Monday, October 6, 2014

S.L. Smith, Guest Author



This week S.L. (Sharon) Smith is my guest author. Sometimes one small detail will grab hold and won't let go until we find the answer to a question. In Sharon's case it was a name. Sometimes the the answer comes to us in the most unexpected way. Read on and find out how she found the answer to a niggling question. Also, Sharon is going to give a Commenter a copy of Murder on a Stick. Welcome, Sharon!

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Stick-S-L-Smith-ebook/dp/B00O0A707W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412451263&sr=1-1&keywords=s.l.+smith


What Kind of Name is That? 

Culnane? What kind of name is that? Where in heaven's name did Pete, the protagonist in my mysteries, get his last name?

That's easy. From his dad, of course. And Pete's dad got it from his dad, and so on, and so forth.

Here's how I fit into the picture. When I was a small child, I'm talking three, four, five, maybe six, I had a babysitter. The only name I knew her by was Mrs. Culnane.

I loved that woman. She was sweet and kind. She was patient and loving. She was like a grandmother to me. By some miracle, Pete has her last name. 

The problem is, Mom couldn't tell me Mrs. Culnane's first name or how she spelled her last name. All of my efforts to determine that failed. 

Not quick to throw in the towel, I settled for the phonetic spelling.

As the number of books grew, and the years passed, my uncertainty over the correctness of the spelling I'd used grew. 

Too late, you say? Never!

I considered what I'd do, should I discover C-u-l-n-a-n-e was incorrect. I decided I'd have someone in Pete's family do genealogical research. Heaven knows, Pete could never find the time. I decided that person could discover that way back the spelling was changed from the spelling used by my babysitter to the spelling I'd erroneously used for Pete's last name.
Well, it turned out all of the worry and imagining how to rectify the error was wasted. This spring, a cousin asked if I'd like to see the guest book from my paternal grandfather's wake, circa 1964. Am I dating myself? Yup.

My cousin sent the book, and Mom read all the names to me. (I'm no longer able to decipher even legible handwriting.) A few pages along, Mom said, "Margaret Culnane. "
(Margaret Culnane wouldn't have known my grandfather, so she must have gone to the wake out of respect for my parents. Yes, that, too, is the kind of person she was.)

"Stop!" I exclaimed, unable to contain my excitement over what I'd just heard. "How did she spell it?"

I guess you have to be as crazy as I am, or have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, to comprehend how thrilled I was to finally have access to the correct spelling and to learn I'd spelled Pete's last name correctly. Heck, I'm still thrilled!

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Stick-S-L-Smith-ebook/dp/B00O0A707W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412451263&sr=1-1&keywords=s.l.+smith


Aside from Pete and his partner, Martin Tierney, all of the character names in Murder on a Stick have something in common. If you've attended one of my book events, you probably know what that is. All of the people who correctly identify that commonality will be placed in a pool for a drawing for a paperback copy of Murder on a Stick.
Thanks, Marja, for providing this opportunity for me to talk about my writing.
Bio:
Version 1:
A lifelong resident of Minnesota, I was born in Saint Cloud and attended Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul. The tall iron fence surrounding the campus provided a sense of security for this small-town transplant. Over the next four years, I grew to love the Twin Cities, in part because of the Minnesota Twins and my love for baseball. After graduating, I rented an apartment a few miles from Metropolitan stadium and rarely missed a home game.

During my thirty-two years with the state department of public safety, I worked with law enforcement and fire officials at the state, county and municipal levels. Those interactions assisted me with writing mysteries, but were just the starting point. Without the help of a friend who spent thirty-five years as a cop, I would never have ventured into writing police procedurals. He contributed to my understanding of the perspectives of my two protagonists, Pete Culnane and Martin Tierney Thankfully, this friend is still a resource. He proofreads each manuscript and performs a reality check on the law enforcement aspects.

Publishing family memoirs helped fine tune my research skills, and taught me to contact everyone in the book. I used that tactic on the first Pete Culnane mystery, Blinded by the Sight, and included those who assisted in the acknowledgments. That paid rich rewards as I worked on books two, three, and four in the series. An investigator in the medical examiner’s office provided a foot-in-the-door with the head of homicide at the Saint Paul Police Department, and with a retired investigator (detective).


Website:



CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website
CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

A Well-Kept Family Secret - A Sandi Webster Mystery is now available in audio format on Amazon.com, iTunes and Audible.com. Stay tuned because next week I'll be giving away a free copy or two.


17 comments:

  1. What a fun post! Enjoyed reading it a learning more about another author.

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    1. Thanks, Marilyn. I always enjoy your comments on Sisters in Crime and in the Oak Tree group.

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  2. Sharon,
    Interesting post!
    I have an elderly friend who married a man late in life. The man was illiterate. He came from a long line of illiteracy. After my friend and the man were married, they decided to buy a house. That was when she discovered that there was a spelling discrepancy with his (and now hers) last name. A trip to the courthouse resolved the issue and she was given permission to legally use either spelling - the correct one or the one he and his parents had been using for many, many years.

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    1. Interesting story. How did she meet and fall in love with an illiterate man? Sounds like a good storyline.

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  3. Actually, Sharon, it is an interesting story. My friend was previously divorced and she had decided that she wanted to get married "one more time." (She's a sweetheart but quite a character.) She met the man at, of all places, White Castle. He was having coffee and she struck up a conversation with him. He's gone now but he was one of the sweetest people I've ever known.

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    1. Great story! Thanks for sharing. I'd like to meet your friend.

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  4. I have had a similar problem with my Vv Tiger stories. I grew up in the Creek Nation section of Oklahoma and knew that Tiger was a Creek surname. However, I patterned a character after a boy I met one summer when I was a teenager. His last name was Tiger but I thought he was Choctaw. And eventually I wrote stories about a fictional Choctaw Tiger family. My research could only find Tigner as a Choctaw name so I explained in one of my stories that the name eventually changed to Tiger. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. However, in Tony Hillerman's novels he quite often had characters from various tribes with the surname Tiger. So, I kept my family as Choctaw Tigers. Of course, I could have put the family in the Creek nation but I did so much research on Choctaw history and customs, I decided to keep them as Choctaw.

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    1. Sounds like a good solution to your problem. I enjoy the research almost as much as the writing. Is that true for you as well?

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    2. Oh no, for the most part I dislike research but my Tiger stories require a lot of it and thank goodness, I'm researching topics I love.

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  5. What an interesting post, Sharon. Someone in my husband's family changed the spelling of our last name, and no one knows why. My husband is always looking into it, but he can never find anything. Naming characters is always a challenge, but I like the way you came up with yours.

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    1. Thanks for your response, Evelyn. I found a problem similar to yours, while doing genealogical research for my mother's family. The spelling for her mother's maiden name changed, at an unknown time and for an unknown reason, from Gregori to Gregory. I understand that sometimes happened when a person gave their name to the immigration officials. Story has it that the name was spoken, and the immigration authorities spelled it the way it sounded to them. Hmm. Apparently accuracy wasn't the main goal. I wish you luck in determining how the change occurred.

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    2. I've also learned that the census takers changed the spelling of names way back when, and sometimes it stuck. So the Census Report is sometimes wrong.

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    3. My maiden name of Chancey was originally Chauncey according to my great-grandfather. The family had a feud sometime before the Civil War and split up with one side dropping the u.

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  6. Great story line. Live in wrong area to attend one of your events so out of luck getting into drawing. Have added your book to my TBR list as have read your previous publications and enjoyed.

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    1. Hi Jake,
      Sorry glad you like my novels. Since no one made a guess, I'm doing a drawing from all commenters. The winner will be notified early next week. I wish you luck!

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  7. You amaze me. You come up with the most interesting subjects to blog. You're an inspiration.

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    1. Glad you found this interesting. It's near and dear to my heart.

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