Is a Sign Just a Sign? Or is it an Idea?

A friend once sent me an email that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. It was a sign, sort of, and it said, “Awkward Moment: When you’re digging a hole to bury a body – and you find another body already buried there.” As a mystery writer, how could I let that pass? A germ of an idea took hold and Awkward Moments – A Bogey Man Mystery came to be.

The same friend send me another email that said, “Next time a stranger talks to me when I’m alone I will look at them shocked, and just whisper, ‘You can see me?’” Good grief! I have to admit there are times I feel like following that example, but I don’t.  When I’m sitting alone and I’m quiet, I’m usually thinking about a storyline.

I can’t use every email for a story idea, but after my smile disappears, my brain kicks into gear and ideas start forming. Sometimes ideas for stories come from the most unusual places. If you’re a mystery writer, even a greeting card can start the ideas flowing. A comment made in passing by a friend, or overheard at a coffee house can inspire an entire book. It doesn’t take much more than a fertile imagination. Well, that and a lot of research and grinding hours at the computer.

One of the things I used to enjoy about the television show, Castle, was that something would happen and he’d start spinning stories to fit the event, guessing about what might have happened. Once in a while he was right, but often he was way off base. This is something many writers do. Given a set of circumstances and without having the entire story, they’ll find a scenario to fit the the information they do have.

I have a character in one of my two series who’s addicted to chocolate. At some point she’ll want to be involved in a chocolate mystery. When she was trapped in a ghost town she ran out of chocolate and almost had a meltdown. I can relate to that. Hmm. This might involve a trip to a chocolate factory. I wouldn’t want to get my facts wrong, would I? I mean, research is research. This, happily, could be very interesting research involving some taste-testing.

At the moment I’m mulling over Sandi Webster receiving a text message she didn’t want. A text message that I didn’t want set off alarms – story-wise that is. I’ve begun to write notes to myself so I won’t forget where I’m heading with the idea.

Someone worried that by writing this post another writer might steal my idea. Let them. There are so many possible scenarios that there’s room for all of us. Someone might write a dramatic and suspenseful story, and someone like me might write something with both drama and a little humor. Another author could even turn it into a horror story.

The life of a writer is so much more than I ever thought it would be. It can be a very solitary existence, but there are moments when we come together and share ideas, and… Well, maybe we don’t share ideas, but we do share experiences and stories. Mystery writers are, in general, very generous with their time and support of each other, and I do believe we frequently march to a different drummer. Yes, we even occasionally use clichés like marching to a different drummer. If you prefer, you might say that occasionally we sing a little off key? I do, anyway.

Authors have a lot of fun, aside from the hard work. Aren’t you glad they share their fun through their books? We do our very best to entertain readers and each other.

Until next time, think before you start digging a hole in the ground. You never know what you might dig up. Although, I have heard of people digging up unexpected treasures. Hmmm.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

    Just a reminder: On The Books Page, toward the bottom, are some entertaining book      trailers.

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

It’s finally here! People Lookin’ Half Dead – A Bogey Man Mystery

Think extreme heat and homeless people disappearing, and you’ll have the basis for the story.

Another One?

I’m happy to say I recently completed my twentieth book, titled People Lookin’ Half Dead – A Bogey Man Mystery. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I’d have twenty books to pick from, although I know a number of authors who offer more than that. The book is now available in both ebook and paperback format, but enough about the number of books.

 

I moved from Arizona to Washington State in 2015. Not long before I moved, during packing, I hightailed it to a fast food restaurant for a takeout dinner. I sure didn’t feel like cooking, and I’d already packed all my pots and pans anyway.

I was waiting for my food when a homeless man walked in. He was tall and extremely thin with long hair. His skin was ashen, and so was his hair. He looked grey from head to toe. Obviously he hadn’t bathed in a very long time. He slowly walked to the counter and asked for a glass of water. He was soft-spoken and polite. The young lady at the counter handed him a paper cup and pointed toward the water. He thanked her and filled the cup. Remember, Arizona is hot and dry and water is as important as food. I’m not going to tell you the rest of the story because it’s not pertinent to this post, but let me say there was a good ending. Oh, and I appreciate the fact that the young lady behind the counter treated him with respect. That said a lot for her character.

Anyway, I’ve never been able to forget this man. He was on my mind so much that I knew he needed to be in a book. The title I’ve chosen, People Lookin’ Half Dead, doesn’t refer to the man’s appearance, but to a heatwave in Los Angeles.

“It’s one of the hottest summers in memory and Chris and Pamela Cross are gearing up to open their new supper club, Gin Mill Grill.

Tillie Babcock, Chris’s grandmother, has moved to town and she’s ready to take over – everything. She loves a good cause and wants nothing more than to help a few homeless people come in out of the heat and gain a second chance in life. Unfortunately, a few of these people are disappearing right out from under her nose.

At Tillie’s insistence, Chris and Pamela now have a cause, or case, of their own -- to find the missing people before it’s too late.”

I could write about the plight of the homeless here, but unless you never watch the news or read a newspaper, you know it’s a worldwide issue, and I’m not here to preach about it.

I generally try to include at least a little humor in my books, and this one is no exception. How did I insert humor in a book about disappearing homeless people? You’ll have to read the book to find out. I’m one of those people who believes you can find something humorous in almost any situation. Sometimes it’s the main characters and the situations they find themselves involved in, and once in a great while a homeless person might make you smile, if only for a second. No, there’s nothing funny about being homeless, but even they sometimes have a sense of humor. (My daughter told me the funniest sign she ever saw a homeless man holding up said, “Bet you can’t hit me with a quarter.”)

So thank you to the homeless man who wouldn’t let me forget him. I hope that at some point he had a second chance at life.

On the other side of the coin, there was once a homeless man who started attending a writers group I belonged to in Nevada. One morning I was the first one in the parking lot. An old van pulled in next to me and it was the homeless man who started telling me about a story he was working on. The story involved killing other homeless people and he went into great detail about the killings. I found myself slowly taking steps so I wasn’t hidden by the van.

Another car pulled into the lot and I took a deep breath and thanked him for sharing his story with me. He laughed, got into his van and drove away. He never attended the group again, but as a writer I couldn’t help wondering if there were homeless people buried nearby.

There are two sides to every story, but the man from the writers group didn’t make it into my book. Or did he?

Until next time, I hope you have a good week and that your life is filled with blessings.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website (Recently updated)

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

Amy M. Reade, Guest Author

My guest this week is author Amy Reade. Of course I had to read the post before I put it up, and let me tell you, you’re about to be entertained. (I also realized I’ll probably never travel with Amy. Yes, I’m laughing.) Her latest book, Trudy’s Diary: A Libraries of the World Mystery, will be available on April 16, 2019. Read on and I hope this blog brightens your day like it did mine. Welcome, Amy!

 

            Like all of you, I love reading Marja’s blog posts every Monday. I don’t expect to be able to match her for breadth and depth of topics and pure knowledge, but I hope I can at least entertain you while I’m here as her guest, which is both an honor and a privilege.

            (Thank you for the kind words! Marja)

            If you’ve read my books, you know that I love to set stories in places I’ve visited and found fascinating. I wrote a book set on the Big Island of Hawaii and three in the United Kingdom. I’ve also set stories in northern New York (where I grew up—write what you know!); Charleston, South Carolina; Colorado; and Washington, DC. I haven’t necessarily traveled to all these places recently, but some of them made such an impression on me that I put them in books long years after I visited.

            When I hear someone say “I love to travel,” I’m always a little bit envious. I picture people strolling down cobbled streets in Europe, sipping coffee and nibbling croissants at al fresco cafés in Paris, lounging poolside at a tropical resort under a huge cabana complete with cool towels and a frosty drink; or hiking against the backdrop of purple mountains’ majesty.

            I love to travel, too, but when I tell people that, what I should really say is “I love to travel despite everything that goes wrong.”

            Let me explain.

            This is what traveling looks like for the Reade family: after the initial complaints about where we’re going (these come from the children and it doesn’t matter where we’re going), they resign themselves to leaving at the appointed date and time. When that date and time arrive, one could be forgiven for thinking the date snuck up on us like a thief in the night. We run around like so many squirrels in a cage, packing, unpacking, repacking, making sure the kitchen is clean and the beds are made (in case, God forbid, we meet with an accident and someone has to come into the house to wrap up our affairs)…you get the picture.

            When we’re flying somewhere far away, I spend the first six hours of any trip crying about how much I miss the dog. Wine sometimes helps, and sometimes makes it worse.

            Upon our arrival at our destination, one of the children throws up. It’s almost always the same child.

            At some point during the trip, there is typically an injury or illness requiring medical attention, or at the very least, photographic evidence so people will believe us later. Once we went to Hawaii and all of us got pinkeye. Once on a trip to Washington, DC, one of my children stuck his/her head through the bars on the hotel window to yell “Hi, Dad!” (Dad was unpacking the car) and got stuck that way. It took three people to get the child’s head back into the hotel room. Once on a trip to Northern Ireland, one of the children went wading in a stream that was on the property of our VRBO and got a nasty rash that had remarkable staying power.

            Okay, you may say, so you’ve had a few lousy experiences.

            But what you don’t realize is that this happens on every single trip. There was the time I was driving a rental car and I hit the curb and the tire fell completely off, almost making us miss our flight and making the car rental guy yell at me, which made me cry. Thank God for the man who drove by and pitied me. He just happened to work for a tire store and he was a crackerjack tire-fixer. He got as big a tip as I’ve ever given anyone.

            There was the time one of our daughters (13 at the time) got stuck on London’s Tube without a phone, while the rest of us stared in horror as the train doors closed behind her. Luckily we were able to scream loud enough that one of the train supervisors took pity on us and stopped the train.

            There was the time we rented an apartment in a seedy neighborhood where parolees could wave at us across a tiny courtyard. There was the time we rented an apartment in another neighborhood where an actual rumble took place right below our windows when Venezuela lost a game in the World Cup that night.

            And here’s something fascinating: apparently this is genetic. One of my children studied in England last year. On a late-semester trip to Amsterdam with seven friends, she spent most of the weekend running from a crazed vacation rental owner who had tried renting the kids a room in a house that already had seventeen occupants and one bathroom. The kids spent the night on the floor of the Amsterdam airport once they were able to escape the clutches of the rental owner. Thank goodness I didn’t know about this until it was all over.

            But despite all these stories (and so, so many more), I still love to travel. I love to experience different places, cultures, foods, and customs. I can remember a place fondly even if we had a dreadful experience there (I believe there is a psychological term for this, something like “blocking”). I suppose the negative experiences I have imprint themselves on my brain, helping me to remember a place and the happy part of visiting.

            And home is always waiting, along with the dog. 

 

Author Bio:

Amy M. Reade is a cook, chauffeur, household CEO, doctor, laundress, maid, psychiatrist, warden, seer, teacher, and pet whisperer. In other words, a wife, mother, community volunteer, and recovering attorney.

She’s also a writer. She is the author of Trudy’s Diary, A Libraries of the World Mystery (Book One: Library of Congress), The Worst Noel (Book One in the Juniper Junction Holiday Mystery series), The Malice Series (The House on Candlewick Lane, Highland Peril, and Murder in Thistlecross), and three standalone books, Secrets of Hallstead House, The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor, and House of the Hanging Jade. She lives in southern New Jersey, but loves to travel. Her favorite places to visit are Scotland and Hawaii and when she can’t travel she loves to read books set in far-flung locations.

Her days are split between writing and marketing her books, but uppermost in her mind is the adage that the best way to market a book is to write another great book.

                                                         Social Media Links

Amy M. Reade

Website: www.amymreade.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/amreadeauthor

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/AmyMReadesGothicFictionFans

Twitter: www.twitter.com/readeandwrite

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/amreade

Instagram: www.instagram.com/amymreade

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Amy-M.-Reade/e/B00LX6ASF2/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Goodreads Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8189243.Amy_M_Reade

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/amy-m-reade

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CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw's website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

COMING SOON: People Lookin' Half Dead - A Bogey Man Mystery