MYSTERY SHE WROTE

  This project was not my first 'dive' into writing for Middle-Grade/Young Teen readers, but it was my first mystical-adventure plot that featured a true superhero as the main character. Like a few of my adult plots this too began as separate novella style books specifically geared to [as one MG teacher described] the 'reluctant reader".  However, the premise came from an unusual place. In 2008 a young mother whose five-year-old son was born with Cystic Fibrosis contacted me. Her son's favorite superhero was Spiderman. Just before bed they often read several pages from a Spiderman comic. The night before, her son was despondent because: "I guess no one  like me could be a superhero, huh?  The mother knew I was working on a young teen mystery series, but wondered if I could write a book about a sick kid - who could also be a superhero?  I found this new challenge appealing. At first, I explored picture books for preschool children, with bug type characters, bu...

Marketing Site,  Shout My Book was too generous with the promotion of my mystery number 10. It's anything but cozy. It is closer to disturbing... And disturbing is what I intended - softened up however, by the two main 70-year-old characters, friends since childhood. Once again, I had followed several news events over the course of about six years. [Including PBS Frontline's " Pandora Papers ".] And once again I wondered what those writing or reporting the news features were not telling us. Or even if they knew. Following public information sources to a logical conclusion, along with a fiction author's imagination - offered me a plot that I just couldn't 'not' write.  Even though I wrote the two main characters doing much of the sleuthing as somewhat elderly like Agatha Christies', Miss Marple  - the discoveries Lois and Ivy make are grim with antagonists' motivations pure treachery.  My plan [still] is a sequel that returns Lois Woodrow and...

Ahhh, my mystery number nine... I had intended to write this book, years before I finally got it finished, but it wasn't written as I had originally planned. I grew up with a dad and uncle [Dad's younger brother] and a grandmother who told oodles of funny and interesting family stories, with colorful characters. With those stories rolling around in my head for decades, this family-memoir was - in my mind - going to be humorous. However, diving into research for more of the history for global events of their 'time' pointed me in an entirely new direction.  Certainly, all the family members I had prepared to feature were still included, but too many social, global and political events between WWI and WWII kept intruding and got in my way. So, what was happening around them got woven in with the two generations before me in my family as well. And - those events turned out to be [in actuality] very close to home - aka my grandmother's boardinghouse. ***** George and Mar...

  This suspense-thriller, book number eight was intended as a sequel to Grabbing Air. I heard from readers who became invested in the two main characters and wanted to know if their life was going to continue on together. As there was more romance in this project than even Shadows And Light, I too wanted to keep going, but how? Then the 'how' presented itself in of all places The Wall Street Journal. An advanced technology launched a new algorithm [pitched as a financial-investment ] called Bitcoin , caught my attention.  At first there wasn't many research sources, but over the course of several months, accumulating news articles and magazine features provided enough for me to work with. It also began to worry me to my core...I didn't see this crypto as a currency or an investment at all, but a high-risk venture. My research pointed crypto toward something else we had seen before. Who had  reinvented a pyramid-scheme that could not be seen or touched or measured by an...

  Mystery-suspense number seven was the result of several readers asking if History Professor Hank Rule was returning and-then about the same time, another Catholic Church scandal caught national headlines. Once more, I was able to include factual research merged with my imagination.  Naturally we write what we know but including careful research at least for me, is just as much fun.  However, including current news and/or historical or technical facts can make plot challenges, for a writer. But - I've always liked that dare - mixing my plot and/or my characters or both with a new technology, or current event or documented history. Sorting out the plot complications can be an occasional headache but worth the effort.  It's worth it even more when a reader or several readers learn something or likes how I managed to create a plot around some extensive factual research. According to literary agents and literary editors there are character driven plots or story driven...

Mystery-suspense number six was originally intended to be a trilogy with "Dream Gate" then "Dream Gate - Grabbing Air" then "Dream Gate - Grabbing Time"... However, once again I was convinced to merge my first two novellas into one novel. This made sense as the research into dreams, something that fascinated Einstein, was an important scientific element I didn't want lost in a plot that couldn't be taken seriously or viewed as believable. And, with another opportunity to merge some history with the fiction I could also expand the developing relationship of my two main characters to give that romance more depth. In every three-ring binder of notes and research I assemble for each plot idea - I give all of my characters a birth date along with a pivotal early life event or more that 'shaped' them. Not all of this character-backstory may make it to the scenes of a final edit, but that character- essence is there and helps to create a substant...

  My published mystery-suspense, number five won an award one full year before "The Count Of Baldpate, only because I submitted it for consideration first. Finding the courage  to send sample chapters to literary agents is nerve-searing enough, but sending off an entire book for a literary review and then a literary competition [that includes other books by your peers] almost requires medication... An early, early version of my Fine Points project was two manuscripts with the second intended as a sequel.  However, since my main adult character was as a child, raised in foster care, an agent at a writers' conference pointed out that she thought ' his mystery' was truly the mainstay. So, my two novellas became one novel.  When [and only when] a suggestion or criticism rings true, writers should pay attention. Though this literary agent regretted that she could not take on additional clients, she liked this premise as something slightly different than the norm. [I cho...

Manuscript [ adventure ] number four was a murder-mystery with historical elements... It came about in a rather unusual way, but like most of my plots grew first from curiosity. One morning in 2002, [then living in Colorado] while driving from Fort Collins to Denver I happened to catch an NPR radio program that had originated with the BBC-- titled "Born A Girl". An anthropologist had studied how girls grew up, were educated [or not] and basically treated in several cultures from advanced to underdeveloped. Her findings were disturbing. And it started me wondering.  How was it that the female [which is still 51% of all live births] of our species remained basically deferential to the male of our species in every culture throughout the centuries? Did it start out that way? Was there a time when the female was considered equal or even in charge? Naturally, I 'went' looking. But that research was slow, and the evolution of the plot took 12 years...  ***** American women f...

  This mystical-mystery-thriller was manuscript number three...  And, thinking back, its plot roots were likely due to my great-grandmother. Mattie Luella Bateman attended church every Sunday. But that wasn't so notable as the fact that each church, temple, synagogue, tabernacle, mosque etc... represented a different religion every Sunday.  As a result, my mother was completely comfortable with all spiritual beliefs which in their foundation she saw as amazingly parallel. Also, mother read everything and so did my maternal grandfather. I grew up with stacks of National Geographics from the 1930s on, two sets of encyclopedias, as well as books on every known religion. [The other books came from our local library, for which my dad was relieved because they eventually left the house, and he didn't need to build more shelves to hold them...] Anyway, while I was still in high school my mother discovered Ruth Mongomery, journalist turned New Age author of several metaphysical b...

This suspense-thriller was manuscript number two.  But unlike the basic plot outline of my first manuscript--that came from 'where' I do not know...I know exactly from where this plot idea sprang.  After five years of writing for both weekly and daily newspapers I had gathered a shoebox stuffed with newspaper clippings that had attracted my curiosity. The  AP [Associated Press] political features I cut out had piqued my interest as much for what had not been written as for what had been written.  What was truly going on behind the printed headlines? What was hidden between the lines of the reported facts of political unrest in Europe or the outbreak of civil wars in third-world countries, what motivated various protests? And, still living in Canada, what was behind what appeared to be random cabinet shuffles or votes of no-confidence in parliament. My enquiring mind wanted to know... But 'building' this plot even with some imagination merged with hours of research w...

This mystery-suspense novel was my first- borne . But its 'birth' was long and convoluted - extremely convoluted.  Why? Well--first, because my background was/is geology and journalism, initially, I had no idea what I was doing. Second, when I got to the last page [292] in an early draft of the manuscript, I thought leaving the characters 'there' - where readers could decide an ending might be more unusual and more creative. But it wasn't. And--after I read last two chapters again  - I knew it.  Feeling stymied though, I packed up all my notes and research and rewrites in a box then pushed it to the back of a shelf behind my laundry supplies. Writing for print journalism and writing fiction are poles apart with a learning curve that was amazingly steep. I knew how to research - all of my fiction plots are merged with fact. However, telling a story is not the job of a journalist. [I have since adapted two of my novels to screenplay format and 'that-too' wa...