Tag Archive for: ” book talk

A Change of Scenery

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For the next few months, while Linda takes a short break, watch for guest posts featuring new books and authors. 

A Change of Scenery by Edith Maxwell

Thanks so much Linda for having me on as a
Stiletto Gang guest!

I write wearing several hats, although never in
stilettos. My late-1800s Quaker Midwife
Mysteries
are usually set in Amesbury, Massachusetts, with midwife Rose Carroll catching
babies, hearing secrets, and helping the police catch murderers.  It happens to be where I live, and I’ve done
lots of research about the town’s history.

But I – as Maddie Day – also write a
contemporary series set on Cape Cod. I often rent a Quaker retreat cottage
during the off season and spend a week alone furiously typing away at the work
in progress. The cottage is in West Falmouth, and over the years I have learned
that the town was a veritable hotbed of Friends during Rose Carroll’s era.

So I pretty much had to take her down there for
one of the books. We who set mysteries in small towns always want to try to
avoid Cabot Cove syndrome, where after a while the village gets a reputation
for being a dangerous place to visit because of all the murders.

My most recently released book is Nacho Average Murder, the 7th
Country Store Mystery (also written as Maddie Day). I took Robbie Jordan out of
southern Indiana for that story, having her return to her native Santa Barbara
for

a high school reunion. Regular readers don’t seem to mind, as long as the
author promises to return to the village for the next book.

Here’s the burb for Taken Too Soon, the 6th in the Quaker Midwife series (releasing September
8).

Quaker midwife Rose Carroll’s
maiden aunt calls Rose to Cape Cod with her new husband when Tillie’s teenage
ward is found dead. Rose and David’s modest honeymoon turns into a murder
investigation. A Native midwife and her family are among the suspects, as are
David’s own brother and a wealthy local Friend. With the help of the local
detective, Rose digs in the shifting sands of the case until the murderer is
revealed.

I love that I can research two series at once! I
wander around the beaches and the back roads. I smell the air, watch the
ospreys and egrets, see what’s growing and blooming at a certain time of year,
and of course sample locally caught seafood. Who knows, maybe Mac Almeida from
the Cozy Capers Book Group
Mysteries
will have to get out of town and venture up to Amesbury one of these books

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Agatha
Award winning author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife historical
mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries, the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries, and
award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she pens the Country Store
Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Maxwell lives with her beau
and their Energizer kitten in Amesbury, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and
wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and on
social media.

 

Art Meets Love and Murder

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Art Meets Love and Murder

by Saralyn Richard

I’m not sure when my
fascination with art began. Perhaps it was in seventh grade, when Ms. Gahagan
incorporated a fine arts curriculum into our elective class. Many students
groaned. They’d taken art class to get away from reading and writing—pounding clay
was more satisfying then. But I enjoyed learning about artists and techniques
and movements, and I fell in love with the Impressionists.

In college, I majored in
English, but my curriculum required me to choose areas of concentration for my
elective choices. I chose art history, and then my fate was sealed. From then
on, I frequented museums, admired the works of the famous and not-yet-famous
artists in my path, and even harbored ideas of “taking up” art, myself, at some
future date, when I had the time.

Over the years, I’ve been
fortunate enough to have traveled to some of the most famous museums in the
world, and each one has left its mark on me. One of the most interesting of the
small museums I’ve enjoyed is the Brandywine River Fine Arts Museum in the
beautiful and rustic Brandywine Valley, Pennsylvania. The museum highlights the
works of local naturalist, impressionist, and modern artists, particularly
those in and around the Wyeth family.



Brandywine Valley is the
locale of my Detective Parrott Mystery series, and, while MURDER IN THE ONE
PERCENT centers around the equestrian crowd, A PALETTE FOR LOVE AND MURDER
deals with the artists. The book opens with an art heist. Someone has stolen
two valuable paintings that artist Blake Allmond had earmarked for donation to
the National Arts Club in New York. Allmond is a reknown painter whose
depictions of water have earned him notoriety and fame.

Detective Parrott is
assigned to investigate the theft from the artist’s own studio, and the
investigation puts him in the milieu of artists, collectors, dealers, teachers,
and warehousers. Soon theft leads to murder, a treasure hunt for a lost
masterpiece, and a palette full of secrets.

Throughout the mystery,
readers are led to wonder at the value of art, its power to transform. If you
love exploring art museums, as I do, put the Brandywine museum on your bucket
list. If you love reading about art, check out A PALETTE FOR LOVE AND MURDER. It’s
a page-turner with a lot of ’art, a brush with death, a landscape for murder—well,
you get the picture.


 

Award-winning mystery and children’s book author, Saralyn Richard strives to make the world a better place, one book
at a time. Her books, NAUGHTY NANA,
MURDER IN THE ONE PERCENT, and A
PALETTE FOR LOVE AND MURDER, have delighted children and adults, alike. A
member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America,
Saralyn teaches creative writing at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and continues
to write mysteries. Reviews, media, and tour schedule may be found at http://saralynrichard.com, or check out her
author page at https://www.amazon.com/Saralyn-Richard/e/B0787F6HD4/ref. Now meeting virtually with book clubs and other organizations.

 

  

Lesson from Bon Jovi: “Do What You Can”

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By Kathryn Lane

When I give presentations on
writing, I’m often asked if I’ve experienced writer’s block – a slowdown of
creativity or the inability to create a new work.

When my creativity slows, I
turn to researching topics I’m writing about and that attracts my creative angels
again. But I’ve heard stories of how dreadful writer’s block can be. Truman
Capote spent the last ten years of his life speaking about the masterpiece he
was writing, a work that never materialized and possibly caused the stress that
triggered his nervous breakdown. How sad is that? 

On the other hand, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, often spoke of his inability to progress on “One Hundred Years of
Solitude.” He gave up and drove his family from Mexico City, where they were
living, to the seaside resort of Acapulco for vacation. They were just arriving
at the bay of Acapulco when he stopped the car and turned around, explaining to
his wife that he now clearly saw the premise for “One Hundred Years of
Solitude.” Skipping vacation, he drove back to Mexico City, sat at his
typewriter, and banged out his masterpiece, the novel which undoubtedly won the
Nobel Prize in literature for him.

So
what happens when a writer hits a wall?

 

Recent
news about a song in the upcoming album 

When Bon Jovi’s tour was
cancelled due to COVID-19, he didn’t just stay home and fret. No, he stepped in
as dishwasher at his JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank, New Jersey – a restaurant he
established years ago which often provides food to those in need.

 

An Instagram posting showing
him washing dishes, stated “When you can’t do what you do, then do what you
can.” That inspired him to create the song “Do What You Can.”

 

The
lesson in Bon Jovi’s action is to turn disappointment around when facing
adversity. If it’s writer’s block or any type of setback, flip it over by doing
what you can, rather than forcing yourself to do what you normally do. Until
inspiration hits again!

  

If
I experience writer’s block and turn to dish washing, I think my creativity
would return very quickly!

 

Ever
had writer’s block? How did you overcome it?




Kathryn’s books –
The Nikki Garcia Thriller series and her short story collection – Backyard
Volcano. All available on Amazon.



Kathryn Lane started out as a starving artist. To earn a living, she became
a certified public accountant and embarked on a career in international finance
with a major multinational corporation. After two decades, she left the
corporate world to plunge into writing mystery and suspense thrillers. In her
stories, Kathryn draws deeply from

https://www.kathryn-lane.com

https://www.facebook.com/kathrynlanewriter/

“If I Had Something to Say” by re_birf is
licensed under CC BY 2.0

Other photos from public domain.

Books from the Heart

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by Susan McBride

I’m kind of in a crunch this week with revisions for LITTLE BLACK DRESS due Friday (as you’re reading this!). So I’m going to make this easy on myself by rehashing a book talk segment I did for “Great Day St. Louis” on Valentine’s Day.

Since love is in the air this month, I discussed four “romantic reads,” all dealing with the topic of home and heart in different ways. Only one, ANGEL’S REST by Emily March, is considered a traditional romance while the other three are novels with romantic elements–THE GIRL WHO CHASED THE MOON by Sarah Addison Allen, THE OTHER LIFE by Ellen Meister, and THE BOYFRIEND OF THE MONTH CLUB by Stiletto Ganger Maria Geraci (yay!).

In ANGEL’S REST, Nic Sullivan is a small-town veterinarian with a broken heart. She’s divorced and semi-happily single until she rubs shoulders with hunky Gabe Callahan, a loner escaping past tragedy by hiding out in the mountains. Serious sparks fly between the two, only–sigh–their pasts and the things they don’t/can’t talk about, keep them apart. It takes a bit of angelic intervention to bring them together.

THE GIRL WHO CHASED THE MOON is Sarah Addison Allen’s third book after GARDEN SPELLS and THE SUGAR QUEEN (and her fourth, THE PEACH KEEPER, is out next month). If you haven’t read her Southern tales of home and heartache, you should. She writes beautiful prose that sucks you in, and in MOON, she gets us wrapped up in the life of a teenager, Emily Benedict, who goes back to her mother’s hometown of Mullaby, NC, to meet her grandfather and find out the dark secret that drove her mom away.

Ellen Meister’s THE OTHER LIFE is a tale of two lives, both of them belonging to Quinn Braverman. In one, she’s a wife and mother in the Long Island suburbs, awaiting the birth of her second baby and missing her deceased mother. In the other life, she’s got a high profile career and a high profile beau, a shock jock like Howard Stern, and, most importantly to Quinn, her mom is still alive and kicking. She can go back and forth to each life through a portal in her basement wall. But once the portal begins to close, she has to make a choice or risk getting caught in a life she might not want after all. (Just optioned by HBO for a TV series!)

In Maria’s BOYFRIEND OF THE MONTH CLUB, a cheating boyfriend and a really awful first date lead Grace O’Bryan to forgo the book club and start a “Boyfriend of the Month Club” with her friends. Like most things in life that we start for fun and giggles, this club turns into more than Grace bargained for. She’s got her heart in the right place, and she finally finds a man worthy of it, too!

Here’s the video in case you want to hear each summary like I’m talking to you right from your computer:


I recently did an informal poll on my Facebook page, asking friends what their favorite romantic books of all-time are, and the top five results:

1. GONE WITH THE WIND
2. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
3. WUTHERING HEIGHTS
4. THE THORN BIRDS
5. THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE

Do you agree? If not, what’s your fave? Inquiring minds want to know! (At least, this one does.) 🙂