local, but you know what else I want?  More time on the couch.

Prop Me Up Beside the Jukebox

In case you don’t know that heading refers to a country song about a gentleman’s instructions about what to do with his dead body – you can view the Weekend at Bernie’s hijinks here.  But I may have to take a similar approach to my computer.  Or at least invest in some sort of carpal tunnel wrist braces because I’ve got a fat stack of edits on a Christmas Mystery script (see the novella version below) and book three of the Rejects Trilogy that both need to be done by January.  Hee hee.  I’m sure this will end well.

What to Read

While you’re waiting to see if I crash and burn or wait breathlessly to see what the mummies and werewolves get up to in the Rejects Pack, please consider picking up Winter Wonderland.

WINTER WONDERLAND

A Holiday Adventure

When a Marcus Winter, a photographer with a bah humbug take on the holidays, meets Larissa Frost, a set designer who loves all things Christmas, sparks are destined to fly, but when a famous diamond goes missing from the shoot they’re working on Larissa finds that Marcus may be the only one who can keep her from being framed for a crime she didn’t commit.

BUY NOW

***

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 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.

Creating Colorful Characters

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For novelists, creating a memorable character that jumps off the page and into a reader’s imagination is darn hard to do. Which is why I frequently envy the person working at his desk in the other room, who always seems to be having fun.

Critters by Don

When my husband retired, people who knew him speculated on how he would spend his time once he left the company he’d founded. Write a book about his ground-breaking career? Open a restaurant? Learn to sail?

Nobody expected him to become a trash collector, but that’s exactly what he did. And then he created colorful characters from what he found.

The first creations came from a long-neglected “junk” drawer. Once he had repurposed most of that supply into a few funny faces, he expanded his search for more bits and pieces outdoors, where he struck it rich.

Don’s Doo-dads

We live near a big city park with hundreds and sometimes thousands of visitors daily: runners, joggers, walkers, golfers, picnickers, folks pushing strollers and herding children. They come to ride the zoo train, see the animals, meditate in the Japanese garden, steer the paddle boats, or simply sit under a 100-year oak and feed the squirrels.

After a day of family fun, there’s always stuff left behind: a random baby shoe or sock, an odd earring, a broken barrette, the cap from a juice drink, the innards of a smashed calculator or mobile phone. If he comes across an interesting piece of detritus, he’ll bring it home and turn it into a piece of whimsy.

Besides the stand-alone Critters, he’s made magnetic Doo-dads that can be worn on clothing or stuck on the fridge. These funny-faced eye-catchers tend to be conversation starters, which encourages him to make more. Neighbors have donated their own odds and ends, eager to contribute to the process.

DELETE, Ms. Elegant, and Bad Hair Day

With each face, a unique personality emerges. A character you might want to meet, or avoid. A face that reminds you of someone you know, or would rather forget. Sometimes I grab a magnet pin to wear, depending to my mood. Feeling spiffy? Bad hair day? Or, if the writing’s not going well, I may sport the one with the DELETE button for a mouth. Enough said.

From time to time, someone asks to buy a piece, but the creator is not keen on selling. For now, his Critters & Doodads reside on shelves and inside cabinets, and only come out on request.

Yet every time a new Critter or Doo-dad emerges from a box of junk, it’s guaranteed to bring smiles. And these days, we all can use more of those. Including novelists.

Is there a silly something that brings you joy?

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.