Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Ahoy, JInx Schwartz!



Howdy, friends. Welcome to THE JOY OF STORY. Today you’ll have the joy of meeting mystery fiction writer Jinx Schwartz, and hearing her story, and hearing about how she crafts her stories.



Raised in the jungles of Haiti and Thailand, with returns to Texas in between, Jinx followed her father's steel-toed footsteps into the Construction and Engineering industry in hopes of building dams. Finding all the good rivers taken, she traveled the world defacing other landscapes with mega-projects in Alaska, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Like Hetta Coffey, the protagonist in her mystery series, Jinx was a woman with a yacht—and she wasn't afraid to use it—when she met her husband, Mad Dog Schwartz. Together they opted to become cash-poor cruisers rather than continue chasing the rat, so they sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, turned left, and headed for Mexico. They now divide their time between Arizona and Mexico's Sea of Cortez.

John: Welcome aboard Jinx. And thanks for spending some time with us. What an adventurous life you lead! How much of your past shows up in your fiction? How much of your present?

Jinx: Ah, the age-old question for a writer: what is the relationship between truth and fiction?

In my case, the edges blur. As with most writers, I take a truth, embellish it greatly, and come up with fiction. In the case of Land of Mountains (Finalist for 2012 EPIC Award for best YA), I pulled events from my childhood in Haiti, slathered it with a whole lot of fictitious, mysterious adventure, and came up with a fictography (a term I blatantly stole from the back cover of John Grisham's A Painted House.)

Lizbuthann, who moves to Haiti as a ten-year-old, spends the next two years coming of age, along with her best friend Doux Doux Boudreaux, in a village fraught with voodoo goings-on, political unrest, and a really pesky zombie.  She lives in an era when, even in a country such as Haiti, little girls were free to ride their horses through jungles and indulge in a great deal of snoopery. Her idol is a comic book character, Brenda Starr, star reporter. They both have red hair and spend endless hours prying into to others' business. Problem is, Lizbuthann (her real name is Elizabeth Ann, but no one in her native Texas says it that way) doesn't have a mystery man to bail her out of the messes she gets into.



John: Jinx, would you call yourself a stylist? Or better put, how would you describe your writing style?

Jinx: I would describe my writing style as breezy. I like lots of narrative (first person) and badinage between my characters. I also love crafting a one-two punch; when the reader is laughing, I hit them with an unexpected punch line. Writing Lizbuthann's take on life, from the point of view of a young girl thrown into a totally foreign situation, was a lot of fun. The fact that she is a bit precocious and incorrigible in an innocent kind of way made it even better.

Writing in first person narrative comes naturally to me, since my friends all tell me I'd talk to a fence post. That said, though, my favorite writers are Larry McMurtry (for his sense of history and humor) and Lee Child, because we all need a Jack Reacher in our lives. 

John: I guess we all need a bit of Jack Reacher, though that’s a far reach for me. Perhaps I could use some Hetta Coffey in my life. Tell me about her.

Jinx: Like Land of Mountains, my Hetta Coffey mystery series can also trace its roots back to fact morphed into fiction.

Years ago, when my dog upped and died, leaving me with a three-story, empty house, I bought a forty-two-foot yacht and moved aboard. In Just Add Water, Hetta, with zero experience in boating, does the same thing. Her adventures during the next four books find her sailing off into hot Mexican water (Just Add Salt), running afoul of a drug cartel in the Sea of Cortez (Just Add Trouble), and bucking up against human smugglers, and worse, on the Mexico/Arizona border (Just Deserts).

Hetta is a woman with a yacht, and she's not afraid to use it.

So, back to your original question, “How far from the truth are my fictional novels?”  Only The Shadow knows.

John: Thanks for such a sparkly conversation, Jinx. Now let us know how we can find your work. I’m sure lots of readers want to meet Lizbuthann and Hetta.

Link to buy all of my books: www.jinxschwartz.com

Land of Mountains  is available in ebook formats and print. I have a direct buy link for all formats on my website   www.jinxschwartz.com

Link to my blog:  http://bit.ly/qpLEeY



A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

PLEASE WELCOME EARL STAGGS




Today’s guest for the Mystery We Write blog tour is Derringer Award winning author Earl Staggs. Earl has seen many of his short stories published in magazines and anthologies. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine and as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His novel MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews online at Amazon and B&N. His column “Write Tight” appears in the online magazine Apollo’s Lyre. He is also a contributing blog member of Murderous Musings and Make Mine Mystery. He hosts workshops for the Muse Online Writers Conference and the Catholic Writers Conference Online and is a frequent speaker at conferences and writers groups.  Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net  Website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com



John: Welcome, Earl! Glad to have your smiling face before us.

Earl: John, you gave us interesting questions for our appearance here, and it was good mental exercise to come up with answers about things we don’t think about on a regular basis. Exercise, whether mental or physical, is a good thing, so thanks for that.

Here are my responses to some of your questions.  I hope your readers find them interesting.

John: What is the relationship between fiction and truth?

Earl: The foundation of mystery fiction is a simple truth:  “Committing a crime is wrong.”

We write mystery stories to illustrate that truth. We could stop writing stories.  Instead, we could print posters with those words on them and staple them to every tree and fence post. That would place the truth out there for all to see.  It would not be very interesting or entertaining, however, and certainly not the most effective way of illustrating the truth. When we see the same words over and over again, they become invisible.

So we create fictional stories about the countless number of crimes that can be committed, the countless ways of solving those crimes, and we create a myriad of fictional investigators and sleuths to follow the clues. If we do it in an interesting and entertaining manner, we have done our job much more effectively than those millions of posters. Our readers come away from our stories satisfied that our good guys have bested the bad guys.  They may not realize that all we’ve done through fiction is drive home a simple truth.

John: We’re often advised to write about what we know about. How does this work for the mild-mannered mystery writer who never saw a corpse or has never been hassled by the cops?

Earl: “Write what you know” may apply to non-fiction and some mainstream fiction, but not to mystery.  If it did, only cops and criminals would be writing it.  When the rest of us write mystery and crime stories, we open the door to our imagination and pull out an ingenious crime. Then we leave the door open until we find a clever way to solve it.  We don’t need to have experienced it personally.  We only need a fertile imagination and the will to write it as it could happen.

John: Are you proud of your style? If so, why? What’s special about the way you use language?

Earl: People often tell me my writing is lean and clean and free of excess wording.  I take that as a compliment and I’m proud when I hear it.

I try to use simple, everyday words.  Strunk and White taught me not to use a twenty-dollar word when a ten-center is handy, ready and able.

I didn’t begin writing that way, but little by little, I found myself comparing what I enjoyed reading to what I was writing.  I preferred reading when an author pared down to the fewest and most exact words possible. Over the years, I’ve tried to learn to write that way.

John: Which is more important to you as you write: memory, research, or imagination?

Earl: No question about it.  Imagination. Every story begins with an idea. That idea may be based on something from memory or may require some amount of research, but that only plants a seed.  From that seed, it’s a matter of letting imagination fertilize the idea until it grows into a complete and satisfying story.

John: Great answers, Earl. You’ve given us a lot of tips, and a lot to think about, too.

Earl: Thanks for the opportunity to visit here, John.  And thanks for inspiring me to exercise. I really need to do more of that.

Now, to everyone who read all the way to here, you’re invited to drop by my Blog/Website at: http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com and visit with my special guest for the day. 

While you're there, you can read Chapter One of MEMORY OF A MURDER, my first mystery novel, which earned thirteen Five Star reviews.



Also while you’re there, don't forget to sign up for the drawing on December 9. The first name drawn from those who leave a comment will receive a print copy of MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of an ebook or print copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of sixteen of my best short stories.



A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.



Monday, November 28, 2011

A Visit with Anne K. Albert

Greetings, friends. Today’s guest blogger on THE JOY OF STORY is Anne K. Albert. As you know if you’re following this blog these days, this blogsite and yours truly are participating in a 15-day whirlwind tour called MURDER WE WRITE. All of us here on the tour bus are grateful to Anne for organizing this tour and making it move along so smoothly. She’s a great tour guide!



Anne K. Albert’s award winning stories chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul…all with a delightful touch of humor. A member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it's a given she'd write mystery and romantic suspense. When not writing she loves to travel, visit friends and family, and of course, read using ‘Threegio’ her cherished and much beloved Kindle 3G!

By the way, some recent-breaking news: Anne’s novel, DEFENDING GLORY, was chosen by iBookBuzz to be Book of the Month of November 2011 in the Inspirational Category. Congratulations, Anne! And welcome to THE JOY OF STORY!



John: Anne, welcome aboard!

Anne: Thanks for featuring me today, John. It’s Day 4 of the second 2011 Mystery We Write Blog Tour and I’m thrilled to be here. I understand you’ve got a few questions and want to interrogate, um, I mean, interview me. Let’s do it!

John: What is the relationship between fiction and truth?

Anne: Fiction is often based on reality, but unlike the real world and its truths fiction has to make sense. Mystery readers, in particular, read to experience a story world where justice prevails and the villain gets his comeuppance. It’s a perfect world order!

John: We’re often advised to write about what we know about. How does this work for the mild-mannered mystery writer who never saw a corpse or has never been hassled by the cops?

Anne: Okay, who told you I squirm at the sight of blood?! Was it that nurse? The one who giggled when I looked away as she took a blood sample?
Seriously. She had no right to tell on me. So yes, that’s a true story, and I’m a wimp in real life. Still, I murder people, bury their bodies, all in the name of mystery.

One of my favorite quotes about this disconnect between the real person and the writer is attributed to W.P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe (on which the movie Field of Dreams was based). He basically said you don’t have to commit suicide to write about it.

Let me repeat that. You don’t have to commit suicide to write about it.

I agree!

That said, I also believe each writer chooses the genre that best fits their personality. I write cozy mysteries and sweet romantic suspense stories with a sprinkle of humor. Bottom line, I write the kinds of stories I enjoy reading. Because I don’t want explicit or graphic details in the books I read, I do not include them in my books. The intimate, graphic and horrific stuff that happens in the real world occurs behind closed doors in my stories. I have to stay true to myself.

John: Are you proud of your style? If so (and let’s hope so!), why? What’s special about the way you use language?

Anne: I wish I knew! Seriously. I just put words to paper, then revise and edit until my eyes bleed. (Slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.) Thank goodness my readers and reviewers like what I’ve done.

Here’s one reader’s comment: “Anne K. Albert's clean and precise style is a refreshing change from the clutter of other writers. Her wit shines through this lightly suspenseful novel and her characters ring sweet and true. Can't wait to read more about Muriel, Frank and the rest of the gang.”

Diana Coyle at Night Owl Reviews said, “This author knows how to entertain her readers and keeps them wanting to turn the page to see what happens next. If you’re looking for a story with a little bit of humor, a whole lot of suspense and plenty of insanity, then you’ve found the perfect story. I’m highly recommending this story to other readers and I’m definitely adding this book to my library. You won’t be disappointed buying this book or others penned by this author. Great job, Ms. Albert! Keep the stories coming!”

Frank, Incense and Muriel also received the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit. J

John: Wow. I am seriously impressed! You have earned credits and credibility. And while we’re riffing on the letter C, Can you name six essential ingredients of mystery plot that begin with C? (Extra credit for more C’s.)

Anne: What fun! Okay. Here goes. (1) Catalyst, (2) Character, (3) Conflict, (4) Challenge, (5) Change, (6) Consequences, (7) Clues, (8) Crisis. I’m sure there are more, but I’ll stop before I (8) Confuse everyone. ;-)

John: Which is more important to you as you write: memory, research, or imagination?

Anne: Imagination, hands down. I do my best to stay inside the character’s head. It’s important that I experience everything they see, hear, feel, taste and smell because like them I have no idea what will happen next. Yes, I am a pantser, and proud of it! Having said that, I’m certain the characters themselves don’t think of this as imaginary! It’s as real to them as it is to me. J



John: Tell us about Frank, Incense and Muriel. It sounds like a fine book to promote at this time of the year.

Anne: Frank, Incense and Muriel is the first book of my Muriel Reeves Mysteries. It’s the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with her sexy high school nemesis, now an even sexier private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse.

John: Good luck with the book, Anne, and with all you’re writing. Thanks for all you’ve shared with your friends and fans today, and thanks again for making Murder We Write such an enjoyable tour!

Anne: Thanks for featuring me today, John.  Readers can read a sample of Frank, Incense and Muriel here: http://amzn.to/pg67sx.


I’m also on Facebook www.facebook.com/annekalbert and Twitter www.twitter.com/AnneKAlbert.

I’d like to encourage readers to enter my comment-to-win contest.
CONTEST DETAILS: Three names will be selected at random from comments on all 14 of Anne’s Mystery We Write Blog Tour guest appearances. Winners will receive an e-copy of FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL, book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. Visit http://tinyurl.com/3hzpqvv for her schedule and contest details. Good luck!

Meanwhile here’s a buy link for Frank, Incense and Muriel: http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Incense-and-Muriel-ebook/dp/B004CLYDRO/



A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Welcome Beth Anderson!



Today I’m proud to present my guest Beth Anderson, Beth Anderson  a multi-published, award-winning author in several genres, including romance and  mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, Beth now lives in Washington state. She has appeared on Chicago's WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University, Moraine Valley College, and many libraries and writers' conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz. Her website and blog are at http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com .



I asked Beth several questions and suggested that she choose one or a few. She chose three, and came up with some fine answers.

John: What makes your protagonist unique? What are his or her passions? Does she or he have flaws?

Beth: In RAVEN TALKS BACK I have two protagonists who share alternating chapters. The book begins and ends with Raven Morressey’s first person chapters so she is my main protagonist, although Jack O’Banion, Valdez, Alaska’s chief of police, plays an equally important part in his third person chapters.   

Raven is an Alaska Native, Athabascan tribe, who is married to a Caucasian male.  They live in Valdez, Alaska with their three children. Although Raven lives in her husband’s world, she still retains a lot of her heritage, even though she was college educated in the lower forty-eight.  She loves her sixties-to-eighties music  and she’s a great gourmet cook, which will show up more in the second book of this series (as yet untitled).  I don’t see her as having many weaknesses at all, since she’s basically  a very strong woman, but at the beginning of this story, one weakness would be that she trusts her husband even though his recent actions have begun to baffle her. However, even though she is at first blind to her husband’s secret life, she’s forced by events beyond her control to acknowledge that she has also been hiding things from him.

John: What are your feelings about love and sex in fiction? Are they essential to plot and character development?

Beth: I think it depends entirely on the book. With romances, there are no holds barred anymore in so many books, but I mainly, in fact almost exclusively, read mysteries.  I think that it does help to make characters more sympathetic if they love somebody, but I’m not convinced it’s important to add actual detailed sex scenes.  Some like that, some don’t.  If there’s a good reason for one, fine, and some authors do quite well at that, but when a writer adds sex into a book where there’s no reason for it, I have to question why the author did that. The thing is, there’s a subgenre for that, Romantic Suspense. Readers know that if they buy a romantic suspense novel there’s probably going to be a lot of sex. What I dislike is when a previously established no-nonsense mystery writer feels compelled to add in gratuitous sex that has nothing to do with the plot. My feeling is, if you want to write hot sex, go do it, but don’t interrupt a good mystery just to add in an unnecessary sex scene unless you’ve thought long and hard about it first.

John: Who is your favorite writer? What book made you want to be a reader? What writer made you want to be a writer?

Beth: My current favorite writer is Dean Koontz, although I haven’t read much of his stuff but I’ll catch up one day.  ;-) 

The first book that made me want to be a reader was a True Detective magazine I found under my grandfather’s bed one summer when I was about four and was furious that I could see the photos of all those murdered people, which fascinated me, but I couldn’t figure out who did it or why.  By the time I came back to their house the next summer, I had learned to read and understand what I read. After that, I read every book I could get my hands on the whole time I was growing up. 

I remember the exact book (but not the title) that made me very much want to be a writer, one written many years ago by a writer named Jacqueline Diamond, about two sisters traveling by rail on their way to Hollywood to meet up with their famous actor  parents.  I can even remember the exact scene.  It was a short scene of the two sisters sitting in their train seats and one of them complained that she hated sitting on the horsehair seats because they made her butt itch.  I laughed out loud when I read that sentence and my thought was, “This author was really having fun when she wrote this scene.” At the time I think I was eighteen, twenty, I’m not really sure, but although I had thought about writing books for years before that, it had never even once occurred to me that it was possible to have fun doing it.  But reading that book, it sounded like fun. I wanted to write from that day on, although it was years before I ever actually did.

John: Thanks, Beth, for giving those questions so much thought. I wish you great success with all your writing, and especially with your new one, Raven Talks Back.

•••

Now let’s let our readers know more about the book. Here’s the official rap sheet:


RAVEN TALKS BACK by Beth Anderson
Krill Press, ISBN 978-0-9821443-9-8

Beautiful Valdez, Alaska. Home of twenty-three-inch snow in the wintertime, but in the summertime, gorgeous mountain scenery where the early morning fog rolls down the mountainside, bringing soft whispers of the past with it. And this year...murder.

Valdez Chief of Police Jack O'Banion's take:
Voices.  Visions.  A sadistic killer running around loose, a hysterical woman, two teenagers on the verge of home-grown terrorism, everybody including the Alaska State Troopers and out-of-town media driving him berserk twenty-four hours a day. And now Raven wants him to arrest someone, anyone, because she thinks her husband is about to be charged with murder and she just can’t face it.

Raven Morressey's take:
She knows nothing she's saying to Jack makes any sense to him because it doesn't to her, either. After all, it's not every day a newly murdered, tattooed, headless and handless body is dug up in your back yard and then you start hearing voices of your dead ancestors and seeing things that never happened--at least yet. She just wants to keep her home together--at first. She's not trying to butt in and solve the murders in Valdez. But she just can't help it.

Want to get to know Beth Anderson a little better, and learn about her books? Check out these fine links:

Website:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com
Blog:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com/blog
Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/bethanderson43
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Beth-Anderson/e/B000APMRR4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Barnes & Noble:  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Raven-Talks-Back/Beth-Anderson/e/2940012515407/?itm=1&USRI=beth+anderson#MeetTheWriter
Also available at your favorite independent bookstores nationwide.



A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

INTRODUCING RON BENREY




Today my guest on the Mystery We Write Blog Tour is Ron Benrey. Ron writes cozy mysteries with his wife Janet. Ron has been a writer forever—initially on magazines (his first real job was Electronics Editor at Popular Science Magazine), then in corporations (he wrote speeches for senior executives), and then as a novelist. Over the years, Ron has also authored ten non-fiction books, including the recently published “Know Your Rights — a Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers” (published by Sterling). Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a juris doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law. He is a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.



As I’ve done with all my guests, I sent Ron a list of questions for him to choose among. Ron appears to be a thorough as well as talented writer: he answered them all! Let’s see what he has to say:


John: What is the relationship between fiction and truth?

Ron: There are many people who consider fiction “lying on paper.” They have made the mistake of thinking that truth and fiction are opposites, when actually, fact is the opposite of fiction.
Fiction has great power to convey truth. I love to quote Picasso, who famously said: “Art is a lie that makes us recognize truth.” The point is that novels can be full of truth, even though they are not full of fact. All good novels are.

John: We’re often advised to write about what we know about. How does this work for the mild-mannered mystery writer who never saw a corpse or has never been hassled by the cops?

Ron: Fortunately, the admonition to be knowledgeable does not require that we’ve lived all of the things we write about. It is possible to “know about things” by carefully researching them. Unfortunately, some mystery writers (both mild-mannered and bold) settle for inventing details they don't know anything about—and haven't researched. (Making note of what a popular TV show has to say about a topic is not research.) That’s why so many contemporary mystery novels contain incorrect police procedure, faulty details about firearms, ludicrous medical “facts,” and bizarre legal concepts.

John: Are you proud of your style? If so (and let’s hope so!), why? What’s special about the way you use language?

Ron: Yes—I am proud of my writing style. In my humble opinion, there are two aspects that make my use of language “special,” although I rarely describe myself that pompously. :)
First, I spent many years as a non-fiction writer who wrote interesting words about dull subjects (I wrote executive speeches and marketing materials—often about technology). Consequently, I know how to explain complex story details in ways that won't bore readers.
Second, during my decade as a speechwriter, I learned how to write readable, interesting, dialogue.
I hope that readers will agree with both of these statements.

John: Can you name six essential ingredients of mystery plot that begin with C? (Extra credit for more C’s.)

Ron:
Compelling—this is what it's all about. A mystery novel without a compelling plot is a merely a doorstop.
Creative—there are too many copycat mysteries extant.
Coherent––all good mystery storylines hang together.
Cheery––Janet and I write cozy mysteries, which are designed not to be taken too seriously.
Cadaverous—I believe at least one murder per mystery plot is essential.
Canonical––I believe it's important to follow the long-established “rules” of mystery fiction, the most important being that you have to play fair with the reader.
Combative—or conflict-filled (take your choice).
Cats and Canines—while not absolutely essential, the lion’s share of cozy mysteries have cats and dogs among the key characters.
Cozy—obviously for us!

John: Great answers, Ron! Somehow you came up with C words nobody else has chosen.

John: Which is more important to you as you write: memory, research, or imagination?
Ron: Imagination—because that’s what necessary to transform details drawn from memory or captured via research into a compelling story. However, I don’t want to disparage memory or research. I find that memory provides many (most?) of the unexpected details that add richness to our stories, while research is essential to expand our catalog of intriguing detail, and to ensure that we don’t make errors of fact that will stop readers cold.

John: What makes your protagonist unique? What are his or her passions? Does she or he have flaws?

Ron: Well, because we want readers to identify with our protagonists, we’re careful not to make them so unique that they are unrecognizable. However, one unusual aspect of our sleuths is that most are competent managers and/or executives. Several, in fact, operate small businesses. They demonstrate a range of different passions, but virtually all will do what it takes to defend their good reputations. And because we want them to seem real, we draw them with common flaws. Our protagonists tend to be stubborn, opinionated, a bit prideful, and perhaps overly sensitive to things that have happened in their pasts.

John: What book made you want to be a reader? And a writer?

Ron: The novel that made me a fan of fiction was “The Bobbsey Twins, or, Merry Days Indoors and Out,” the first of the “Bobbsey Twins” series written by “Laura Lee Hope” (a name of convenience given to several different authors). The book that triggered my urge to write mystery novels was “Some Buried Caesar,” by Rex Stout, the first Nero Wolfe mystery I read. Nero and Archie hooked me on reading mystery fiction. Not long after, I decided that someday I would write mysteries.

John: Great answers, Ron! You and Janet obviously love what you do and know how to do it write. So give us a sample? Tell us about one of your books.

Ron: Here is the synopsis of “Dead as a Scone,” the first novel in our “Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries” series:
Murder is afoot is the sedate English town of Royal Tunbridge Wells … and the crime may be brewing in a tea pot!
Nigel Owen is having a rotten year. Downsized from a cushy management job at an insurance company in London, he is forced to accept a temporary post as managing director of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Alas, he regrets living in a small town in Kent, he prefers drinking coffee (with a vengeance), and he roundly dislikes Flick Adams, PhD, an American scientist recently named the museum’s curator.
But then, the wildly unexpected happens. Dame Elspeth Hawker, the museum’s chief benefactor, keels over a board meeting—the apparent victim of a fatal heart attack. With the Dame’s demise, the museum’s world-famous collection is up for grabs, her cats, dog, and parrot are living at with Flick and Nigel—and the two prima donnas find themselves facing professional ruin.
But Flick—who knows a thing or two about forensic science—is convinced that Dame Elspeth did not die a natural death. As Flick and Nigel follow the clues—including a cryptic Biblical citation—they discover that a crime perpetrated more than a century ago sowed the seeds for a contemporary murder.

John: That sounds good, doesn’t it fans? And look at this handsome cover:



And of course we want to let everyone know how to get their hands on this book, so:

Buying Link:


Website Link:

New Blog Link: (Will launch on 11/1)


Ron Benrey

A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.


Friday, November 25, 2011

WELCOME PAT BROWNING!



Today I’m pleased and proud to be hosting Pat Browning, a writer I very much admire. I met Pat some years ago at a Left Coast Crime conference in Monterey, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. This year I had the pleasure of reading her wonderful novel, Absinthe of Malice, set in the city of Pearl, California. I’ve never found Pearl in my road atlas, but it seems as real to me as, oh, say...Hanford.

Pat, thanks for coming around today, and thanks for inviting me to be part of this wonderful tour. Now I’ll turn the mike over to you.

Pat Browning says:
John asks: Who is your favorite writer? What book made you want to be a reader? What writer made you want to be a writer? Good questions! Let me start with a quote that goes right along with what I’m going to say about the most influential writer I ever read and about my own writing.

“THEY SAY YOU CAN'T RUN FROM YOUR TROUBLES. But the ‘they’ who say it—they ain't American. The whole history of the country is about packing up the buckboards and getting out of Dodge before the gunfights start up again. Indians, yellow fever, gangsters, sheepherders, locusts, Baptist crusaders, the buffalo herds…there's always some kind of spur to light out and see the new territory."
—From California Country by Richard Von Busack, www.metroactive.com, a Silicon Valley newspaper

Favorite writer? Too many to name, but the most influential, hands down, was John Steinbeck. More about that in a moment.

I’ve always been a reader. My mother claimed I learned my ABCs from her Folger’s coffee cans. When I was four or five I used to lie in the floor and “read” The Daily Oklahoman front to back. I could usually figure out the cartoons and ads.

Always a reader, always a writer. In the fifth grade I wrote and illustrated one-page haunted house stories and passed them around the classroom. That summer I filled a blue notebook with a “book” that was an unabashed knockoff of a Bobbsey Twins story and passed it around the neighborhood. I was briefly a minor celebrity. When I was about 12, I sat under a pear tree in our front yard and wrote a story about fairies living in a tree stump. I mailed it to The Kansas City Star; they printed it, and sent me a check for something like 50 cents.

Back to John Steinbeck. Oklahomans never forgave him for writing The Grapes of Wrath, but he got a bum rap there. Oklahomans just happened to be handy to hang his story on. “Okie” was the name Californians gave every migrant from the Midwest.

What nobody seemed to notice was that Steinbeck’s book was an indictment of a power structure—corporations and banks—that kept a foot on the necks of workers. Steinbeck burst onto the scene during the Great Depression, a time of social and economic upheaval and a nationwide movement of strikes and counter-strikes. California was not the Garden of Eden migrants expected. California had problems of its own.

Steinbeck’s politics went right past me. I fell in love with his short, sweet tales of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times. He was my bridge between the English literature classics I grew up reading and the soon-to-be American classics by a new breed of American writers. I devoured Steinbeck’s novellas: The Pearl, The Moon Is Down, Cannery Row.

Steinbeck set his books where he lived, among people he knew, and so did I when the time came. Not that I can hold a candle to Steinbeck or would even try. My amateur sleuth novel Absinthe of Malice won’t last much longer than the latest edition of the fictional newspaper my protagonist writes for.

But I love the beautiful San Joaquin Valley that so many people “fly over” or drive past on their way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Small towns tucked into every clump of trees along that route were settled by Greeks, Armenians, Swedes, Brits, Dutch,  Portuguese, Italians and people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, you name it. Add the local Indians and the Chinese who arrived after the Gold Rush of 1849 and you get a wonderful mix. I didn’t have to look for my setting. I was living in it.



My focus in Absinthe of Malice is on descendants of pioneers who crossed the plains in covered wagons in the aftermath of the Civil War. The focus of my work in progress, Metaphor for Murder, is on a mysterious and long-dead descendant of Chinese immigrants. Stay tuned.…

John adds:
Thank you, Pat. Great stuff, and I can’t blame you for idolizing Steinbeck. He’s the greatest. And now, let’s tell the readers more about another “greatest.” Here’s Pat Browning’s official rap sheet:



Pat Browning was born and raised in Oklahoma. A longtime resident of California's San Joaquin Valley before moving back to Oklahoma in 2005, her professional writing credits go back to the 1960s, when she was a stringer for The Fresno Bee while working full time in a Hanford law office.

Her globetrotting in the 1970s led her into the travel business, first as a travel agent, then as a correspondent for TravelAge West, a trade journal published in San Francisco. In the 1990s, she signed on fulltime as a newspaper reporter and columnist, first at The Selma Enterprise and then at The Hanford Sentinel.

Her first mystery, FULL CIRCLE, was set in a fictional version of Hanford, and published through iUniverse in 2001. It was revised and reissued as ABSINTHE 0F MALICE by Krill Press in 2008. An extensive excerpt can be read at Google Books --

The second book in the series, METAPHOR FOR MURDER, is a work in progress. ABSINTHE takes place on a Labor Day weekend. METAPHOR picks up the story the week before Christmas. Log line: Small town reporter Penny Mackenzie tracks an offbeat Christmas story and finds herself in the middle of a murder and the mysterious desecration of an old Chinese cemetery.

“White Petunias,” Pat’s nostalgic essay about growing up in Oklahoma, appeared last winter in the RED DIRT BOOK FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY. She describes it as her remembrance of the summer before World War II scattered “the boys” to the four corners of the earth and the world changed forever. “White Petunias”can be read on her blog, Morning’s At Noon – http://tinyurl.com/4yo9t87.

Pat's articles on the writing life have appeared in The SouthWest Sage, the monthly journal of SouthWest Writers, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her web site at http://patbrowning.weebly.com is under construction.

And now a word from our sponsor!



ABSINTHE OF MALICE can be ordered through any bookstore or online from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Barnes and Noble, print and Nook
Amazon, print and Kindle



A final note from John: During the Mystery We Write Blog Tour, I will be keeping track of the comments left for the guests on my blog. After the tour, I'll draw one name out of a hat, and that lucky person will be given a copy of my new book, Behind the Redwood Door, as well as a copy of my short story collection, Generous Helpings. But I'll need to contact the winner, so if you're interested, leave your email address at the end of your comment.