Marilyn Meredith, Guest Author

Today my guest is Marilyn Meredith (F.M. Meredith), a long time friend and one of my favorite authors. I asked her what's coming up now that Tangled Webs has been released and, by the way, it's a book I just started. Welcome, Marilyn!

WHAT’S NEXT?

That’s the question Marja asked me to address.

Several things come to mind. First, I’m going to be busy promoting Tangled Webs. October was chock full of events and I have a few lined up for this month. Plus Thanksgiving is always a big celebration at our house, so preparations for that have to be taken into consideration.

 

Will there be another Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery? I certainly hope so, and by the time this blog appears, I should have some basic idea of what the next mystery should be and what might be happening in the lives of my ongoing characters. (Actually, I’ve got a good start on it, though haven’t a title in mind yet.)

Oh, and I didn’t mention that I soon will have a book coming out in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series too, so plans will have to made for promotion for that one too.

After saying all that, I’m going to put a disclaimer in here—because life happens, and none of us really know what the future holds. If there are no unexpected happenings, the above is what’s next.

I want to thank Marja for hosting me today—she’s been a friend for a long time, one I’ve actually met in person and had several conversations with.

Marilyn writes the RBPD series as F. M. Meredith

Blurb: Too many people are telling lies: The husband of the murder victim and his secretary, the victim’s boss and co-workers in the day care center, her stalker, and Detective Milligan’s daughter.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/yabj9z9f

Bio: F. M. Meredith who is also known as Marilyn once lived in a beach town much like Rocky Bluff. She has many friends and relatives in law enforcement. She’s a member of MWA, 3 chapters of Sisters in Crime and serves on the PSWA Board.

Webpage: http://fictionforyou.com

Blog: https://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com

Facebook: Marilyn Meredith

Twitter: @marilynmeredith

Next I’m hopping over to https://jrlindermuth.blogspot.com/ and revealing my Writing Habits.

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CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw's website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to amazon.com

Patricia Gligor, Guest Author

This week my guest is Patricia Gligor, my friend and author of the Malone Mysteries, a series I really enjoy. Have you ever thought about walking in someone else's shoes? This post will let you do that. Welcome, Pat!

Imagine  This 

One of my favorite movies is the 1996 “A Time to Kill,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock. 

In the movie, Jake Brigance, a young white lawyer, defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who brutally sexually assaulted his ten year old daughter. During the trial, it isn’t a question of whether or not Hailey committed the crime; several people saw him do it. What Jake hopes to do is to convince the jury that the case never would’ve made it to trial – if Hailey was white. A daunting task in the racist culture in Canton, Mississippi at that time. 

As the trial progresses, Jake tries everything he can think of to convince the jury to find Hailey not guilty but it isn’t looking like that will happen. Until the summation when Jake prevails upon the jurors to close their eyes and “Imagine this.”

Obviously, I can’t ask you to close your eyes so I’ll simply ask you to “Imagine this.”

You’re a thirty-two year old stay-at-home mom. You live on a quiet, tree-lined street on the first floor of a beautiful, old Victorian in a peaceful, family-oriented neighborhood with your husband and two adorable young children – a boy and a girl. You love the house and, most of all, you love your family. You’re living an idyllic life, right?

Wrong!

Your husband, an alcoholic, is drinking heavily and his behavior toward you is erratic. One minute, he’s the kind, loving man you married and, the next minute, he’s cold and cruel to you. You want to “fix” your relationship but you don’t know how. Your little boy is diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) but your husband refuses to believe it, which causes even more arguments in an already tense household. Your mother-in-law constantly pokes her nose in your business, always siding with her son, blaming you for everything and bringing more discord into your marriage.

To top it off, it’s the week of Halloween and there’s a serial killer murdering women in their homes in your neighborhood. Some of your neighbors have decorated their yards for the holiday but you hardly notice as you find yourself looking over your shoulder wherever you go. You’re nervous going out in broad daylight. But how do you feel about going out at night? Do you double and triple check the locks on your windows and doors before going to bed? Does every little noise startle you?

What you just imagined is a brief glimpse into Ann Malone Kern’s life. If you’d like to read more, you can order “Mixed Messages,” the first book in my holiday-themed Malone mystery series, in eBook format at http://tinyurl.com/8sd2cz4.

Patricia's Blog:  http://pat-writersforum.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patricia.gligor

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CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw's website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com  

What Is It?

 

I really need to update my photo. One of these days.

 

I’ve been reading the blogs written by others for quite some time now. Every once in a while someone writes a post about blogging. How many times a month should you blog? How do you find subjects to write about? Should they be personal or impersonal? What, exactly, is a blog?

I found this in the Business Dictionary: “A website, similar to an online journal, that includes chronological entries made by individuals…. Blogs typically focus on a specific subject… and provide users with forums (or a comment area) to talk about each posting. Many people use blogs as they would a personal journal or diary.”

A diary? I never looked at it that way, and I’ve been blogging since 2010. Personally, I think it’s all in your intent. I definitely don’t consider my blogs to be a journal, but more like articles. For me, and this is just me, a blog should entertain or inform the reader. I believe it’s a place where authors can showcase their writing styles and let the reader know a little about themselves in the process. Unfortunately, if you’ve read all of my blogs, you probably know more about me than you ever wanted to know. (I actually called myself eccentric in one of my blogs.)

Going back to take a quick peek at blogs I’ve written in the past, I see that I’ve written about everything from dark and stormy nights to marketing and promoting to writing humor, and everything in between. I’ve written about authors who’ve entertained me with their books, and I’ve been entertained by guest authors who promote themselves and let you learn a little about themselves. I’ve done some blatant self-promotion, but after all, I’m trying to encourage people to read my books.

I’ve written about some of the How To’s of writing, and used silly examples to make a point, making at least a few people laugh in the process. I’ve discussed holidays, put up banners supporting our troops from time to time, and usually tried to keep it light.

So why am I blogging about blogging when I could be writing about so many other subjects? I have no idea. Maybe reading other blogs about this topic made the thought attach itself to my little pea brain.

Blogging should help an author get their name “out there.” I sometimes wonder if it works. If you went to a social event and someone introduced you to a little blonde lady named Marja McGraw, would the name sound familiar to you? Would it make you think of books? Or would you say, “Nice to meet you,” and leave to hit the snack table? I’d probably be waving my hand after you, yelling, “Hey, I’m really a nice person and I’d love to talk books. I write them, you know. Yoo hoo.” If only my mother had named me Mary Higgins Clark or Rhys Bowen or Janet Evanovich. (I’m sighing, by the way.)

After all is said and done, I blog once a week. I figure that’s all I should subject anyone to because… I’m not being honest. I’m afraid that if I blog more than once a week I’ll run out of subjects or I’ll start repeating myself. Actually, I’ve already started repeating myself. Some of my posts are updated and reposted.

My daughter tells me that will never happen. You see, I make her read each blog before I post it. She thinks her mother is prolific. I appreciate my daughter because she’s honest. She’ll either tell me it works, or she’ll tell me it stinks. After that, it’s all up to you, the readers, to decide if it’s worth coming back again for another visit. (Thankfully, if I repost an old blog, she doesn’t remember it and I hope you don’t either.)

So far, so good, and thank you so much for dropping by every week. You really have no idea how much I appreciate each of you.

Until next time, I hope you have a great week. You can probably find a blog about any subject you’re interested in, so have fun reading some posts.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

I mentioned self-promotion, so let me give you an example.

One Adventure Too Many –A Sandi Webster Mystery, is funny, mysterious and a charmer.

Taking a vacation can lead to an unexpected case for private eye Sandi Webster-Goldberg. Taking a vacation with your menopausal mother, an eccentric aunt, a pregnant friend and her husband, and a flustered husband can lead to total chaos.

Pete Goldberg and Stanley Hawks take a leisurely walk in the country, only to discover an abandoned house. When Sandi, her mother, Livvie, and her Aunt Martha decide to explore, they discover that the house isn’t quite as abandoned as previously thought.

A young woman and her baby are hiding out from unknown danger. She needs help, and the three women are more than happy to oblige her.

An Extra Degree of Difficulty

I read a lot, mostly mysteries, and so often the protagonist goes through plenty before solving the case. He or she may be threatened, beaten, run off the road, locked in a dark room, or any number of things. What happens when the protagonist has something else working against them besides a bad guy?

How many books have you read or movies you’ve seen where the sweet young thing is being chases through the woods, trips and falls, and sprains an ankle. It’s been done over and over. However, I have a feeling if someone was chasing me I might not see the tree root sticking out of the ground, or the hole some critter dug, and I’d probably trip, too.

Now let’s take this to a different level and add the extra degree of difficulty. What if the character has a sprained or broken ankle before the chase? He or she is going to have to be pretty creative or there won’t be a chase. What this means is the author is going to have to be pretty creative.

Let’s say the character is sitting out on the patio, babying a bad case of allergies. She’s sneezing, sniffling and blowing her nose. Her ears have stuffed up from all the sniffling.

Now the bad guy is sneaking around the side of the house, weapon in hand. I’m going to say the protagonist lives in the desert and has a yard full of gravel rather than grass. (Grass doesn’t do well in the desert heat.) No matter how hard the antagonist tries to be quiet, the gravel crunches under his feet. He stops and listens, but all he hears is a sneeze. Onward bad guy.

Meanwhile, between the sneezing, blowing and stuffed ears, our innocent allergy sufferer doesn’t hear his arrival. Oh, and let’s say she doesn’t have any pets who might warn her of the impending danger. What’s a girl gonna do?

The bad guy leaps around the corner of the house and comes after our girl. Here are a few things she could do. She could throw her box of tissues at him, but that probably wouldn’t do much good. She could wait until he’s close enough and start squeezing her nasal spray toward his eyes, repeatedly. Or, since this is a mystery and she may have had some idea that something might happen, she could reach for her own weapon which is lying conveniently in her lap or on the patio table next to her. The bad guy has a knife and she has a gun. Never bring a knife to a gunfight. Well, she could have a container of mace or something similar. I’m partial to a can of bear spray. It’s supposed to spray for something like thirty feet.

Changing the scenario just slightly, our female is still blowing her nose and sniffling, but this time she has a dog who’s sitting next to her on the patio. Through her teary eyes she sees the dog stand and stiffen. The hair on his back stands up, and although she can’t really hear him, she can tell by his face that he’s emitting a low growl. The bared teeth are a dead giveaway. When the bad guy steps round the corner of the house, he finds a woman with a gun or bear spray pointed at him and she has a phone in her hand. She’s just called 9-1-1.

I realize these examples are silly, but sometimes making the protagonist more vulnerable makes the story a bit more exciting. What if, as I mentioned before, he or she had a broken leg before the confrontation? Remember the Hitchcock movie, Rear Window? If you’ve never seen it, you might want to check it out. Very creative self-defense. However, unless your protagonist is accident prone, I wouldn’t overdo it. One broken leg per series would be plenty.

Would you like to know what brought on this particular post? My daughter sprained her ankle yesterday when her thick-soled flip flops twisted and she fell off of them. Once again, real life sparks ideas.

Until next time, I hope you have a healthy week with no falls, no allergies and no bad guys.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

Here’s hoping you’ll take the time to give One Adventure Too Many – A Sandi Webster Mystery a try. The biggest accident in this story is a visit from Sandi’s busybody mother and aunt who want to help solve a murder.