Tag Archive for: Marilyn Meredith

Planning Ahead for a New Rocky Bluff P. D. Mystery Debut

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I don’t have a cover yet, but the the title is Dangerous Impulses. This follows No Bells which centered on Officer Gordon Butler, whose romantic interest is the major suspect in murder case. He risks his life and his job to prove her innocent.

For those who might be interested in catching up on the series, my whole idea when I wrote the first one, was to show how the job of being a police officer affected the family and what was going on in the family affected the job.

When I wrote, Final Respects, I had no idea it would be the beginning of an on-going series.

When I’d finished writing, I realized that I wanted to know more about these people who lived and worked in the small southern California beach community of Rocky Bluff.

Though the characters continue, different ones have starring roles. In Bad Tidings, Lt. Gilbreath often has to be the bearer of bad tidings and receives one of his own.

Fringe Benefits is about a very bad cop. It is also the introduction of Officer Gordon Butler, who has become the favorite of fans of the series.

Officer Stacey Wilbur plays an important role in Smell of Death and it is the beginning of the romance between her and Detective Milligan.

No Sanctuary is about two churches, two ministers, two wives and one murder. Officer Stacey Wilbur, Detective Milligan and Gordon Butler play interesting parts, and Stacey begins her extra job in vice.

An Axe to Grind is about the death of a stalker. For those following Stacey and Doug Milligan’s romance, things are definitely heating up.

Stacey is so busy planning her wedding she isn’t paying enough attention to the job–and there almost isn’t a wedding in Angel Lost.

And of course, No Bells, where Officer Gordon Butler puts his job on the line in his efforts to prove his lady love innocent.

Of course all these books are available in the usual places in paper and ebooks.

Just remember, I wrote them as F. M. Meredith, which is a whole other story.

Marilyn aka F. M. Meredith

Thanksgiving Traditions

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Traditions
in my family have changed a lot over the years. The earliest Thanksgivings I
remember were at my Grandparents’ home in South Pasadena. Grandma cooked the
turkey, my mom and aunt helped with the side dishes, Grandpa carved and we ate the
feast at an elegantly set table in the dining room. My sister and I were never
allowed to wash or dry dishes because we might have broken the China. (Do you
think our feelings were hurt?)
This was at my mom’s on Thanksgiving morning, a long time ago.All the kids in picture are now grandparents.
At some point the holiday gathering
changed to my parents’ home and as I remember it was after I was married. The
dining room was smaller, but we managed to fit everyone around the table. My
dad carved the turkey and yes, my sis and I were not only allowed to dry the
dishes, but wash them too.
I remember one Thanksgiving that I had
at our home in Oxnard. No way could our big family fit in our small dining
alcove so the tables were set up in the living room. I’m sure I cooked the
turkey and perhaps my dad did the carving since he was the “expert”. What I do
know is my aunt brought her wonderful green beans (not the casserole that’s so
popular these days but fresh green beans cooked with bacon and fresh mushrooms.)
She also brought the candied sweet potatoes—no one could make them like she did.
My grandparents, parents and aunt have
all passed on. My sister now lives in Las Vegas with most of her large family
and I’m here in the foothills of California with part of my even larger family.
Usually the dinner is at our house because the dining room is bigger with a
large round table, and if there are more than 12 we can set up another table
nearby.
We’ve had many people joining us for
Thanksgiving dinner over the years. Many of the traditions have changed.
Because there are so many and I don’t want to spend the whole time in the
kitchen, I serve the meal buffet style with paper plates. 
Different members of the family
bring something. This year, my daughter will do the potatoes—mashed and sweet
potatoes. I cheat and buy the turkey gravy in the jars—it tastes much better
than mine.  I’m going to make the green
bean casserole everyone wants these days. I always make the dressing and will
again. One of my granddaughters will make the pear, cream cheese and  green Jell-O that was always my mom’s
contribution. We’ll have store bought rolls, 
lots of olives and pickles, and I’ll make some chocolate pies and
probably buy some others.
Joining hubby and me this year will be
our son, my daughter and her hubby, their daughter (our granddaughter) and her hubby,
their three teenagers ( our greats) and the three young men who live at their
house one is another grown grandson who belongs to our youngest daughter, a
young man who was a foster kid  and had
nowhere to go when he aged out of the system, and another young man whose
step-mother decided she didn’t want him around anymore. (He’s still in high
school.) Needless to say my granddaughter and her husband are big-hearted.
I know I don’t need fancy place
settings, just lots of good food for this crowd.
In 2011 we broke tradition and went to another daughter’s for Thanksgiving, hubby and I are on the end, right side.
After we’ve eaten, those who want can watch
football games, the rest of us will play Estimation—the card game my mother and
father loved to play—and has continued on as a Thanksgiving tradition.
So what about the rest of you, anyone
else have some non-traditional traditions?

How Can it be November Already?

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It is hard to believe, isn’t it? Today is the specified day to vote–though there were some early voting days. Because of the disastrous storm, voting may be impossible for some. I mailed in my ballot a couple of weeks ago though because of the way they do it these days, we’ll know who the president is long before the polls have closed in my home state, California–Alaska and Hawaii are in the same predicament.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost their homes in the devastating storm. It’s difficult to even imagine how horrible it was and will continue to be for a long time.

Writing and promoting seems so insignificant compared to what is in the forefront of our minds right now, but that what this blog is all about.

I’ve been busy as I always am. I’ve been promoting a scary supernatural mystery that’s out on Kindle, The Devil’s Foothold. It’s nothing like anything I’ve written lately–and getting it on Kindle was an adventure and wouldn’t have happened without a lot of help.

I’m in the process of reading–and the rewriting and editing–my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery to my critique group. I’m also writing another Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel. In my spare time (that’s a joke) I’m going over my first published book, an historical family saga, to be published on Kindle.

I’m headed north to Redding for an Author’s Festival this weekend. My daughter is going to drive and we’re calling it an adventure since it’s about a 6 hour drive.

And guess what, since it’s November, I need to start thinking about Thanksgiving. Yep, I’ll be cooking like I usually do.

And we all know that the best movies come out in November and December–so I’ll try to squeeze in a couple.

Here’s the cover for The Devil’s Foothold, hope it’s not too scary for you.

The Devil’s Foothold

Marilyn

Most Fun Book Launch Ever

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One of my friends who is also a big fan of the Deputy Tempe Crabtree series kept begging to be a character in one of my books. “I don’t care if I’m a murderer or if you kill me off, please put me in a Tempe book.”

I finally obliged her. I didn’t use her name, but I put all the rest of her in–her personality, her looks, her passions, her house,  and her dogs. The character Miqui Sherwood is really my friend. Miqui and her dogs are an important part of the story.

The book was at the publishers and ever so often, my friend would call, “Is the book here yet?”

We planned a  book launch at our local Inn (there’s one in the book) that had just reopened. I made postcards for us both to send out and big posters for the Inn to display. I got a piece into the newspaper and promo was on the radio about the launch.

In the meantime her doctors gave her the devastating news that she had a rare form and most difficult type of cancer with a 50/50 chance of cure. She began radiation and chemo treatments. The book came and she began reading a copy. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d be feeling well enough to enjoy the launch.

Her last chemo treatment was the morning of the launch. She arrived soon after I’d set up the parlor of the Inn with my books and a delicious cake decorated like the book cover. I need not have worried, she looked and felt amazingly good.

Most of the people who came were her friends. I talked about her part in the book. She said she was amazed by how much I knew about her. And by the way, she loved the book and her party. She signed the books right along with me.

After the launch was over, a bunch of us stayed at the Inn and had a lovely dinner.

It was great event in many ways, and most of all that my friend had such a good time.

Marilyn



Raging Water
Blurb: Deputy Tempe Crabtree’s
investigation of the murder of two close friends is complicated when relentless
rain turns Bear Creek into a raging river. Homes are inundated and a mud slide
blocks the only road out of Bear Creek stranding many—including the murderer.

I know there are some
people who like to read a series in order, but let me reassure you that every
book is complete. Though the characters grow through each book, the crime is
always solved. Here is the order of the books for anyone who wants to know:
Deadly Trail, Deadly Omen, Unequally Yoked, Intervention, Wing Beat, Calling
the Dead, Judgment Fire, Kindred Spirits, Dispel the Mist, Invisible Path,
Bears With Us, Raging Water.

Bio:
Marilyn Meredith is the author of over thirty published
novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the
latest Raging Water from Mundania Press. Writing as F. M.
Meredith, her latest Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel us No Bells, the forth from
Oak Tree Press. Marilyn is a member of EPIC, three chapters of Sisters in
Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety
Writers of America. 

Marilyn borrows a lot from where she lives in the Southern
Sierra for the town of Bear Creek and the surrounding area.

The Blessing and the Scary Part of Having a Big Family

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We have been blessed by four new great-grandchildren in the last four years.

Jaslyn who is now 4 (she’s named after her daddy, Jason)

Justice, Jaslyn’s baby brother

These two charmers belong to granddaughter, Merenda, and I don’t get to see them often enough.

Aleena was just born a week and a half ago, nearly 9 pounds. All went well, until she came home from the hospital. She spiked a fever and had to be rushed back to the hospital. She was dehydrated, not getting enough milk. She, mama and daddy spent two days and two nights while the doctor’s ran all sorts of tests.
Granddaughter, Jessica, lives all the way in North Carolina. I can tell you we all did lots of praying.

This picture was taken when she got back home. She looks as happy as I’m sure her mommy and daddy were.

The next week, great grandson, Julius (I year) had to have an operation to take a cyst off his forehead.

Julius before his surgery

In the recovery room

When he woke up all he wanted was his daddy and his bottle.

His daddy, Nick, is the grandson we raised from age 11 to 22.

Julius is doing fine now. But again, it was a lot of trauma for a one week period. We get to see Julius a lot, and he’s a tough little guy.

All together we have 13 great-grandchildren. The eldest is 19. Lots of blessing.

Marilyn

Need to Take My Own Advice

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Managing our time has been a frequent topic on this blog. I’m always quick to give advice on the subject. This week I realized that I need to heed what I spew out to others.

One thing I gave up doing long ago was housework. The last few years I’ve had someone in the family who needed extra money and was willing to clean my house for me. I still do touch-ups and clean bathrooms that need that extra scrub.

Right now I’m gearing up for the launch and promotion of the 8th in my Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series due out sometime this month. To categorize what kind of book it is, I call it a cozy police procedural. Though it’s pretty far along in the series, I write each book as a stand-alone so it isn’t necessary to read the books in order. I’m setting up the in-person launch at our local used book store. There are no other bookstores within an hour plus driving time.

But what’s really been taking up time is that I decided to plan my own blog tour. I now know why those who do this professionally charge as much as they do. First you have to find blogs who are willing to host you–and ones that might get a bit different traffic–and coordinate the dates. I always ask them what they’d like me to write about so that each post will be different. The group I gathered together came up with some splendid topics and interview questions. Then, of course, I had to write the posts and add all the information about my book, send them to the appropriate person along with my book cover and a photo of me. This time instead of sending my usual photo, I sent a different one for each post.

This will be happening during the month of April and a couple of days into May. To add to the craziness, I also signed on with eight authors to do another blog tour right in the middle of mine. This one will only last eight days, but it will be labor intensive. I’ll be busy promoting all these blogs and doing all the needed commenting.

This month I’ll be attending Epicon which is the convention for E-published authors and E-publishers in San Antonio. I’m giving a presentation on blogging and blog tours. My publisher is attending so I’ll also be spending some time with her. Soon after returning, I’ll be heading for Left Coast Crime. I’ll get home just a couple of days before my blog tour begins.

Somewhere in all this I need to be working on my latest manuscript.

Poor hubby, he’ll be disappointed if I don’t take a day now and then for us to head to town, have lunch out and take in a movie. He’s going with me to San Antonio so maybe that will count for some of our together time.

Like someone commented on a earlier post, my “me time” is when I’m writing.

One other thing I can’t miss is the fact that Dancing With the Stars is soon to begin. I can pass up a lot of reality TV, but I love Dancing. Hubby likes it now too, so that’ll be part of our together time.

Next month I’ll let you know if this has all been way too much for this great-grandmother to cope with.

Marilyn

Ways to Keep Your Mind Young

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I would never tackle writing how to keep yourself looking young though I do think there are some things that help. One that really doesn’t help are facelifts. Egad, some of the beautiful movie stars have ruined their faces and no longer even resemble themselves in their attempts to look young. But that’s a whole other article. What’s wrong with wrinkles anyway? Most of your friends know how old you are, so it’s weird if you don’t have any wrinkles. However, you can quit wearing the same hairstyle you wore back in high school, and I don’t think it hurts to color your hair. If you are one of the fortunate ones whose hair turns a beautiful shade of white, leave it along, but mine is a most yukky mixture of grey and brown–and so I’ve decided to be a redhead.

Oh, my, I’ve really gotten off track, I really wanted to write about things that you can do to keep your mind young. Most of my Stiletto gang members don’t have to worry about any of these things yet, but I think there might be one or two readers who are closer to my age bracket.

A big thing is to get out of the house once in awhile. For writers this isn’t the easiest thing to do. Most of us would like to devote our days to sitting in front of the computer and hanging out in the worlds that we create. And the older I get, the more I want to do this.

Fortunately, I have a husband who likes to get away once in awhile too and we both love to go to the movies and have a nice meal out.

We also like to leave our mountain abode and head over to the coast once in awhile. Often it’s to visit our kids who live in Southern California, at other times we’ll go to the Central Coast, often for something to do with book promoting. We’ve made lots of good friends in that area of all ages who we like to spend time with or to be correct, with whom we like to spend time.

And that leads me to another point. It’s important to have friends of all ages. When I was young, I had a lot of older friends, especially writer, writers I learned a lot from or (from whom I learned a lot.) Now I’m the older one and I have a lot of young writer friends. I hope I’m as helpful to them as my older friends were to me.

I belong to the same critique group I joined way back in 1981. Of course many of the faces have changed, but there are still two of us from the original group. We have three younger women now who are a delight to be around–plus they keep us on our toes, pointing out things hat have changed. Plus they are a lot of fun. We held a couple of our writing meetings at Starbucks recently and had a great time chatting before we got down to business.

Hanging out with kids helps too. I’m fortunate because I have a big family with lots of grandkids and great grandkids of all ages. I also teach a Sunday School class with kids from 2nd to 6th grade. Big range, but the older ones help the younger ones. It’s a great way to learn what problems kids face today–much bigger ones than I faced way back when.

And then there’s reading. I like to read all sorts of books though I’m partial to mysteries. I loved the Help, book and movie, brought back lots of some unpleasant memories of when I lived in the South. I also loved the three The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books, and all three of the movies–and the American version of the first one. I recently finished Stephen King’s long, long story about President Kennedy’s assassination, which was far more than that and yes I loved it too. I read all of those books on my Kindle, though I have a stack of paper books in my TBR pile.

I love blogging and Facebook–not so much Twitter, though I do tweet once in awhile. I’ve always loved e-mail. And I couldn’t do without my Blackberry which I use for so much more than a phone. Hardly anyone has my phone number, just family. So I guess, the point here is keeping up with all the new gadgets and social venues helps too.

One last thing, being a part of The Stiletto Gang has been great fun for me. I enjoy reading what interests the younger generations and what my fellow writers are producing.

Anyone have any other ideas about how I can keep my mind young?

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com/

Sometimes I Wonder if I’m Crazy

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The day after Thanksgiving I jumped on a virtual tour bus with 13 other mystery authors on a 14 day book tour. Of course we started long before the tour began by sending each other information about what we wanted to be sent for each blog post, and then of course we had to comply with the requests. Some of the writers took much longer to get their information sent off. Once it was received, in my case I immediately posted it to my blog with the correct date and time for it to appear.

Once the tour began it was important to promote the blogs as much as each author had time to do it. So far I’ve been promoting my blog with the guest author and whatever blog I’m appearing on that particular day. I’ve also made an effort to visit each of the other blogs and leave a comment.

Many books are being offered as prizes on this tour and some folks who love books, especially those that are free, have begun to catch on and there names and comments are appearing on the different blogs.
For my blog at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ I asked the authors to write a post about setting. If you read each of their posts, you’ll see that none of them are alike at all. Some spoke about setting itself, others described the settings of their books. I found it fascinating.

Today I’m appearing on Timothy Hallinan’s blog http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/ he’s the author of The Queen of Patpong, a wonderful book.

We have authors of all genres within the mystery field, I think you’ll recognize most if not all of these names:
Beth Anderson, Ron Benrey, Pat Browning, John M. Daniel, Alice Duncan, W. W. (Wendy) Gager, M. M. (Madeline) Gornell, Timothy Hallinan, Jackie King, Jean Henry Mead, Mike Orenduff, Jinx Schwartz, Earl Staggs, and Anne K. Albert who organized this whole tour.

It’s been a bit of work, but I do think it’s paid off. I kept checking my numbers on Amazon for the e-book and they’ve been going down, which is a good thing.

Being with a small press (two, actually), I’ve had to work very hard to promote any of my books. The one I’ve been focusing on for this tour is Bears With Us.

Of course I’ve also been busy with in-person events, some of which I’ve written about on this blog.

All that’s left for this year is spending two days, December 9 and 10 at the Christmas Boutique at the Porterville Art Gallery from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I’ve done this several years and it’s a lot of fun. The artists who have their jewelry, cards, pottery, and of course paintings on sale are fun to chat with and their work is wonderful. It’s like going to a Christmas party that lasts for two days.

And in the mean time, I had 13 for Thanksgiving dinner, then the next day hauled the leftovers to may daughter’s so we could do it all again. (Daughter and granddaughters and great-grand daughter had spent the whole night and most of the day shopping for bargains. I was not crazy enough to do that.)

Hubby and have put up all the Christmas decorations we felt like and it doesn’t amount to much.

My collection of moose–not a collection I planned, people just kept giving them to me.

And sort of an Indian display. Oh, we have a small tree with lights that you just have to plug in and the stockings are hung on the mantel, and few other decorations here and there. But with no kids to help me decorate a big tree, not bothering with that this year.

Oh, and about being crazy? This virtual blog tour has taken up a lot of my writing time, but as I tell other authors, if you don’t let people know about your book, how will they know to buy it?

And I think I’ll take this time to wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season no matter what you might celebrate, as for me it’ll be a Merry Christmas.

Marilyn

About Reviews

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My time recently has been taken up with promoting my latest Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, Bears With Us.

This is what I’ve done so far: a book launch at our local used bookstore (we have no book stores anywhere nearby), and two days at our Springville Apple Festival (sold about 1/2 the books I did two years ago) and I just finished up on a month long blog tour.

Blog tours always take a lot of time because of the promoting, going back and comment about the comments, plus I ran a contest–the person who commented on the most blogs could have his or her name used as a character in my next book–so I had to keep checking in order to keep track of all those who commented.

Some of the bloggers reviewed my book and all of them were wonderful, but one gave away the whole ending of the book. Eeek! She’s been asked to take that line out and as I write this I’m not sure if it happened or not. Unless she does, of course, I won’t promote the blog nor will I use the review anywhere.

Through the years I’ve received mostly wonderful reviews, but there have been some that were a bit odd, a couple where I could tell the person hadn’t read the book all the way through, and once before an Amazon review gave away a surprise ending. I contacted the reviewer and she eliminated that part. What I don’t understand is why anyone would do that. I work really hard to come up with an ending that might surprise most people and putting that in a review is definitely a spoiler.

Believe me I appreciate the time someone puts into writing a review about one of my books. I’ve written lots of reviews over the years–and believe me I would never give away the ending.

Authors, anyone else ever have that problem?

Readers, how do you feel about a review like that?

Marilyn

My Take on the Publishing Game

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Most of my fellow Stiletto Gang members are published by New York publishers. I started that way–eons ago–and then the editor who signed me left the company. The one who took her place wasn’t interested in my next book. After many rejections, it was accepted by an independent publisher who really looked great–and the owner and his son ended up in jail after gambling away everything they made in Las Vegas.

I kept on writing. A mystery was signed on by a publisher I found in Writer’s Digest big market book. He did a great job of editing and formatting the book, but it turned out he was an e-publisher, one of the first. This was in the days long before any sort of reading device. It was far too hard to even order the book (I tried) and there weren’t all the ways we have today for promoting. A few years later, when the Rocket eReader came on the scene, I tried several e-pulishers. One turned out to be less than desirable for a number of reasons. Since that time, I resold that same mystery (became a series) to two different publishers, one went out of business, and now Oak Tree Press has published the whole series (Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series) and several other of my books as trade paperbacks and e-books.

My Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series also followed a bumpy path. The second, third, fourth and fifth book in the series was published as mass market by a small publisher in a nearby big city. Previously she’d published beautiful coffee table books about flying. We became friends and did promotion together. She knew nothing about e-pubbing so I still had those rights which I sold to a prominent e-publisher of that period and she brought out the first in the series as a prequel in e-book and trade paperback.

To make a long story short, the publisher who became a friend died unexpectedly. The e-book publisher put all the books out as e-books. Eventually that publisher quit the business. I met the owner/publisher of Mundania Press who is now publishing that series and bought out the other e-book publisher, so Mundania now has all those books.

Though I know that authors make more money going the Kindle route themselves, I’m quite happy to have someone else put my books on Kindle and all the other e-book sites and take care of all the other publishing chores.

Now there are all sorts of  ways to read e-books and though I’m no longer with a New York publisher, these days I don’t think it matters. In fact most of them don’t quite understand the e-publishing world yet.

Back when I was first e-published hardly anyone knew what that meant. I joined Epic which was and is the main organization for e-published authors and I learned and am still learning a lot from them.

Agents are changing their roles as they have realized that having an agent isn’t quite as important as it used to be. I heard an agent speak who is with a large agency in San Francisco. Though she’s still active as an agent, she’s also hung out her shingle to help authors promote their e-books. I’ve read about other agents who are now working with authors to turn their manuscripts into e-books for all the different e-Readers.

The bottom line is publishing has been turned upside down and as authors, we need to pay attention to what is happening.

Marilyn, who knew all this was going to happen but it took much longer than she expected.

http://fictionforyou.com/