Jean Henry Mead, Guest Author

This week my friend Jean Henry Mead is my guest and she’s interviewing one of her characters, Sarah Cafferty. I got a kick out of this interview, and I think you will, too. I enjoy the Logan and Cafferty books and it was fun getting to know Sarah a bit better. Welcome, Jean!

 Protagonist Revolt by Jean Henry Mead

Like Marja, I include humor, romance and murder in my mystery/suspense novels, so I decided to interview one of my protagonists, who, after six books, seems like old friend that I eavesdrop on during the writing process. Sarah Cafferty is one of two senior amateur sleuths who hasn’t been her usual cheerful self since completing her latest adventure in Murder at the Mansion.

Author: Sarah, why are you so cranky? You’ve shown good humor in my previous Logan and Cafferty novels. You're too old for PMS.

Sarah: Cranky? What do you expect? First you destroy the mansion. Then you send us flying off to Texas to escape the killer. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you allow a questionable character to talk us into hiding in a mountain cabin in the Alaskan outback, which is even more dangerous.

Author: I’m sorry, Sarah. I know it was traumatic, but you have to admit that it was suspenseful.

Sarah: Where were you when we nearly froze to death in the tundra? Sitting in your comfortable chair thinking up ways to get us into deeper trouble?

Author: That’s my job. Would you prefer that I replace you and Dana with younger sleuths?

Sarah: Dana and I are only in our early sixties. Not some elderly widows with walkers. We can do everything that younger sleuths do.

Author: Well—

Sarah: With the possible exception of skateboarding and scaling tall buildings.

Author: If that’s true, I think I’ll have you bungee jump in the next novel.

Sarah: Unless you’re joking, Dana and I are taking a hiatus from your mystery series.

Author: What about our readers? You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?

Sarah: Haven’t we done enough? In The Village Shattered you send a serial killer after us. In Diary of Murder a vicious drug gang. In Murder on the Interstate you have a homegrown terrorist group kidnap us while they’re planning to take down the entire country. And if that wasn’t enough, you have a wolf killer cause us to wreck Dana’s Escalade and then stalk us on Gray Wolf Mountain. (Taking a deep breath.) Then you send us to Texas in Murder in RV Paradise where you have me wading into a lake to retrieve a woman’s body, only to be suspected of the murder. I don’t call that paradise.

Author: I’ve got some ideas that will knock your socks off.

Sarah: That settles it! You can email us in Argentina. That’s where we’re going on vacation. If we don’t answer, you’ll know that some other novelist has decided to adopt us and treat us fairly.

Author: You’ll be bored within a week and out of a job in a month. Novelists who are nice to their protagonists don’t last long in the publishing business. Readers want suspense as well as mystery.

Sarah: I’ve got a great idea. You take my place and I’ll write you into some mysterious and suspenseful situations. You’ll love bungee jumping over a crocodile pit or waking up with rattlesnakes. I can think of lots of exciting scenarios to place you in.

Author:  Point taken, Sarah. From now on we’ll concentrate on mystery and go easy on the suspense.

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Bio: Jean Henry Mead is a former news reporter and photojournalist. She’s the author of 21 books, half of them novels, which include the Logan & Cafferty series, Hamilton Kid’s mysteries, Wyoming historical novels, and nonfiction interview and history books, one of which served as a college textbook. She has also served as a news, magazine and small press editor, contributor to the Denver Post, and has been published in magazines domestically as well as abroad.

Visit Jean’s website at http://www.jeanhenrymead.com/

You can read her blogs at:

            Mysterious Writers    http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/

            The View from My Mountaintop http://theviewfrommymountaintop.blogspot.com/

            Murderous Musings  http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/

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A Well-Kept Family Secret – A Sandi Webster Mystery is available in audio format. Try it, you might like it. Don't forget How Now Purple Cow - A Bogey Man Mystery.

Whatever Happened to the Forties?

Here we are in 2015, and I hope the year is starting out well for all of us! The holidays are over and things have calmed down. Right? Nope. Still busy, busy, busy. So, with your indulgence, I’m reposting an older blog that I think/hope you’ll enjoy.

What’s one of the best things that can happen to a mystery writer? Well, to come up with your own personal mystery, of course.

Thanks to some book trailers I made some time ago, I needed to find photos from the 1940s. Not an issue because I have a huge old trunk my grandmother gave me, and it’s chock full of old photos ranging from the 1800s through the 1970s. This trunk has three layers and enough photos to last a lifetime. You can find a photograph to suit just about any occasion.  The trunk also includes vintage greeting cards dating back to the early 1900s and plenty of vintage postcards.

In addition to family photos I’ve found pictures of a train wreck, vacation photos, and to my horror, a photo of a firing squad shooting people. (How would you like to find that stuck in the middle of your family photos?) Since the officers are on horseback, it’s a pretty old photo. There are even “posed” photos of a fight and a marriage proposal. Anyway, I even have an entire album of pictures from my grandfather’s service in the Navy from 1904-1907. Fascinating photos from around the world. He served on the Elcano and he was part of the Yangtze River Patrol.  By the way, Grandpa was quite a bit older than Grandma, so draw your own conclusions as to my age. (Good luck with that.)

This trunk is so full that every time I go through it I find things I’ve missed before. I found a small diary, and a pad of paper on which my grandmother tried her hand at writing poetry. I’m very family-oriented so these things are important to me.

By this time you’re probably wondering what the big mystery is, right? I was looking for candid photos from the 1940s to use in book trailers, remember? I found some group family photos, but that’s not what I was looking for. Eventually l found an old family album resting in the bottom of the trunk. It was full of old greeting cards from the forties and I knew I’d found what I was looking for. Eureka! Oh, really? The cards were followed by page after page of those little black tabs people used to use to hold down the corners of photos – and that was it. There were lots of tabs, but no photos. They’d all been removed.

Picture me looking perplexed.

Now, I come from a family of photographing fools. They took pictures of everything they could aim a camera at, including a buggy being pulled by an ostrich and my great-aunt trying to look sexy in a woolen bathing suit (1915 or so). This is an aunt I mentioned in an earlier post whom I saw drinking out of a perfume bottle on Thanksgiving one year. Yes, she had a bit of a drinking problem and hid her, um, liquor in the bottle.

Okay, I had group shots from the forties and pictures of my siblings and me, but that wasn’t what I needed. So what happened to the 1940s? Why are all the other photos gone? Most of the people who could answer that question are gone. Those who are left don’t have an answer. A whole era is missing. How can you lose ten years of photos?

Maybe I’ll never know the answer to this little mystery. Or maybe I’ll find something informative in the trunk the next time I go through it, although I have overwhelming doubts. Or maybe I’ve just stumbled on an idea for a new mystery. Ideas come from the darnedest places.

You’d think a mystery writer could figure this one out, wouldn’t you? Not necessarily.

Until next time, I wish you a New Year of good health, prosperity, and… Well, maybe a little mystery of your own to solve. They can be so much fun.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

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CLICK HERE to see some of the book trailers on my website. Scroll down The Books page.

Humor? What's That?

Let me begin by saying I hope you all have extraordinary Thanksgiving celebrations and that you come away with some funny stories. Sometimes holidays are the funniest times of the year.

 A few years ago I did a presentation at a library in California and when it was over a young college student approached me. He was a foreign student and I’m sure the idea of humor changes from country to country, and he had a question – a tough question. “What is humor? You say your stories are humorous, but what does that mean? What is humor?” What surprised me was that he was serious. Hadn’t anything ever made this young man laugh?

However, it was an excellent question, and I’m sure there are multiple answers, depending on who you ask. We sat down and had a chat. I’ve thought about his interest in humor for a long time.

To me humor means something that makes you laugh, or smile, or simply feel better than you did thirty seconds ago. It lifts you up and makes you feel good.

What may be humorous to one person might seem silly or corny to someone else. Actually, sometimes there’s no humor in what can make an individual laugh. I have a friend who laughs hysterically in an emergency, even knowing that what’s happening isn’t funny. She’ll react to the problem, but laugh until she cries while doing it. It’s nervous laughter and a release for her.

 I once saw my ex-husband walk into an orange tree and almost knock himself out because he wasn’t looking in the direction he was walking. He was too busy saying something sarcastic to me. Now that made me laugh until I cried. While is wasn’t really funny… Well, I guess you had to be there.

Some people find physical humor uproarious. Watch someone stumble down a step in a crowd and see how many people laugh. Have you seen a sitcom where someone walked into a door or a wall? Humor. Personally, I love a dry wit – the understated humor – and yet I thoroughly enjoy Abbott and Costello. Go figure.

Marley, of Marley and Me fame (John Grogan), had me falling off my seat while I read the book about his life. (For those who haven’t read the book, Marley was a dog; a Yellow Lab.) I have to admit I shed a tear a few times while reading the book. Even after reading about this incorrigible dog, what did my husband and I do? We brought two Yellow Labrador Retrievers into our home and family. They’ve created havoc from time to time, but in the end it’s easy to laugh about.

The one thing I can say for sure is that humor keeps me going. If at all possible, when something goes wrong I try to find a funny side to it. Sometimes it may be six months or more before I can see the humor in a bad situation, but it’s usually there if you look for it. And it’s in the telling. Some people are natural born comedians when telling a story.

In the telling? My books tell stories and they have some humor in them. Hopefully you’ll read one, and even more hopefully, it will brighten your day.

I’ve mentioned this before and I think it’s time to mention it again. There’s truly nothing funny about murder and I won’t write humor into the crime. However, the people solving the crime, and circumstances, can often lead to humor. A victim will just lie there, but the living character can create outrageous scenarios.

What makes you laugh? Anything in particular? The Labs make me laugh almost on a daily basis. My husband has his moments, too.

Until next time, I hope your week is silly and corny and full of laughter. You deserve to feel good about life from time to time and humor will send you in the right direction.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

A Well-Kept Family Secret (Sandi Webster Mystery) is now available in audio book format.

Meeting Your Favorite Author

I know some authors blog every day. I don’t know how they do it. I only blog once a week and every week I’m sure I’ll run out of ideas by the following post. This blog is no exception. And believe it or not, I’ve been doing this since 2010!

I wasn’t sure what I was going to blog about so I asked my daughter a question, thinking it might open some creative doors. She’s an avid reader and I asked her, “If you were face to face with your favorite author, what question would you ask?”

 After a few moments, her response was, “I’d ask her if she’d sign my book.”

That’s it? She had no burning questions about where the writer’s ideas came from? How long it takes her to write a book? How many books has she written? What’s the author’s favorite book? Anything? Nope. Just “Please sign my book.” She made me laugh because her answer was so simple.

Apparently all she cares about is that the author writes a good book that entertains her. I know other readers would have more questions, but my daughter’s reaction brought home the fact that no matter what else an author does, he or she needs to write a book that makes the reader come back for more.

I have favorite authors and plenty of questions. How do you come up with so much humor? How do you keep your stories fresh so they don’t all run together? How do you manage to come up with so many unique characters? How do you manage your time so you can make so many personal appearances? What do you find is your most effective marketing tool?

Lastly, I’d have to ask, “Would you please sign my book?” I guess my daughter and I are more alike than I realized.

Just for the heck of it, here are a few questions and answers from me that haven’t been asked yet – or maybe they have.

What’s my favorite genre? Mysteries, of course, but I’m pretty sure I’ve answered that before. I particularly enjoy the ones with a little humor in them.

Do vintage movies inspire my writing? Absolutely. My characters also enjoy old black and white movies.

My favorite book? I know I’ve answered this one before – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I even owned an antique store/tea room once and it was called The Mockingbird. By the way, this brings up something else. I read that someone wrote an unauthorized biography about Harper Lee. The author’s name is Marja, but I want to assure you I’m not that author. I don’t recall what her last name was.

Who is my favorite author? There are just too many to pin it down to one writer, especially since I’ve started reading authors who are new to me.

Why do I include dogs in my stories? Because I love dogs, and they often add an element of humor to a story.

 Smooth, creamy chocolate

What do I have to say about chocolate? I’m laughing as I write this. I’m a chocoholic. “Chocolate is the answer. The question is irrelevant?” I found that on a calendar. And let’s not forget, “I Never Met a Chocolate I Didn’t Like.” That’s actually the title of one of those little books you find in gift shops.

Okay, that’s enough. I’ll come up with something new next week. (I’m open to suggestions.)

Until next time, feel free to ask people questions this week, and I hope you enjoy any unexpected answers you might receive.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

COMING SOON: What Are the Odds? – A Sandi Webster Mystery