Author: Jacqueline Vick

While I was researching my latest pet psychic mystery, Giddy Up for Murder, I discovered a few fun facts about the events surrounding the Revolutionary War that might change the way you remember these exciting events. 

For instance, how would you like your Stars and Stripes with six-pointed stars?

When a group of men including George Washington visited Betsy Ross to ask her to create a flag to represent our new country, Washington suggested the six-pointed star used by his Mason Lodge. Betsy showed the general how much easier it was to cut out a five-pointed star. So, our current flag may have come to us because the original seamstress was tired.

How do we know the story told by Betsy’s children is true? We don’t, but several factors support this version.

• Several family members signed affidavits swearing her story was true.
• Paperwork exists that shows the Ross’s did work for George Washington
• Her late husband’s uncle was on the Flag Committee
• On May 29, 1777, the Pennsylvania State Navy Board paid Betsy for making flags, and on June 14, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as our official national flag.

I’m going with yes, it’s true.

How about the story of Paul Revere shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” True? Or false?

While Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made Paul famous in his 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” in reality, our hero rode into the night with two other men, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott. Paul was detained by a British patrol in Charleston, while Prescott made it to Concord.

“Listen, my children, and you will here

Of the midnight ride of Samuel Prescott,”

Admittedly, this does not rhyme, so I understand Longfellow’s creative choice.

Two other riders are rarely mentioned: Isreal Bissel and Sybil Ludington, but theirs is a story for another day.  

Much of the research an author does winds up in a file for possible future use. The Betsy Ross episode made it into my book; Paul Revere’s ride did not.

In Giddy Up for Murder, pet psychic Frankie Chandler attends a Revolutionary War reenactment. When a man dies, the only witness to what really took place is a horse with a vendetta against a person who could not possibly have committed the crime. 

If you’d like to check out the book, the preorder is available now. 

So, while you’re celebrating America’s semiquincentennial this year, why not dig into the patriotic tales you remember from childhood. What you find may surprise you.

Material on Betsy Ross gathered from Historic Philadelphia, Inc. article “Did She or Didn’t She?”

Material on Paul Revere’s ride gathered from Constitutional Facts article “The Five Riders.”

Jacqueline Vick is the author of over twenty published short stories, novelettes and mystery novels. Her April 2010 article for Fido Friendly Magazine, “Calling Canine Clairvoyants”, led to the first Frankie Chandler Pet Psychic mystery, Barking Mad About Murder. To find out more, visit her website at http://www.jacquelinevick.com.

I was writing a Pet Psychic short story for St. Valentine’s Day. It seemed like the perfect time to have Bowers propose to Frankie, but I wondered if that would be fair to readers of the series. On one hand, it would encourage people to keep up with the shorts. On the other hand, not everyone enjoys shorter fiction, so they might be confused when they picked up the next novel.

I’d run into this problem before with a Harlow Brothers short mystery, also involving a romantic situation.

In both cases, I took out the big changes and will use them in future novels. Did I do right? Should I have gone with what felt natural?  In the Pet Psychic instance, I’ve thought of ways to incorporate the proposal in a more creative environment, so maybe my concerns about including a marriage proposal in a St. Valentine’s story came from my creative muse.

So, I am curious. Do you think the short stories in between novels should include major changes to the character’s life? Or should those only appear in the novels?

Linda O. Johnston, a former lawyer who is now a full-time writer, currently writes two mystery series for Midnight Ink involving dogs: the Barkery and Biscuits Mysteries, and the Superstition Mysteries.  She has also written the Pet Rescue Mystery Series, a spinoff from her Kendra Ballantyne, Pet-Sitter mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and also currently writes for Harlequin Romantic Suspense as well as the Alpha Force paranormal romance miniseries about shapeshifters for Harlequin Nocturne.  Her most recent release is her 44th published novel, with more to come.

Why write?

That’s a pretty basic question for authors, and yet I don’t always think about it.

Why do I write?  And, if you’re an author too, why do you write?

For me, I suppose the answer is both simple and complicated.  It’s who I am. 

I’ve always written something.  I started out enjoying writing essays for my classes in school, and then a touch of fiction, in grade school, then junior high and high school.  College, too, though what I usually wrote there were assignments rather than just doing it for fun.  My undergraduate degree was in journalism with an advertising emphasis, so my classes involved a lot of writing.

Later, I wrote articles for a small newspaper, then actually got a job in advertising and public relations–working for my father.  One of the most enjoyable things there was writing articles for a house organ magazine for the firm’s largest client, a men’s hairstyling and hair products company, though I could write nearly anything for the magazine.

Shift, while doing that, to law school.  I had a couple of articles published in the Duquesne Law Review, which was both prestigious and enjoyable. 

And fiction during this time?  Not a lot of it.  But after I got my JD degree and started working first for a law firm, then in-house for Union Oil Company, I began getting up an hour earlier than anyone in my growing household so I could write.

I soon actually began getting published, and of course that spurred me to write even more fiction, along with the contracts I reviewed and drafted.  In fact, that’s what stimulated me to come up with one of the phrases key to my life: Contracts are just another form of fiction.

My law career ultimately ended, so now I’m a full time writer.  And have you gleaned from all of this the answer to why I write? 

As I said before, it’s because that’s who I am!

I know a lot of other writers.  Some, like me these days, write full time.  Others maintain their “real” jobs as well.  But they’ll always find some time to dig in and write what they want–and that helps to make them who they are, too.

And you…?  

Rosemary wrote her first book when she was ten years old – for her little brother. She also illustrated it herself. It was later rejected by Random House!

She has been writing ever since.

The author of Best Sellers Hollywood Then and Now and Los Angeles Then and Now, English born Rosemary Lord has lived in Hollywood for over 25 years. An actress, a former journalist (interviewing Cary Grant, James Stewart, Tony Hopkins, John Huston amongst others) and a Senior Publicist at Columbia Pictures, she lectures on Hollywood history. Rosemary is currently writing the second in a series of murder mysteries set in the 1920s Jazz Age Hollywood featuring Lottie Topaz, an extra in silent movies.

* * *

“…The days dwindle down to a precious few…” Sound familiar?  These are the lyrics to Kurt Weill’s 1938 heart-wrenching, “September Song.”

“- and the days grow short when you reach September,” Frank Sinatra sang. And then –

“- One hasn’t got time for the waiting game…”

In Hollywood, the days have at last cooled down after sweltering heat, where the nights were filled with the cacophony of neighboring air-conditioners at full tilt.  And it reminds me that another summer has passed and – in Kurt Weill’s poignant words –  I really don’t have time for the waiting game, any more.

I think of all the unexpected things that happened this summer, the new friends I made, things I learned, expectations I met and sometimes exceeded. And yet all the things I did not get around to, come to mind: Painting my bedroom chest-of-drawers blue, selling that big travel-trunk, attending those Booty-Barre classes, visiting friends in Arizona.

I failed to make it down to the beach this summer. I did, however, go on a watermelon-diet (easier to do during those hot, dry days) and lost a few pounds: the pounds I had gained when devouring English comfort-food such as buttered toast, treacle-pudding with hot custard, roast-potatoes, crumpets. I could go on…

In the summer of 2017, I did not find that perfect literary agent for my mystery novel about Lottie Topaz. Neither did I finish the next Lottie Topaz novel, Seven For A Secret… The days were just not long enough.

But I did finish the updated version of Los Angeles Then and Now and I wrote a 1,200-word article on the Woman’s Club of Hollywood, for the upcoming issue of Discover Hollywood. All was not lost. I was also putting in long, long hours, 6-7 days a week helping to revive and restore the Woman’s Club of Hollywood.

And this summer was not too bad in my cozy apartment. Surrounded by fans (the whirring kind, not the screaming ones), I battled my temperamental old lap-top, wishing I had the time to learn how to use a MAC, in the belief that would solve all my computer problems – like the cursor that jumps all over the place and deletes lines and paragraphs, so I have to keep re-typing, or my Windows Live email program that eats emails and only sends out select emails, seemingly on a whim.

But now that early mornings feel fresher, almost brisk at times and, as Kurt Weil wrote, “When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame…”  and cooler days beckon, I no longer have to spend evenings in front of the open fridge seeking an icy-blast or two. My heat-dulled brain unable to write even the simplest sentence.

As we say goodbye to another summer and Fall approaches, I find my focus improves and once again my mind is tripping over itself to write all those books and articles emerging from my memory and imagination.

‘This time it will be different’ is my mantra, as I make fresh To Do lists of writing projects to be finished and new ones to start.. These “precious days” from September to December I will spend doing…. what, I wonder?

“…These precious days I’ll spend – ”  doing all the things I intended to do during the summer.

And how did you spend your summer of 2017?