Gremlins – Don’t Feed at All

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By Bethany Maines

The premise of my Carrie Mae Mystery series is that in the
sixties, while other ladies were burning their bras and inventing Tupperware,
Carrie Mae Robart founded a door to door / friend to friend cosmetic selling
empire – Carrie Mae Cosmetics. Her goal was to give women financial
independence without having to work outside the home. However, the more women
she met, the more she realized that there were some problems that couldn’t be
solved with just money ­– some problems needed a fist in the face. So Carrie
Mae set up the Carrie Mae Foundation. Financed by proceeds from the cosmetic
sales, the foundation is part non-profit – working on pro-bono legal cases and
lobbying government on women’s rights issues – and partly a women only,
black-ops, elite fighting force. The heroines of my stories Nikki Lanier, Ellen
Marson, Jenny Baxter and Jane Rozmarek are part of that force and they travel
the world, fulfilling the Carrie Mae mission statement: helping women
everywhere.
Now the thing you’ll notice about this premise is that it’s
only partially based in reality.  I
mean, sure, it’s possible for a woman in the 1960’s to found a peer to peer
make up sales company.  Not that I
know of any… ahem.  But sadly, it
has apparently never occurred to anyone to found an elite fighting force for
women as part their non-profit. (If someone knows of one, please email me
immediately; I would like to join up.) 
The problem with all of this lack of reality is that I have to make it
sound plausible when writing. And that means all the other bits have to sound
real. I have to research the guns and the locations and I try to make sure that
my characters emotions feel authentic. 
But if I spend too much time in reality, I suddenly look at my own
premise and think, “That’s ridiculous! 
I can’t write that.” 

That’s right; I tell myself, “I can’t.”  Those are some of the worst words in
the English language.  (Although,
they’re still not as bad as, “We need to talk.”) I’m two books and two short
stories, and half a manuscript into a series, and… I can’t?  How does the Can’t Gremlin sneak into
so many places?  I thought I was
well fortified behind the Walls of Fantasy; girded by the Armor of Gumption; defended
by the Holy Force of Imagination. 
And yet… I can’t.  Why is it
so hard to get that jerk of a gremlin out of the house? Can’t have an elite
fighting force?  You might as well
suggest that a woman can’t write books. The cycle of Can’t can be extremely
hard to break, so when I get too down in the Can’ts, I like to read other
people’s books.  There’s nothing
like a good trip through someone else’s imagination to leave the Can’t Gremlin
in the dust.  But still, I know
he’s just waiting around the corner to trip me up.  Which is why I prefer to visit reality infrequently and for
only brief periods of time.  Feel
free to visit me any time, but leave your gremlins at the door – I can’t be
bothered with Can’t today.
Bethany Maines is the author of
the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube
video or catch up with her on Twitter and
Facebook.

A Different Kind of Dues

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“Pay your dues.” I’d certainly heard enough of that in my prior career as a psychotherapist. Interns had to do grunt work or work 24/7 to be considered
accepted. Clinicians had to give up family life if the bachelor head-of-the-hospital demanded that staff be as workaholic as he. If you didn’t comply, your
professionalism was maligned and your job was in jeopardy. The belief was you had to go through all the pain and struggles that those who “made it” went
through in order to earn respect.

There may be something to say about the personal growth that emerges from overcoming obstacles and encountering difficult experiences (we writers are
always throwing roadblocks at our protagonists), but in real life, the philosophy of making others suffer because one’s own road up the career ladder was not
smooth never sat well with me. As a clinical supervisor and eventual CEO, I wanted those who were coming up in the ranks to have a wide range of
experiences, to learn as much as they could, and to take on challenges. But to purposely make their journey difficult so they could pay their dues? Or,
more covertly, not to offer a hand to make things easier for those who followed? Not my style.

Thankfully, not the style of the writing community. One of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring characteristics of the people who write fiction as a
career is that they have substituted the “pay your dues” mentality with “be a stepping stone” for those who follow. Oh sure, I can imagine there are
exceptions—as there are with anything, including the generalization I made about people’s philosophy in my prior career—but overall, writers tend to be
generous, supportive, encouraging people.

This past weekend I volunteered at the Writers League of Texas Annual Conference and had the privilege of talking with aspiring writers and offering all
sorts of professional guidance to make their journey into the publishing world easier. It was my way to give back and I loved it. Next week I’ll be at the
International Thriller Writers (ITW) conference in NYC. ITW has as one of its main purposes “to provide a way for successful, bestselling authors to help
debut and midlist authors advance their careers.” The idea being: If you’ve made it, offer a helping hand. There is success enough for everyone. Hmm.

What have you done to spread success? Did you share a terrific recipe that you’d developed? Did you take the time to teach a personal skill to someone? What random act of kindness could you perform, say once a week, to lighten someone’s load?

Marjorie Brody is an award-winning author and Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her short stories appear in

literary magazines and the Short Story America Anthology, Vols. I, II and III. Her debut psychological suspense novel, TWISTED, was awarded an Honorable
Mention at the 2013 Great Midwest Book Festival and won the Texas Association of Authors 2014 Best Young Adult Fiction Book Award. TWISTED is available in
digital and print at

http://tinyurl.com/cvl5why or http://tinyurl.com/bqcgywl.
Marjorie invites you to visit her at
www.marjoriespages.com.

Cause of death – Researching?

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So, yeah, I’m writing a new mystery for the Tourist Trap
series.  And I’ve got this dead guy in
the middle of the floor, playing, no being, dead.
I know who kills Kent. I know why he has to die.
It’s the how.
I had a great idea that I started researching and ran into
some controversy over whether or not a stun gun can kill someone.  So now I’m mulling over the but what if…
additions.
I’m trying to make the story interesting without delving
into the world of science fiction or fantasy. 
My Google search history would make a serial killer proud.
Meanwhile, I’ve got a dead guy in the middle of the stage.
Literally. 
So this question is for the cozy mystery reader – How
realistic do you like your murder facts? 
I don’t want to make people throw the book across the room. (grin)
To gather more information, I’ve joined a crime writer yahoo
group and am busy searching the files for relevant entries. I’ve searched out
blogs from former police officers where they post about the effects of
different weapons.
In the past, I met two guys who owned a lot of guns (prior
military dudes) in a bar. When I said I’d never shot a gun before, they offered
to take me to the desert and teach me to shoot.
I went.
Luckily, I also came home, but I started to get a little
nervous when I thought about how isolated the spot they’d chosen for the
shooting lesson. 
When we were driving to our favorite ATV riding site with my
husband’s best friend, I brought up the question of guns. I think the friend
thought I was a bit off, or at least until my husband asked if this was for one
of my books.
So writers, what have you done in the name of research?  Know any great murder sites you’d like to
share?
Lynn
If you like your mysteries in paper format, MISSION TO MURDER is now available -e-book July 31st.

Pre-Surgery Rant

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by Linda Rodriguez


By the time you read this, I’ll be recuperating from some
major surgery, but at the time I’m writing it, the surgery hasn’t taken place
yet. So I’m nervous. Aren’t we all in such a case?
Scary as surgery is, however, dealing with health insurance
companies has become even scarier. Between the time I left my surgeon’s office
and the date my surgery was scheduled, my insurance carrier had been bought by
another huge insurance company. Doctors who were approved providers on my
original plan but not on the buying company’s plan were instantly dropped from
coverage and told they must re-apply to be accepted. 
Guess whose surgeon was
one of these? She went between supper and breakfast from being an approved
surgeon under my insurance to being out of network, which means I’d have to
essentially pay for most of this surgery entirely out of my own pocket. One of
the partners in her practice had been approved under both plans, so rather than
wait the months it could take to get her approved again—since that really is
not an option for this surgery, which is not elective—or pay about $20,000 that
I simply don’t have, I agreed to have this older man I’ve never met be my
surgeon while the young, smart woman who met and examined me, impressed me, and
developed a rapport with me will only assist. And my follow-up care and
treatment plan will also have to be with this man, who is probably an expert
surgeon and a lovely person but is totally unknown to me. As the internet cats
would say, I haz sad.
Over the years, I’ve heard many arguments against
nationalizing health care to make sure that every citizen can have the health
care he or she needs. They usually fall back into “Do you want the government
to decide which doctor you can have or which medicine you can take?” pretty
quickly. 
Although the government has never yet made those decisions for me,
health insurance corporations have done so again and again. They have decided
that medicines my doctor prescribes will not be covered. They decide which
doctors I can see and which specialists, and all tests prescribed for me must
first be cleared with them. Now, they have changed their minds midstream and
told me I cannot have the surgeon I want and have been seeing with their
approval. I know people who have died because their insurance companies, to
which these people had paid hefty premiums for years, decided they could not
have the life-saving treatments their doctors, who were approved by their
insurance companies in the first place, said they needed.
So, how are we any better off with what we have than with a
national single-payer healthcare system? As I wait to go into surgery at the
hands of a complete stranger and read of the Supreme Court decision privileging
the personhood of a major for-profit corporation over the personhood of actual,
living, breathing, individual women, these issues suddenly become immensely
personal.

Saving Private Ryan—and Everyone Else Too

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By Kay Kendall

Many anniversaries in the
last few weeks remind us of the wretched world wars that ripped apart the
twentieth century. Right off the top of my head, here are three important dates:
* June 6, 2014—70th
anniversary of D-Day.
* June 28, 2014—100th
anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, precipitating incident
of World War I.   

* June 30, 2014—80th
anniversary of “Night of the Long Knives” in Germany, when Hitler ordered murders of his Storm Troop leadership, thus cementing ties between the
Nazi regime and the German Army.

Those first two dates
received lots of publicity, but the third did not. June 30 was an important event that enabled Hitler to become Führer of National Socialist Germany and to claim absolute power.
Sometime in my
twenties I realized that I think about war and its fallout far more than most
females do. War is so common that many take it for granted, I think. But consider
this: Some psychologists estimate that it takes three generations—three!—for the
effect of having a family member serve in combat to work its way through the
offspring.  Now, multiply that times the
millions who served in both World Wars I and II, and then you begin to get a
sense of how enormous and long-lasting is the legacy of twentieth century
battles.

I also study history,
enjoying every detail, trying to understand why events turned out the way they
did…and also what could have been done to change tragic outcomes. There are
others like me, but far more people keep track of the Kardashians’ activities
than they do historical dates.


Because of this, and
because I think it is critical to know something about history and not to
forget lessons learned, I have chosen in my own small way to write about a long
ago era. If you set a fictional story within an accurate backdrop, then readers
can pick up a sense of the time and place almost by osmosis. My chosen era is
the Vietnam War.

Mystery authors who
have inspired me include Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, and Jacqueline Winspear. Each
of these writers has new books out this year. Furst and Kerr set their
thrillers within the lead up to and early years of World War II. Winspear has a
famous series about Maisie Dobbs, a nurse in World War I. Her current book,
however, is a standalone called The Care
and Management of Lies. She is the third generation in her family since her
grandfather was gassed in the trenches of France. Her father fought in World
War II. She thinks and reads about war and its aftermath and writes about it
too. The Care and Management of Lies is
her homage to the Great War, and she describes eloquently why she wrote it, see
http://thecareandmanagementoflies.com/camol-inspiration.php
Many moviegoers were made aware of the
importance of D-Day by director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. Since then Hanks
has produced and participated in many films and television shows that memorialize
that great conflict, World War II. The enormity of that war seems to get into
your soul and will not let you go.
World War II is often cited as the “good
war,” the one that was necessary to fight. On the other hand, World War I,
originally called “the war to end all wars,” sadly did not live up to its name.
In fact, historians now see the two great wars as parts of the same whole.
Philosopher George Santayana famously
wrote, “Those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it.”

If we do not
want to produce millions more Private Ryans who must eventually be saved (or
brought home in body bags), we need to ponder how humanity bumbles into wars
so easily, and then decide what we as citizens can do to stop this idiocy.
Waging war is too significant to be left to politicians alone.
*******


Kay Kendall’s debut novel, Desolation Row—An Austin Starr Mystery, takes place in 1968. Mysteries about World Wars I and II inspired her to use the Vietnam
War to illuminate reluctant courage and desperate love when a world teeters on
chaos. 

Kay’s work in progress is Rainy
Day Women, when her amateur sleuth Austin Starr must prove her best friend
didn’t murder women’s liberation activists in Seattle and Vancouver. She is an
award-winning international PR executive living in Texas with husband, three
house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. Terribly allergic to bunnies, she loves them
anyway! Her book titles show she’s a Bob Dylan buff too.
Discover more about  DESOLATION ROW, here at
http://www.KayKendallAuthor.com

Computers–Love ‘Em and Hate ‘Em

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When I think back to when I first started writing and used a typewriter and carbon paper–I love my computer.

When I’m having problems with my computer–like right now–I hate it. I’m writing this on my iPad because my computer won’t start. I’m taking it in to the repair shop, but this is due in the a.m. I had a whole different post planned, complete with photos, bur I can’t access those particular photos with this cool little instrument.

Of course there’s plenty of work I need to be doing because I was away from home this weekend and the work tends to pile up.

Besides writing posts for blogs, I have some documents I need to send to people, and I can’t access them from here. So frustrating.

I did purchase a new editing program before the problem and perhaps that did it. I’m not smart enough to know. Though I do have a back-up program it only does it once every 24 hours, so it won’t be backed up.

This is my post for today–and yes, I am frustrated.When next you hear from me, hopefully my computer will be well.

Marilyn