I’ve always wanted to write a country song. I love country music and how artists tell stories with such few words set to beautiful music. Over the years, I’ve put pen to paper and attempted to write a poem that could possibly morph into a song. There’s just one little problem … I don’t hear ..read more

The song from The Sound of Music kept popping up in my head as I struggled to choose a title for this blog, which will be my last for Ladies of Mystery.  I started writing these shortly after the first book in my Edmund DeCleryk mystery series, Murder in the Museum, was published in early spring, 2018, and other than missing one a while back, I’ve managed to write every month for the past six years. You’ve read not only about my books, investigative procedures and writing processes, but also what it’s like to live in the northern Finger Lakes region of New York, our travel experiences and ..read more

by Margaret Lucke Is it hot enough for you? Here where I live in Northern California, we’re sitting under a long-lasting heat dome—heat meaning 100° and more. And we’re not alone. Most of the country has been enduring extreme weather this summer—ultra high temperatures, severe thunderstorms, tornados, the season’s first destructive hurricane. But at least we don’t have to endure oobleck. Have you ever encountered oobleck? It’s green, sticky, relentless. It gummed up an entire kingdom and brought all activity to a halt. As a little kid, I loved the stuff. I discovered the green goo in a book ..read more

by Janis Patterson Everyone agrees that every genre story has to have a hero/protagonist, which means that it also needs a villain/antagonist. Both are needed to create conflict, which is what the story is about. One thing most people do not admit is that while the hero pretty much has to be human or at least act in a fashion that humans would find sympathetic, the villain/antagonist does not have to be human or sympathetic. It only has to be someone/something that prevents the protagonist from attaining his goal. Plus, just to make it easy for writers (not!), the villain has to have his own a ..read more

I am doing something I haven’t done in some time. I am trying to write a 70k+ book in a month. I want this book off to my critique partners and beta readers by the first of August so I can have it polished and uploaded for release before I leave on a month long vacation the middle of September. Have I put a lot of pressure on myself? Yes! But it will be worth it to be between books while I’m enjoying my vacation. Most writers know about the saggy middle. It’s where in the middle of the book, sometimes it feels like the pacing has slowed or the story doesn’t feel as fresh and vigorous as it sta ..read more

Working Backwards When people find out that I write the occasional mystery novel, the most common question I get is “so do you write the ending first and then work backwards?” So, for anyone who might be wondering if I did that with “Art of the Chase,” the answer is no. However, I didn’t quite write it from beginning to end either. You could say I did it sideways, from the middle out. Where Is the Middle Anyway? For me, a mystery turns less on the beginning or the ending and more on the little bit of information that’s so interesting and surprising that it allows you to see certain things abou ..read more

A few days ago, I took a tumble in the parking lot of the San Jose Kaiser Permanente. While I don’t advise it, if you have to take a fall, try to do it in the parking lot of a hospital. Within seconds about 12 doctors, nurses, and orderlies came running. They were all very concerned about me. I, on the other hand, sat there wondering how I was going to get up. Getting up from the ground at my age is not always the easiest thing to do and it certainly isn’t the most graceful. It may have taken four nurses and orderlies to do it, but they hauled me up and took me to ER where I was diagnosed wit ..read more

Mom would have been 100 years old this summer. The year she was born, Calvin Coolidge was president, having taken that office on the death of Warren G. Harding. Seventeen presidents later, Mom was still hanging in there. We hoped she would make it to that centenary celebration. We were planning a hell of a party! But she didn’t. Her mind and wit were still sharp—her body was wearing out. Though Mom didn’t get a 100th birthday party, Aunt Flo did. Mom was the baby of the family and Aunt Flo was seven years older. They were the only two siblings remaining of six brothers and sisters. That year ..read more

THE MYSTERY IN MY LIFE             I grew up reading my mother’s Agatha Christie novels, losing myself in idyllic English villages where everyone knows each other, sprawling manor houses with hidden passageways, and luxurious seaside hotels that reminded me of the England I’d left behind when we’d immigrated to Canada.  With each book, I took on the challenge of matching wits with Miss Christie, ever hopeful that this time I would identify the murderer.  However, the real mystery in my life was my own family.    &n ..read more

Ever one to try something new, I leaped on the AI-generated illustration wagon. I chose an ethical provider, one who has asked permission from those owning the rights to their photographs and one who pays when those photos are used in a mashup (Note: I licensed all of the pictures used in this blog). As you may or may not know, depending on your relationship with your covers, finding the perfect illustration or photograph can take endless hours of wandering through providers and then sometimes settling or buying rights to multiple photos and cobbling them together to create the cover you envis ..read more