Bubblegum + Paper Bags Lead to . . .

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By AB Plum

Bubblegum + Paper Bags Lead to . . .
Ruination.

Last week with several deadlines looming and promo tasks lurking, I screwed up.
  

Uh-huh, right in the middle of a frustrated, stressed-out, hair-pulling cycle, I got distracted.

By bubblegum.

None of my characters chews bubblegum. Why not? I asked myself. As a kid, I’d loved the sweet, caries-inducing rubber glob I could chew until my jaws ached. 

Against strict parental mandates, I’d slap down my few pennies, inhale the indescribable scent of sugary fruit, pop the pink ball in my mouth, and chew away—lost in a world where I imagined blowing a twenty-inch bubble.  


Surely, even a properly raised eleven-year-old Danish boy—my main character with a dark soul—might discover bubblegum? 

TO Dos wailed. I shoved the question in the back of my mind and went to work scheduling my blog posts. I had two due within a week of each other.

Then, don’t ask me how, I got distracted again. Who invented the paper sack? How could John Pavlos of MoMA, consider that mundane thing “the smartphone of the 19th century”? 

What? Before texting, did people pass written messages back and forth on those smooth, brown surfaces? Did kids hold paper bags, attached with string, against their ears and talk to each other from yards away? Smartphone of the 19th century?
C’mon.

But you can see how I screwed-up, right? Posted one blog a week early.

Not a history-changing screw-up like Napoleon marching into Russia without adequate winter provisions.

Not a mistake like the sinking of the Titanic—on a different scale than Napoleon’s blunder—but an unforgettable snafu by someone in charge of planning for enough lifeboats.

My screw-up only led to my own embarrassment unlike the poor Tampa patient years ago whose surgeon removed the wrong leg and left the poor guy in worse shape than he started.

The public aware of my mistake was minuscule compared to the Super Bowl audience witnessing the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ on live TV in 2004. (Not to mention all the re-runs).

When I reexamine the above list and consider all the screw-ups we’ve seen in the past few chaotic weeks of political transition, I think I’ll change my mind.

My screw-up really falls into the category of messing up.

Messing up vs screwing up.

Uh-huh. I can live with messing up. I’ll depict screw-ups in my fiction (some of which carries a definite autobiographical note).

For now, I’ll forget that none of my characters chews bubblegum or uses brown paper bags. No more distractions.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

How about you? Made any mistakes lately?

*****************
AB Plum lives and writes just off the fast lane in Silicon Valley. Unless she gets totally distracted, she plans to release on March 17 The Lost Days, Book 2 in The MisFit Series, her dark psychological thriller about the childhood of a psychopath.



EXCERPT from The Lost Days
The sun’s eerie summer glow disoriented me as much as the headache hammering my skull. Or maybe my confusion came from the man seated next to me, his foot placed at the top of my foster brother’s spine. I gritted my teeth. Dimitri lay crumpled face down in the space behind the driver’s seat. His legs were folded under him like a penitent waiting for absolution.
The man in the front seat turned and flashed a mouthful of piano-white teeth. His piercing blue eyes glittered. I stared. His copper-colored hair glowed in the golden evening light.
He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “For a boy who killed his mother three months ago, you have a face that borders on transparent.”
“You-you’re not American.”
“And you’re not Finnish—despite your mother.”
Involuntarily, I snorted.
Nostrils flaring, he cuffed my right temple with his knuckles. “I already know what you think of your mother.”
My ears rang. Involuntarily, my fingers flexed and twitched as if I’d been electrocuted. I wanted to hit him. Smash his face. Kick his Finnish teeth down his throat.
“We are going to see,” he said, “just how tough you are.”


















































Two Years of Wisdom in 250 Words or Less

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On Friday, my first book, The Deep End, will turn two. There it is toddling around Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

Two years ago, I eagerly anticipated being launched to the top of the New York Times list. Hollywood would call. I’d be coy (not really).

Two years ago, I knew nothing about publishing.

I know a little bit more now.

If a new author were to ask my advice, this is what I’d tell them…

  • The adage is true, the only thing a writer can really control is the quality of her book.
  • Marketing matters. Don’t expect your publisher to do this for you.
  • Know your readers.
  • Don’t give your rights away! Foreign language, audio, television and film–they’re all worth more than my newbie self could have imagined.
  • If you’re self-publishing, don’t publish before you’re ready. It’s great if your mother and your spouse and your best friend love your book. But their love doesn’t mean your opus is ready for primetime. Professional editing (both developmental and copy) make a huge difference. 
  • What is your brand? If you can’t answer, you can’t expect your readers to find you.
  • Finally, think marathon not sprint. A few lucky authors rocket to the top of the lists with their debuts. For the rest of us it’s about building a readership, keeping those readers engaged, and making sure each book is better than (or please God, at least as good as) the last.







Julie Mulhern writes the Country Club Murders, a series of humorous mysteries set in the 1970s. Feeling nostalgic for Tab, phones with cords, or harvest gold? Pop over to the country club! While you’re there, play a round of golf, a set of tennis, or a rubber of bridge. Good, almost-clean fun! No bodies…well, no promises.


Book five in the Country Club Murders, Watching the Detectives, will release May 23, 2017.

Where I Work

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Where
I Work by Debra H. Goldstein

When I wrote my first author bio, I noted my ideas and my
writings are diverse. Consequently, I named my personal blog (www.DebraHGoldstein.com/blog) “It’s
Not Always a Mystery.” That blog title still captures my personality and
authored works perfectly, but recently, I noticed there is another area in
which I vary what I do – where I write.

I’ve always kidded if I can see water, even if it is
bathwater, I am my most productive. That holds true – rolling ocean or gulf
waves, rippling lakes, or placid tub water all calm me enough to create or
clarify thoughts. Unfortunately, I live in a landlocked area and since my November foot
surgery, I’ve been limited to showers (that’s another story to be told —
think fat naked lady trying to decide if she needs to call 911). Consequently,
I’ve had to find other places for stimulation.

As I write this and later today do a final edit on what I
hope will be my next book, I’m sitting in my living room in a one-hundred plus
year old chair (recovered a couple of times during that period) that originally
belonged to my grandmother. This room, decorated in blue, gold and orange is my
favorite in the house we downsized to twelve years ago. It is bright, but
comforting. The colors are restful, but bold. Two chairs, an ornate couch, and four
mahogany tables belonged to my grandmother, my aunt, and then to me. Two end
chairs, with backs that make me think of a harp, perhaps because they are
placed near the piano bought for me when I was six, were my mother’s pride and
joy. There is a mirror and vases over the fireplace, inherited from my

mother-in-law, that match the two Capodimonte lamps that no one in the family
treasured except my grandmother and me. Although I may play music on the piano
or through an iPod, there is no television or other distractions. I work
diligently in this room and I am at peace.

Working in the over-sized club chair in my bedroom is
different. That chair, which was designed for my father, who like me had long
legs, has an extra depth of two inches. Add those two inches to the ottoman
that can be pulled to touch the chair, and perfect comfort can be achieved. It
is a room for drafts – for starts and stops – for formulating ideas and letting
them percolate while the television in front of me calls my name to turn it on
and make short shrift of my work. Despite my willingness to be distracted in
this room, I am proud of the work product produced there.

Ironically, my least productive writing room is my office
even though I spend most of my time there. In our former house, my office was a
600-square foot sanctuary with a wall lined with bookcases. When we downsized,
I adopted a 13×15 bedroom and placed my computer on a credenza between the two
windows so I could write looking over the tops of the neighborhood’s houses. I
hung an inspirational picture above the credenza. Turning my back to the
credenza, brings me to my oversized desk which sits before a smart television.
The sides of the room have free standing floor to ceiling bookcases – biography
on one wall, mysteries overflowing on the other. Because of the limited space,
I had to move novels and literature to the hallway, children’s books, plays,
and non-fiction to another bedroom. Although I write some drafts in this room,
most of the time, I use my stand-alone desktop to polish manuscripts, make sure
spacing and formatting is correct, and to send the final copy from. Paperwork,
social media, promotional activities, and all business-related chores are
handled in my office. There is creativity present in the room, but it is tinged
with reality.

Having had my step climbing limited the past six months, I moved
key parts of my office into my dining room (computer, printer, paper, pens).
That elegant room now looks like the Martians have landed and it wasn’t pretty.
It is not restful or enjoyable to work there. My chair, wonderful for formal
dinner parties, is stiff for creativity. The room, which is fun to laugh and
spend an evening in with friends, is lonely when I’m alone. Working in there is
a stop and go process interspersed with games of spider solitaire. I want my
dining room back the way it was meant to be.

The interesting thing to me is how different the places I
write or do author related things are. As diverse as they are, they represent
the diversity that is part of being an author and what makes me who I am as a
person. Where do you write and how does it impact you?

Parent Traps

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By Bethany Maines

A recent trip to the grocery store reminded me that Valentine’s Day is upon us. As I cruised down a particularly pink and red aisle I saw wall to wall sets of movie themed Valentines for kids. Which made me realize that as my spawn starts to become an actual kid certain things are barreling down on me. Valentines. Birthday parties. Teacher gifts. And all of them cause me to think – what the hell?

When did teacher gifts become a thing? I don’t remember my mom having to essentially tip any of my teachers. Teaching is an arrangement in which someone gets paid to show up and tell things to small people. It was a nice arrangement with very clear cut guidelines – show up, learn/teach, go home. Now all of my friends with older kids are dithering about teacher gifts around Christmas. I recognize that teachers aren’t paid enough, but crappy set of lotion at Christmas is not going to make up for that.



And suddenly if you have a birthday party for your kid there have to gift bags for the children who attend. Birthdays are the day when everyone shows up and gives the person celebrating a gift. Why are we now bribing people to attend? If I have to bribe you to show up then you are not my friend. I suppose the alternative theory is that the small children cannot handle the sight of someone else receiving gifts. But… Isn’t that the entire point of parenting – teaching your kids to manage their own emotions? So wouldn’t gift bags just be me supporting your poor parenting?

Valentine’s Day has now become a flashpoint for grade school bullying. Better give a Valentine to everyone or you’re a bully. Sounds lovely. You know what that means in reality? It means that I have to buy Valentines. A kid can make four or five Valentines, but no grade schooler is going to hand-craft an entire classrooms worth of Valentines. So now I’m stuck supporting the Hallmark industry? Swell.

Can someone figure a way out of this for me? Can I just carbon freeze my kid at three? Or can I start a social revolution for those of us who are anti-social? Somebody help!

***
Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie
Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales
from the City of Destiny and An
Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video
or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

ALTERNATE FACTS—WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

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By A B Plum

What’s the big deal about alternate facts?

Depends.

Now, before you send me “hate mail” rubbing my nose in the error of my ways, let me attempt one view on my response. (Misguided, shallow, inane, naïve, etc., etc., etc., though that view may be). 

Read on. Please.

We writers of fiction deal with alternate facts every day. Alternate facts have provided the drama, the comedy, the romance in fiction since . . . forever.

Take the story of Adam and Eve. Is it a fact that a serpent tempted Eve to succumb to that apple? Have you ever met a snake—other than maybe a two-legged one—who communicated with you? Tempted you to do anything but scream and run the other direction?

In the story of David and Goliath, is it a fact—or thinly veiled political propaganda, aka an alternate fact—that helped establish David’s rep as a formidable foe in battle?

Snow White ends up in a glass coffin waiting for her true Prince to waken her with a kiss. How many of us believe a talking mirror landed her there? C’mon, that’s just a bit of a jump from a speaking serpent.

How about the superheroes of comics? Is a guy who “leaps tall buildings at a single bound” a symbol of symbol against evil—even if he wears a red cape, tights, and funny boots? Certainly, he’s a product of several writers’ gluing together disparate alternate facts (a mild-mannered newspaper reporter steps into a phone booth and shoots into the sky—not to be confused with a bird or a plane).

Wonder Woman came on the American scene from ancient Greece in December 1941—a time of prolific alternate facts spouted by dictators in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the politicos in the U.S. Here comes Wonder Woman, another alternate fact embodied as an emblem of hope during the very real good-vs-evil-battle raging across the civilized world.

The term alternate fact will, I suspect, become a buzzword and a meme. The phrase may even get included in the 2017 list of new words added to the Oxford English Dictionary. We’ll undoubtedly see/hear thousands of rebuttals, defenses, satires, gibberish, and rationale about the political impact of alternate facts ad nauseam.

Personally, I like the discussion.

At the same time, I wonder why the big deal? Readers, movie fans, TV viewers, video-game aficionados, Wall Street movers and shakers, and all the rest of us come up against alternate facts every day. Every day. Often they’re even passed off as facts.
We don’t need a writer to point out, tongue in cheek, that some of us have more critical genes than others. Or may it’s more synapses synapsing. Or whatever.

Those of us who write fiction certainly know about trying to persuade fans that alternate facts are the truth. Readers let us know pretty quickly when we underestimate their intelligence. Many of them go so far as refusing to buy our next books. Ouch.

Bring on the alternate facts. I imagine them galvanizing us across party lines and ideological platforms. We’ve already seen the demonstrations and discounted the fake news accounts that no one showed up.

Fake news, like alternate facts, fools no one.

The fact is, people—not just readers of fiction—dislike being underestimated.

We can clearly see that army of snakes slinking through the underbrush from miles away.

And if we can’t see ’em, we can smell them. 

Here are the straight facts:  AB Plum works and writes dark, psychological thrillers in Silicon Valley. The Lost Days, her second book in The MisFit Series should hit the shelves in mid-March.

Strength Undefeatable

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by J.M. Phillippe
I can’t remember if my mom picked it out for me, or if I found it myself. I am pretty sure the appeal of the poster was that it was long and narrow, perfect for putting on the back of a college dorm-room door. The colors were pastel-bright and dreamy, that vague 90’s swirly artwork of stars or flowers or something like it served as the background, and all in all it screamed: young girl leaving home to go to college.
On the poster were the words: 
I’d done a grade-school project on Anne Sullivan, the woman credited with dramatically changing Hellen Keller’s life. That you could be deaf and blind and still connect to the world amazed me. That you could see past someone’s isolated and nearly savage exterior and believe that there was a person worth connecting to still amazes me. I knew there was wisdom in the words of the poster, and over the next four years, I’d find myself going back to them over and over.
And then my brother died in 2001, and I felt completely lost.
I would feel lost for years. I would bounce from job to job completely unsatisfied. Panic about spending my time well made me waste it. I had this need to not only live my life, but the life he might have lived as well. I became more reckless. I felt restless. I dreamed up and dropped plan after plan after plan, trying to find one that might fit, that might make my life worthy of the word “life”. I didn’t fully understand survivor’s guilt then. I didn’t have the words “complicated grief” to describe the way my mother withdrew into herself. I was trying to be a free spirit. I was trying to find my strength undefeatable. I was trying to make every moment count, and feeling like no moment was good enough, would ever be good enough. I was trying to find myself; that’s what people in their 20s do, even if they don’t start the decade with losing their older brother.
I didn’t understand what strong was. I didn’t understand that creating a hard shell wasn’t the way to go. Undefeatable strength shone like a diamond — cold, bright, beautiful.
And then…
I found a new path, one that would take me to a new city, a new career, and a new outlook on life. I started to soften. I started to read about shame, about vulnerability. I discovered Brené Brown, a social worker who spoke about what it means to “dare greatly” in life, and what we need to do so: 

“If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path. And I know it’s seductive to stand outside the arena, because I think I did it my whole life, and think to myself, I’m going to go in there and kick some ass when I’m bulletproof and when I’m perfect. And that is seductive. But the truth is that never happens.”

So I started to try to enter the arena of my life as I was, and not wait until I was that perfect hard diamond I thought I needed to be.
And then…
My mother died. All my instincts said to go hard again. All my instincts told me the world was a cruel place that will take things from you unpredictably, or when you are on the verge of accomplishment, or starting a new, promising path. It will wait until you have your guard down, and it will strike, so you should never have your guard down. I was in the presence of fate again, and I needed to be strong. 
I always thought choice was about action, about taking a path as literally as walking in the woods, and that every path had an inevitable destination. So every choice came to me dripping with expectation, great blobs of insecurity dropping all over me. 
It now occurs to me that choices aren’t always linked to action, like hopping from stone to stone. Choices aren’t always about where you are going, but about who you choose to be in the here and now. Not how you set up the next moment, but about how you experience this one. Into all this self-reflection and reframing came other words:
A plant has deep roots and is strong because of them, able to withstand storm and damage and regrow again and again. And I thought, now that’s strength undefeatable.
The world has gotten scary again, and once again I am struck with feelings of loss, of confusion, of fear about the future. Once again I must face the reality that life will always be filled with changes, tragic or otherwise, and that the only thing I can control is whether I try to be a diamond or a plant — cold and hard, or fragile and vulnerable.
Strong and vulnerable do not seem to go together, and yet…
To keep our faces toward change, to be good human beings by staying open, and to to embrace the vulnerability of engagement – that is the strongest stance any of us can take. 
Here’s to staying engaged…
***
J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness and the short story The Sight. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City. She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

Working Through It: Motivation in Backstory

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By Kimberly Jayne

The last three
months, I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck on Survivor.
I don’t know about you, but from my perspective, with the election won by the
most disagreeable guy on the island (who should have been easily voted off)—and
a death in my family—I’ve been grieving. And it’s affected my writing.

But like everything
else that tests my sanity, I’m confident this too shall pass. It’s worth noting,
though, that when the Fates point our heads in one direction, their sleights of
hand point us in another without our recognizing it until after the fact.

Case in point…
Instead of actually writing, I’ve had a lot of time to think—some of it even
deliberately. While I’m not able to boast productivity in word counts, I am
able to count lots of behind-the-scenes progress on premise, backstory,
character motivation, truths, lies, and arc.
 
In my dark fantasy, the mystery
aspect of the plot concerns where the protagonist comes from and the secret nature
of her existence, which informs the trajectory of her arc and will ultimately
make an enormous impact on her world. Shocking, actually. Some of this was
already sketched out but just vague enough to roadblock my forward momentum.

So, back to thinking,
or rather, creative hashing out. For the story engine, the “why”
aspect of the character’s motivation is the jet fuel that can turn a book into
a page-turner—or a disorganized snoozefest, if you’re always running on empty.
It’s also the kind of epic behind-the-scenes battle that writers frequently
avoid because it’s just not easy. And until writers resolve these “why”
elements, they’ll torture themselves with “how it should all go—this way,
not that way—wait, that other way, because what if…” until it’s perfect. Until
it’s perfect, procrastination is the well-spring of writer’s block.

So while I’ve been
alternately moping and becoming a better activist, my brain has been
percolating on “why” story elements that are making my book
better—far better. I didn’t realize the extent of this percolation until a
series of light-bulb moments culminated in giddy, hand-rubbing, Mr. Hyde-like
epiphanies.
 
And all it took was staring off in deep thought, scribbling notes
on napkins, texting plot fragments to myself, talking it out with my cats, and forcing
a series of writing sessions where my progress was measured by how many minutes
my butt stayed in my chair. Of course, it helps to have writing buddies who
will brainstorm and pro-and-con ideas with me.

What all this means
is that I’ve created a stronger spine on which to hang my story. I know the
truths, and I know the lies. And now I have to wield them with precision. I’m
beginning to enjoy the writing again and celebrate the return of a terrific
adventure I enjoy diving into in each day—in a place where I can ignore all the
hijinks happening on the island.

__________________________________________

Kimberly Jayne writes humor, romantic comedy, suspense, erotica, and dark fantasy. Her latest foray into a dark fantasy released in episodes is as much an adventure as the writing itself. You can check her out on Amazon. Find out more about her at ReadKimberly.

Books by Kimberly Jayne:

Take My Husband, Please: An Unconventional Romantic ComedyDemonesse: Avarus, Episode 1
Demonesse: Avarus, Episode 2
Demonesse: Avarus, Episode 3
All the Innuendo, Half the Fact: Reflections of a Fragrant Liar

 

A Heroine for the Ages Meets a Bizarre Loner

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by Linda Rodriguez
When a group of writers decided on
Twitter to put together an anthology to benefit our friend Sabrina
Ogden and the Lupus Foundation, I was in on it from the start. After
all, I love Sabrina, and I deal with lupus every day myself. So we
called it Feeding Kate since Kate is Sabrina’s blogosphere
nickname.

https://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Kate-Crime-Fiction-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00B6UMGSM

The two main characters in my story,
“Rivka’s Place,” could hardly be more different. They are a
true odd couple of disparate ages and experiences and yet with great
respect for one another and love. I’m a big believer in courage and
in love.

One, Rivka, is an elderly Holocaust
survivor, a woman who refuses to be bullied as her shop’s
neighborhood becomes more and more dangerous and insists on helping
everyone around her. The other, C.J., came of age many decades after
World War II by killing two men as his father had trained him to do,
only to learn that everything he’d been taught was a lie, a man who
wants nothing more than to be left alone in peace to do his work,
read, and hide from his memories and those who hunt him.

Where did this bizarre partnership of
Rivka and C.J. come from?

I gave Rivka a background similar to
that of a well-known Kansas City woman, who had escaped from the
death camps of Nazi Germany twice as a child and had indeed insisted
on continuing to run her bakery in a deteriorating neighborhood,
feeding many who couldn’t afford to buy her goods. She’s dead
now, and Rivka looks and sounds nothing like her. Rivka came out of
the folds of my brain, but her background owes a debt to this
remarkable real woman I never met. I have always found her story
inspiring. As I have found the stories of so many who live with lupus
an inspiration.

To my knowledge, however, there is no
one anywhere remotely like C.J. He sprang full-blown into my mind and
demanded to be written. I have often wondered what would happen with
a young person who’d grown up in one of these cults or cult-like
families, indoctrinated in fear of civilization and government,
trained to defend the family against that “dangerous” government,
if that young person later learned that everything he or she had been
taught was a lie. C.J., I suspect, arose from these idle wonderings.

Bringing the two of them together left
me in a quandary when I first tried to write this story. Where could
it go? How could it end? I didn’t want to lose either of these
people I had come to value as I created them, but I didn’t see any
way that this could end well. These two characters were on a
collision course with tragedy. Eventually, I wrote the ending scene
through tears. Yet in some ways it is a happy ending because each
person is true to her and his inner self.


Do you like to
read of characters who make difficult choices? Are there people
you’ve known or just heard about who have inspired you with their
courage or their love?

Fun Facts About Sparkle Abbey

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by Sparkle Abbey
We’ve had a crazy week. We know, it’s only Thursday, but it feels like we’ve crammed in seven days since Monday. It’s times like this when we like to laugh and remind ourselves we have pretty amazing lives. So we thought this was the perfect time to share some fun facts about Sparkle Abbey.

  • We are friends as well as neighbors. We live just one street away from each other. We can see each other’s houses from our windows.
  • We’re plotting to buy the house between to use as a writer’s retreat house. We’ll put in a pool.
  • We were part of the same critique group for years before we started writing together. Our critique group sometimes travels with us and we love to plot stories with them on road trips.
  • We love to travel together and usually navigate pretty well. Although we did once accidentally go to Michigan. (Shh…don’t tell our husbands. We’ve never told them.)
  • Our favorite drink is a margarita on the rocks or an iced tea. When we stop in our neighborhood pub, Francies’, after work the waitresses just ask if it’s an iced tea night or a margarita night.
  • We’re also regulars at our local Starbucks, where they call us Non-Fat, No-Water Chai and Skinny Hazelnut. If one of us is there without the other, the barista often asks where the other half of the team is.
  • We both love beaches and find the ocean soothing.
  • Our husbands enjoy each other’s company and enjoy scotch tastings and comparing preferences.
  • We’re both grandmothers and are crazy about our grandchildren.

  • We both enjoy old movies, especially the vintage romantic comedies.
  • We have taken yoga classes together, although one of us (guess who) has been known to fall asleep during the relaxation portion.
  • We love Broadway shows and packed as many as possible into our last New York City trip. We also had a Rod Stewart sighting. Ask us about it.
  • At least once a week, we text each other and ask if it’s possible to join the Witness Protection Program.
  • We are featured in a Writer’s Digest book “Writing with Emotion, Tension, & Conflict” in the chapter on “Tension and Pressure.”
  • We picked the pen name ”Sparkle Abbey” because those are the names of our two rescue pets, Sparkle (ML’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog.) The other choice using our other pets’ names was – Chewbacca Matisse

  • We go to the same hairdresser who has the best stories. She used to cut Elvis’ cousin’s hair. Yeah, that Elvis.


Okay, now it’s your turn. Share some of your fun facts!




Sparkle Abbey is the pseudonym of two mystery authors (Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter). They are friends and neighbors as well as co-writers of the Pampered Pets Mystery Series. The pen name was created by combining the names of their rescue pets–Sparkle (Mary Lee’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog). If you want to make sure you’re up on all the Sparkle Abbey news, stop by their website and sign up for updates at sparkleabbey.com.

February 2017 Real Life Stories About Greed, Corruption, and Murder by Juliana Aragon Fatula

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My bestfriend is a journalist and a very good one. She writes about homicides and horrible things that people do to one another. I write fiction. She writes non-fiction. Sometimes we have tea and she tells me her real life horror stories about the bad things that go bump in the night. I don’t know how she deals with all of the heartache and pain she hears from people she interviews who have experienced the loss of loved ones. It’s easy for me to create a fantasy world and characters who kill each other in horrendous ways. She talks to coroners and detectives, witnesses, and survivors and tells the stories we read in our Sunday papers. She’s tough. She has to be. She tells me the stories and I can see how they affect her; keep her up at night, depress and anger her.

I realized my stories are nothing compared to the real life drama she experiences with her job. She has been writing for 25 years. I wonder when she retires what she’ll write about. She told me once, when you have to write for a living, it’s not as much fun to write a novel. Something like that. I encourage her to write. To tell her story. But I understand why she doesn’t. Her head is full of real life horror stories about murder, rape, stabbings, beatings, gun shots, drowning, hanging, suicide…

I never understood how difficult her job is until she started sharing with me her interviews with victims and their families. The survivors. She says they just want someone to listen to them and their frustration with the criminal justice system. She goes to court and sees the suspects go to trial. She hears the witnesses testify about the actual events that occurred in the crime. She does this over and over and over again. There is no end to the crime in our small community.


I admire and respect the work she does. It’s not easy, but someone has to report the truth. She is diligent and professional and does a tremendous job. Sometimes, I don’t know what to say to her to make her feel better. I tell her how proud I am of her and her dedication to investigating the stories to get the truth. She uncovers injustice. She tries to get her victims the closure they need to move on.


I’ve learned a great deal about crime from her. She deals with the corruption, the lies, the hate. We read the newspaper and learn about the crime from her writing, but she knows the details, that even we don’t learn about because they are so terrible.


My homegirl, loves pugs, bostons, and whatever the hell Angel is, a chihuahua? Anyway, she is special; she is spectacular; she is big, blonde, and beautiful.


She’s such a professional journalist that she has been on the Investigative Discovery Channel twice for interviews about the murder trials she’s covered over the decades. For living in a small town, we have a tremendous amount of crime, drownings, and suicides at the Royal Gorge River in the canyon.


My hope for her is that someone watches her on TV and hires her to do investigative reporting for a news channel. She would be terrific. But she’s too modest; she doesn’t believe her own worth. She’s priceless; she’s the best friend a woman could ask for.


When I’m writing my murder mystery, I think about her and the difficult job she does everyday. I’ve never met anyone like her. She works at one of the hardest jobs that exist.


I’ve been watching CNN religiously since the election and I hear politicians talking about alternative facts and telling the media to keep their mouths shut. It angers me that the people elected to protect us are trying to sneak the wolf in the back door while we are looking the other way. I believe in the first amendment and freedom of speech.


My bestfriend never looks the other way or sneaks anyone in the backdoor; she investigates, interviews, documents, photographs, and writes the stories that reveal the dark side of mankind.


I appreciate her work ethic and stamina to tell the stories that are stranger than fiction. She is my s-hero because she stands up to the politicians, the lawyers, the police and represents the public’s right to know the truth. Amen, sista’.