Month: April 2024

Missing Author Found!

Missing Mystery Authors … whatever happened to your favorites? Do you ever ask yourself that question? I sure do. That’s what prompted the “Missing Author” series that I launched several years ago on my blog. It always drew traffic and prompted readers to ask about their own favorites who, for whatever reason, hadn’t published in a while.

While finding information for some authors wasn’t difficult, it was for others. Fortunately, many weren’t technically “missing.” They maintained websites and were active on social media, so I could contact them. Often life circumstances put her or his writing on hold—illness, care giving, changing job responsibilities are a few examples—but some made a comeback with a new series or picked up an old one. Earlene Fowler made things easy: she wrote on her website that she retired from writing when social media started taking over and she didn’t care to participate.

Others stopped writing altogether when publishers dropped their series or their agents retired. Sadly, some passed on.

Others have seemingly vanished. Does that spark story ideas for anyone?

How did the Missing Authors series start? I was a big fan of Rochelle Krich and have read just about everything she ever wrote. In 2003, she came to Richmond, Virginia and I took off work to hear her speak at the local Jewish Community Center. She last published in 2005. I’ve not been able to learn a reason for her retreat from the writing community. I don’t hunt down these authors, I don’t pry, and don’t publish anything without their permission. I had to let Rochelle go.

The same held true for many other authors. But I made some great connections. I found and became email pals with Corinne Holt Sawyer, Connie Archer (I’m interviewing her for my June newsletter), and Judith Van Gieson (sadly, she passed away few years ago). Author and blogger Charlotte Rains Dixon, who was also searching for Gabrielle Kraft, told me about a memorable writing class Ms. Kraft presented years ago in Portland, Oregon. Charlotte details the class here. To date, neither of us has located Ms. Kraft.

Readers of my blog participated with either information on the authors, or with requests about the whereabouts of their own favorites. They introduced me to some great new-to-me authors.

You can visit my blog and read the posts. I’ll list the links below. I started the series featuring one missing author per post. When requests started flooding my inbox, I included several authors per post. But I haven’t pursued this project in recent years (you may have noticed my use of the past tense), so you won’t find current information on the authors–but if you have any, please share.

This brings me to what prompted today’s post about the missing authors: I found one! A couple of weeks ago, author John J. Lamb, who I posted about in 2014, contacted me out of the blue.

John J. Lamb was a homicide detective and hostage negotiator in Southern California before retiring to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley where he and his wife became teddy bear collectors. John also penned a series of mysteries featuring a homicide detective who retires to Virginia and collects teddy bears.

I met John several times, at book signings, when he led a writers’ workshop, and when he spoke to our local Sisters in Crime chapter. He gave me good advice about realistically depicting an amateur detective interacting with the police. He was kind, funny, irreverent, and loved sharing stories of his law enforcement career.

Then poof—he became one of those vanishing authors. He took down his website, and the email address on the card he had given me bounced.

On April 7, to my surprise and delight, I found the following message from John in my inbox (by the way, I have his permission to publish this exchange):

Good Morning, Maggie,

It’s been a long time and I hope you are well. I was taking a digital stroll down memory lane and came upon an old website posting where you wondered why I’d vanished. The abbreviated answer is:
a) Berkeley didn’t want any more Teddy books and my agent was unable to sell a standalone thriller.
b) Heart attack, from which I fully recovered.
c) Needing health insurance, I returned to work as a civilian evidence custodian at a large Shenandoah Valley PD.
d) My wife is battling Parkinson’s Disease, which takes up a great deal of my time.

I think that covers it. Anyway, I’m glad so see that you are still writing.

Take Care,
John Lamb

Excerpt from the resulting message thread:
I’m writing my memoirs of my life as a cop. I finished the first volume (Entitled: Service With a Sneer) of what I anticipate will be four books. My original intent was to make this anecdotal history available to my grandchildren, but only after they’re adults because this is definitely not cozy mystery territory. But my test readers have convinced me to try once more to get published. So, I’ve been querying agents and have actually received a couple of nice personal rejections.

Another excerpt from the thread:
Service With a Sneer covers my time as a USAF cop and deputy sheriff in the desert near Palm Springs. I’m at work on Beach Blanket Bedlam, which covers my first two years as a patrol cop in Oceanside. Next comes Bring Out Your Dead, recounting my history as a homicide detective. The final volume will be Three Stripes, Yer Out, which alludes to my terminal rank of sergeant. Not that I wanted to promote to a higher rank. I was always worried about surgical scars from the frontal lobotomy required for collar brass.

John’s books, including his standalones, are available on Amazon and at libraries.

The Missing Authors series has been fun and, as you can see, often rewarding. If there’s an author you’ve been missing, let me know in the comments. I could be persuaded to resurrect the series.

Here are the links to the series:

“Missing Rochelle Krich“

“Discovering a Lost Author: John J. Lamb“

“Whatever Happened to Gabrielle Kraft?“

“Whatever Happened to (Name an Author)?“

“In Memory of My Favorite Mystery Authors (And Maybe Yours)“

“Those Missing Authors: An Update“

“Missing Author Found!“

“Missing Authors: Update 2“

“Missing Authors: Update 3”

“Missing Authors: Update 4”

“Missing Authors: Update 5”

“Missing Authors: Update 6”

“Missing Authors: Update 7”

Dropping Clues Along the Way

by Gayle Bartos-Pool

Gayle at Bill's House Sept 2022

I have read a lot of mysteries over the years and have written quite a few myself. My detectives, whether they are a professional or a talented amateur, always gets the bad guy or gal. Writers like a happy ending.

Most detectives, private or otherwise, usually spot a few clues toward the end of the story that help them pinpoint the culprit responsible for the previous mayhem. Jessica Fletcher in the Murder She Wrote TV series usually came across a major clue early on in the hour show, but she doesn’t put two and two together until after the last commercial break. It might be formulaic, but most of us like the show and the redundant plotline enough to come back for more.

KNIFE

But there are a few variations of the theme that are kind of fun to write. While I was writing one of the new stories in my latest book called The Four Detectives, I was having trouble with how I was going to finally catch the would-be killer. In this new book, I have taken the three private detectives from my three previous mystery series, added a retired cop from a stand-alone book, and have them join forces in a new detective agency. But I couldn’t figure out how to get this one P.I. to catch the killer before she struck again.

First, I was going to have the killer turn the tables on Ginger Caulfield and blame her for the killing she was planning, but after researching how long it would take for Gin to go to court and deal with lawyers and judges and the media was way too time consuming. Some of these court cases take years. This was to be a short story, not Gone with the Wind.

People 5

I knew how I wanted Gin to get ensnared in the plot against her, but getting her out was taking too long, so I had another thought. What if she smelled a rat early on and turns the tables on this would-be menace?

Not that this hasn’t been done before, but I wanted to actually drop a ton of clues throughout the story so my readers might start getting the hint early on and guess what was coming. This method would allow the reader become the detective, too.

I did this by putting quotation marks around a few words. That usually means the word has a double meaning. And I have a character grin at certain times after they say something that might not require a grin. That telegraphs to the reader that the statement probably has a hidden implication. Or I had a character hesitate when they shouldn’t be hesitating. That usually means somebody’s lying. I added a number of these “tells” just like a bad poker player does when his actions let other players know what kind of a poker hand the guy is holding. Usually a bad one.

As for me, the writer, I wanted to give the reader some clues that they might put in their fertile brain to see if they could solve the case along with my detective. It was a fun journey and I think my private detective got a laugh out of it, too.

Writers always need a way to tell a story that entertains the reader, but it’s fun for the writer when they can have some fun as well. Write On!

typewriter-and-desk

Getting Out There

by Linda O. Johnston

Writers write. But to help sell what we write, we need to do promotion not only online, but also in person. So, we have to get out there.

Okay, I admit I’m doing it less than I used to before the pandemic. Not that I’m terrified about getting sick, but I kind of got used to not going to as many conferences as I used to. I previously attended Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime and Bouchercon and the Romance Writers of America conferences often, as well as local meetings.

Now—well, I did go to Bouchercon and an RWA conference last year. This year, I’ve mostly just gone to meetings of local chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and Orange County Romance Writers, sometimes on Zoom.

Oh, and coming up will be the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and I’ll be signing at the local SinC and MWA booths there on Sunday, April 21.

Enjoyable? Yes. It’s always fun to see other writers in person, and to sell as many books as possible and get to autograph them for the buyers.

And I have to admit I miss the frequent lunches I used to attend with other Writers in Residence members. But some have moved away and it’s become more difficult to get together with any of them.

More conferences in the future? I hope to.

So—well, how do you get together with other writers these days? With readers? Only online, or do you see them in person too?

LAVENDER and BURNT TOAST

      By ROSEMARY LORD

“Lavender and burnt toast.” A book title? A recipe? Sounds intriguing.

I have racked my brain to figure what this was about. I had written this in a notebook of story ideas. But then I have a plethora of such notes, squiggles, post-its, unfinished paragraphs in multiple notebooks and single pages – of ideas that swirl around my head – spilling as hurried notes in these many notebooks. But, over the years, I have become a lot more organized. I have actual files – with labels!

            It took me back to Professor Randy Pausch’s gem of a book, The Last Lecture, which he undertook during the last months of his life after a terminal cancer diagnosis. It was about overcoming obstacles and seizing every moment. “Because,” he said, “time is all you have – and you may find one day that you have less than you think.”   

“Time must be explicitly managed, like money,” he observed. And “Ask yourself, are you spending your time on the right things?”  Most useful was, “You can always change your plan, but only if you have one.”

But the thing I remember most was his thoughts on being really, super organized. Randy’s wife was against having everything filed and alphabetized. She said it sounded way too compulsive. Randy responded, “Filing in alphabetical order is better than running around saying, “I know it was blue and I was eating something when I had it.” Sounds familiar. How often have I been heard to mutter, “…It was blue and I was eating something……” as I rummage through my boxes of writing files for some specific pages of an unfinished manuscript.

“It’s not where you start – it’s where you finish…” wrote Dorothy Fields, lyricist for the 1973 Tony Award winning Broadway musical Seesaw, which was based on the William Gibson play, Two for the Seesaw.  “…It’s not how you go, it’s how you land.”

I’m not so sure about that…I’ve always favored the maxim that it’s the journey that counts. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

            Do you ever look back at the journeys you have been on – or had thrust upon you? Journeys are adventures. Because it’s on those journeys that we discover exciting detours and encounter fascinating people.

Even if it’s literally a train, plane, bus or car journey we’re taking. Just think of people you met along the way, places you saw. This is, after all, where many of us writers find our inspiration. From the people and happenstances along the way.

We can see how things have never got back to the way they were, since the Covid lockdowns. So much changed. We’re in a different reality now. We were shut-ins. As writers, we had more time to ourselves to write during the shutdowns. But the regular writer gatherings and frequent workshops and writers’ conferences have been very slow to return. And they were such fun, where we caught up with fellow writers from across the world, met new writers, editors, experts and publishers, heard new ideas, discovered new talent. I’ve missed them. Zoom meetings are not the same.

Sometimes one feels like Sisyphus, earnestly toiling away to survive and thrive in this new world, dealing with the puddles that life frequently presents for us to jump over.    

In Greek Mythology, Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a mountain. Once he got to the top, the weight of the boulder forced it to start rolling down to the bottom, wherein he had to start again.  According to Albert Camus, the Greek gods felt that there is no more dreadful punishment than this futile and hopeless labor for Sisyphus. Hmmm. Sometimes life feels like that. Oh well. We soldier on, dealing with the adventures and challenges of our regular lives and balancing our writer’s goals and dreams.

Then, just when we least expect it, something magical happens. We discover a new author whose words inspire us to try something new, encourage us to take a leap of faith into the unknown. We hear a new piece of music or see a new painting that re-awakens that creative spark. We make a new friend or meet someone who has that missing piece of life’s jigsaw we have been trying to complete. We never know where or when that serendipity appears.

And with the freezing winter and endless rain we have all been living through, hopefully now in the rear-view mirror, Spring is just around the corner. So it really is the time to start thinking of planting new seeds. New plants. New crops. In our gardens, window-boxes and in our lives. Maybe something different this year. Read something different. Write something different. But most of all – time to make fresh plans for the year ahead, seek new ventures, add new goals to our To Do lists.

Whilst I try to remember what Lavender and burnt toast was all about….