Tag Archive for: Carrie Mae Mysteries

Dear Brain…

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by Bethany Maines


Dear Brain,


While I appreciate
your many efforts and strong creative solutions, I would very much appreciate
it if you could focus on the problems at hand. Thanks so much.

Sincerely,
Self
I have a writing calendar that tells me what I’m supposed to
be working on. Outlining, editing, actually writing, it’s all scheduled out. Since
the release of High-Caliber Concealer,
third book in the Carrie Mae Mystery series is right around the corner
(November 17!), that means I should be busy working on draft one of book 4 – Glossed Cause. That also means that last
month I should have finished an outline of said fourth book. Do you know what I
have not completed? Yes, that’s right – the outline. I had completed  about 75% it and stopped because… Well, I don’t
hate it, but I don’t love it either. And then last week I realized what was
wrong with it. Not that I know how to fix it, but at least I know why I’m not
excited about it. So I’ve been twiddling my thumbs, enjoying the summer, pretending
that I have all the time in the world, and hoping that inspiration would hit.
Then, last night it did hit. I woke up with a fantastic idea.
For a different book.
I came up with a great idea for the sequel to my recent
release – An Unseen Current. I even
have a great name for it, which practically never happens. It’s really, really
exciting and not at all what I need. But if I’ve learned anything about
creativity it’s that if you fight it sometimes it stops all together. What do
you think? Should I work on this new idea for a bit and see if inspiration
strikes for Glossed Cause or should I
set the new idea aside and focus, focus, focus?

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of
Destiny and An Unseen Current.
 You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Loud Neighbors

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Bulletproof Mascara Villain: Val Robinson
I was kept awake last night by Nikki who is flirting with
her ex-boyfriend.  This is a problem that
I know Nikki is love with her current boyfriend – Z’ev.  Why is she behaving this way? What could
drive her into the arms of another man? How do you explain this kind of
behavior, young lady! The real problem, of course, is that writers are crazy
and we listen to all the voices in our head and sometimes the voices are quite
loud.  In this, case the edits for my
third Carrie Mae Mystery are demanding to be heard and dealt with.
In general, the edits are going quite well. Each edit is
adding the layer of depth and realism that really make a book sing.  It’s like adding jewelry to an outfit; a good
round of edits can make the entire thing sparkle.  Unfortunately, some edits can cause a chain
reaction changes through-out the book. 
Suddenly an author can find herself questioning the timeline (does this
scene need to be moved to Tuesday?), the continuity (were they eating peach or
blackberry pie before?), and worst of all – would the character really do that?
All of my characters are quite real to me. I have entire
dossiers about their past.  There are
pictures. There are idiosyncrasies and favorite swear words and moral codes and
lines that each character wouldn’t cross. But the gray areas, such as, “Would
you kiss your childhood sweetheart in the moonlight on a warm summer’s night?”
are sometimes harder to negotiate. 

But making the big decisions, like who gets to kiss who, is
why I get paid the not so big bucks. 
Although, if you want to find out if Nikki gives into temptation you’ll
just have to pick up a copy of High-Calber
Concealer in November 2015.
Bethany Maines is the
author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Dreaming

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by Bethany Maines

The other night I dreamed that fellow Stiletto Gang author
Linda Rodriguez rewrote the back-story on the main character of my Carrie MaeMystery series – Nikk Lanier. 
Nikki is a twenty-something red-headed linguistics major turned superspy
with an overbearing mother and a steady boyfriend who works for the CIA. 

Notice how none of that background
involves a whirlwind marriage and divorce from a blonde lawyer and the adoption
of an African orphan?  But by the
time my dream Linda was done that’s what Nikki had.  And in my dream, I kept thinking, “Maybe I could make the
divorce work, but what am I supposed to do with a baby?  I can’t just send it back!”  And then I woke up in a cold editorial
sweat trying to figure out I was going to jam all these changes into Nikki’s
next adventure that I’m 30,000 words into with no place to add in a spare baby.

What I love is that in my dream, never once did I question
why Linda was rewriting Nikki’s backstory, and it certainly never occurred to
me that I could just reject the edits. 
Nope, once Linda wrote it down, it was set in stone.  Never mind that Linda and I have never
actually met in person or done any writing together what-so-ever.  In my dream, the changes were done and
that was that.  The other odd thing
about my dream was the very real dual reality of Nikki’s reality.  Linda may have written it, but I
couldn’t send the baby back to the orphanage because Nikki would be upset, and
what would her friends think? 

But once I woke up, calmed down and then stopped laughing,
it occurred to me to wonder.  Do
other authors dream about other authors? 
Do they dream about their characters?  Is my brain off the deep end or just averagely crazy? We may
never know the answer to that one…

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Your Vote Matters!

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By Bethany Maines



The good news: I have a new short story coming out on Tax
Day!  Yes, that is an infamously
black day, but I thought I’d give people something to look forward to.

The bad news: 
I’m having serious second thoughts about the story title.
Up until now it’s been known rather blandly as Cops &
Robbers.  The story – part of my
Tales From the City of Destiny series – features Sam Roseberry, a Tacoma
Detective and Native American shaman in training, as he hunts down a killer
who’s been murdering people for their magical powers. Not only does Cops &
Robbers sound like the wrong genre, it sounds about as boring as butterless
popcorn. The truth is that when I’m writing, the name of the story is the
farthest thing from my mind. When I call a story something initially, it’s
usually something like, “The One With Sam.”  Which is an even less sellable name than “Cops &
Robbers.”  Once my writing group
insists on a name (apparently, “The One With Sam” doesn’t clarify things for
them), I slap a working title on the thing and move forward. Sadly, my working
titles are frequently extremely literal with a dash of cliché for easy
memorization. Sam is a Cop and people are Robbing magical powers.  One title – check. 
My first novel was called something hideous like “Espionage
Purple” and my agent delicately suggested that perhaps that maybe… er… that
wasn’t the best title for the book and maybe… er… it could be changed. To which
I said, “Oh, yes.  That’s a
terrible name.  I’d love to change
it.”  And she said, “Great, so you
should come up with some alternate titles!”  I was so crestfallen. I was really hoping she would tell me
what to call it. What do you mean I have to name my own book?!! The horror! The
suffering! I ended up mass emailing my friends and listing out words that connected
to the themes of my book. Then we all played MadLibs until we’d arrived at the
far more appropriate and fun Bulletproof Mascara.
But I have to admit that the horror of naming my own stories
remains. Toward that end I have narrowed down the field of names to a top three
and I’m hoping that you – my internet friends – will help me pick.  What’s your vote?  Which one would you want to read?

Bethany Maines is the author of The Carrie Mae Mysteries, as well as Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her at www.bethanymaines.com.  

So a Man Walks Into a Bar…

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Or
Look, it’s My New Short Story!
by
Bethany Maines

I have a theory that short stories are like jokes.  There’s the set-up that establishes
location and characters. A man walks into a bar with a duck on his head.  Then
there’s the action that moves the plot forward. The bartender says,
“Sorry, we don’t serve monkey’s in here.” And the man says, “It’s a duck.”  And
then there’s the ending. The bartender says, “I was talking to the
duck.”  There’s always more that can be added to the joke, such as
why the man had a duck on his head to begin with or who won the fight after the
ending, but the joke doesn’t really need it.  And there’s the challenge to the author – to figure out what
is the right amount of information and what is just an explanation of the why
the man is wearing a duck hat.
Tomorrow, I’ll be releasing my first e-short story,
Supporting the Girls, (available from Amazon, ibook, Barnes & Noble, and Vook) so you will be able to judge for yourselves whether or
not I selected the correct information. Supporting the Girls is a new adventure for Nikki Lanier and her covert
team of Carrie Mae make-up ladies. 
(If you haven’t read my novels Bulletproof Mascara and Compact With the Devil, you may need to understand that Carrie Mae is a
make-up corporation, specializing in at-home sales and make-up parties, that
also happens to run an organization of female operatives that help women
everywhere.)

And I may have gotten a little carried away while I was working
on my story because I also made a video. 
But when you have a “great idea for a movie” (you have to say that part
like Jean Claude VanDamme), you know a videographer, and you’re friends with an
entire karate school of awesome people, suddenly an action movie doesn’t sound
like such a far-fetched venture.  Head over to youtube to check it out!
It’s possible of course that my joke isn’t that good, or
that possibly the joke is on me, but tomorrow you will have the opportunity to
judge for yourselves and I’m hoping I hear laughter.  But… um… you did read that part about how I’m friend with an
entire karate school, right?  Let’s
just say, I’d better hear laughter. 
Leave a comment to below for a chance to win a free copy of Supportingthe Girls!