Hop! Hop! Hop!
March
23, 2014
My friend Bart
Gilbertson, author of DEATHBED AND BREAKFAST, a Pookotz Sisters Bed and
Breakfast Mystery, asked me to participate in a Blog Hop. You can read his Blog
Hop entry HERE. The rules of the Blog Hop are that I need
to answer four questions and then bounce the blog and the questions on to 3 or
more of my author friends. In a week’s time, they post their own blog answering
the same 4 questions and then bounce the blog on to 3 or more of their author
friends…and so on. Sounded like fun to me! And it's all right with Josephine and Solow.
I
am currently struggling—I mean working on my sixth novel in the Josephine
Stuart Mystery Series. I am seventy percent finished. It’s that pesky thirty
percent I still have to invent. I finally know who the killer is and the book
title will most likely be “Roller Rubout.”Yes, the story takes place at the
roller rink where Josephine is painting a mural. Painting giant letters
spelling words to the Hokey Pokey song is the most boring work she has ever
been hired to do. Her hired painters end up doing most of the work while
Josephine snoops around for the killer of the former owner of the roller rink.
Question
2: How does my work
differ from others of its genre?
My
protagonist is a fifty-year-old widow who paints murals for a living. Like
Jessica Fletcher, every new mural environment has a dead body. Unlike Jessica,
Josephine drives a red Mazda pickup and wears colorful, paint-smeared clothing.
She is a down-to-earth gal, quick to judge and even quicker to seek justice for
her friends. Her side-kick is a basset named Solow who can sniff out the bad
guys in a crunch. Unlike “Cabot Cove” type small town cozies, Josephine is all
over central California—-sometimes by choice, but not always.
Question
3: Why do I write what I
do?
I
spent my life painting, murals mostly, until arthritis forced me to quit. But
the urge to create was still strong. I took creative writing courses and nine
years ago I started my first novel, “Secure the Ranch.” When the book was
finished I immediately started another. Writing can be frustrating, but like
painting, it is an outlet for my creative juices such as they are. I am working
on my sixth book in the Josephine Stuart Mystery Series and I’ll keep writing
until I run out of juice. I have more fun writing than old ladies should be
allowed to have, and I try to write some of that “fun” into my books. Beetles in the Boxcar is a lot of fun and it's free from Kindle March 27 to March 31.
Question 4: How does my writing process work?
My
teachers recommended outlines, but that never happened for me. I start with one
sentence and elaborate on it until I have a full story. I set up an unusual
murder situation and then I figure out who did it and why. From start to
finish, I imagine my readers trying to figure out which of the many suspects is
the real killer. Sometimes I can’t decide who done it until the book is nearly
ended. I picture in my mind the characters as if I were watching a movie or TV
show. I try to write everyday, even if it’s only a paragraph. I like to work
hard in my garden, and when I am physically exhausted, I settle into my chair
and write. Sometimes it flows, other times I just correct parts already
written. So far I have five books on the market, Secure the Ranch, Read My
Lipstick, Shaking in Her Flip Flops, Cuckoo Clock Caper, and Beetles in the
Boxcar. Now let me introduce some of my wonderful writer friends.
Lyla Fox is the author of
MURDER ON CINNAMON STREET, a Shaky Detective Mystery, and SNOOP, a Small Town
Gossip Mystery—both published by Cozy Cat Press.
When Lyla was very young she
read the Nancy Drew series. She fell in love with Nancy and her “boon
companions” and actually wrote to Carolyn Keene. She got a letter back and
treasured it, carrying it around and showing it off for six months. In
the letter the author said something to the extent that Lyla was a good writer
and should keep it up. Over a decade later, when she learned that there
was no actual Carolyn Keene, the damage was already done. She’d been
convinced that a writer was within her.
Cozy Cat Press Author, Christian Belz has been a practicing
architect in Metro Detroit for 28 years, with experience in retail,
educational, and industrial projects. He is Vice President of Detroit Working
Writers. He won the Grand Prize in Aquarius Press's 2011 Bright Harvest Prize
for his short story "Chambers". Christian's fiction has appeared
in Writers' Journal, The Story Teller Magazine, and
Wicked East Press's anthology: Short Sips, Coffee House Flash Fiction
Collection 2. His poetry has been published in WestWard Quarterly and
Yes, Poetry. His latest accomplishment is a cozy mystery, THE ACCUSED
ARCHITECT, a Ken Knoll Architectural Mystery.
Author Elissa Grodin has
written a mystery published by Cozy Cat Press CCP, called PHYSICS CAN BE FATAL.
Her second book in this series is nearly finished, in which the movie director,
Alfred Hitchcock, figures into the plot. Elissa has a strong background in film
studies, and has published on the subject. In her second Edwina Goodman
mystery, the plot revolves around the Film Studies Department at the college
where Edwina teaches. Ms. Grodin lived in England in her 20s, and wrote for the
Times Literary Supplement as a freelance journalist. She later moved on
to children's books, and has had six children's books published, the most
recent being C Is For Ciao, a picture book about the history and culture
of Italy.
Author Jacob Appel has
written many books, but his latest is a cozy mystery called WEDDING WIPEOUT, a
Rabbi Kappelmacher Mystery. Jacob remembers being a young child in a commuter
suburb watching the men and women – but mostly men – disembarking from the
evening train after long days at their offices in New York City. They looked so
miserable, so Cheeveresque in their suffering. He determined at that moment
that he would never live in a bedroom community and spend his days pushing
papers in circles. The only occupations he knew of as a child that didn’t
involve the rat race were medicine and writing. Jacob is relieved to say that
he is both a physician and a novelist—and he hasn’t travelled by commuter train
in over fifteen years.
Well,
there you have it, my first attempt at a Blog Hop. I hope you enjoyed getting
to know me a little bit more, and I hope you’ll follow along on the blog hop
with my friends as well. It’s time to bounce out for now…
Hop…hop…hop…
Thank you, Bart for a hoppy hoppy good time!
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