A Lifetime of Resolutions
A Lifetime of Resolutions by Debra H. Goldstein
The 2025 holidays are almost behind us. As part of celebrating the beginning of a new year, people tend to make resolutions. I stopped doing annual ones several years ago when I realized they were often short sighted. Instead, I’ve tried to live a life that exemplifies my resolutions.
Here’s a few:
My legal and writing career:
A combination of career and life in general:
The others still exist, but this is the most important one now:
What exemplifies you? Did you make any resolutions for 2026?
Happy Holidays!
Welcome to Suite and Savory. Can we help you?
By donalee Moulton
Lotus Detective Series #2
Lotus Detective Series #1
Shopping plays a big role in my new book, Melt. The second in the Lotus Detective Agency series, it follows three women who meet in a yoga studio and discover they have a penchant for solving crime. In the first book, Bind, a very expensive watch is stolen from the gym where the yoga studio is located. Not surprisingly the women get involved in solving the crime. Not surprisingly there is a lot of focus on the yoga studio and downward dogs.
Melt takes Charlene, Lexie, and Woo Woo outside their comfort zone, literally and figuratively. There is less action centered around the yoga studio and more around the women and their growing ability to solve crimes. One new location that plays a central role, and will likely make guest appearances in future books, is Suite and Savory, a fictional gift store in downtown Halifax.
The manager of the upscale store is Sofia Makri. She is the daughter-in-law of a key suspect in the book. She is also an acquaintance of Woo Woo and, therefore, offers the detecting triad a way in to the suspect’s world.
That was the reason Suite and Savory made its way onto the pages of Melt and into the world of my characters. As so often happens, the location became much more than a backdrop as originally anticipated. It became a meeting place, it became a place where friendships grew stronger and new ones blossomed; it became a place with a hint of romance.
It also became a place where characters searched for how to perfectly show their affection for one another. The story takes place around the holidays and the three women, the detective who has become part of their lives – and the crimes they solve – find themselves searching store shelves for the “perfect” gift.
Suite and Savory is a place to find the weird and wonderful. There are bright scarves and elegant notebooks and mandala bracelets and snuggly slippers. There are water bottles that clean themselves and slow sweaters. There are figurines, including three miniature pewter figures in yoga poses: lotus, shoulder stand, plow. There is choice, and the choice highlights the dilemma of the main characters as they strive to show what they mean to one another.
Suite and Savory also turned out, to my surprise, to be central to the plot. It’s where something that never should happen happens to one of the three main characters, and as a result, it is the launchpad for an intense and immediate interplay of scenes.
The gift store also plays one more key role in the story. It is the reason the world unravels for one of the characters, and how that character, in turn, unravels the world of those around them.
I had no idea as I started to plot out Melt that a retail outlet would take centerstage. It started out simply as “gift store.” Then the question became what kind of gift store. The answer: the kind that makes a difference to the story.
I also had no idea as I started to plot out Melt that a place that sells fusion side tables and $500 candles would come to mean so much. I hope it will mean as much to you.
December and Sheepdogs by Saralyn Richard
Many of you know that my sidekick for many years was a naughty-turned-nice sheepdog named Nana. Nana was our second sheepdog, and we had high expectations for her, since our experience with the breed was stellar. In fact, we’d always believed sheepdogs were people in dog suits.
Nana, however, surprised us by being the wildest, craziest, most mischievous furbaby in history. She disrupted every corner of the house, broke bones, tore up valuable objects, leaped to grab things from counters, and ran at full speed into whatever happened upon her path—usually my knees.
We had to do something serious—and fast—to save Nana and ourselves from her exuberance. We hired a trainer, as much for us as for Nana, and I began making a list of Nana’s bad habits, so I could address them. As the list grew, so did my determination to turn Nana around.
One day, while walking Nana on the seawall (which only tempted her to jump), I told my husband that I was going to write a children’s book about Nana. “There are lots of kids who need to learn self-control, and Nana’s story could help them.”
My husband grinned. “Only if Nana’s story has a happy ending.”
I started educating myself about writing children’s books. By the time I’d written the first draft, narrated and pawtographed by Nana, of course, and hired a fabulous illustrator, Nana had settled down and become so well-behaved—no one could believe she’d ever been that naughty. Nana’s adventures were just beginning.
Naughty Nana was published in 2013, and Nana and I took to the road to promote the book. We went to schools and libraries, birthday parties and parades, kids’ events and bookstores. Nana became a local tourism ambassador, and her calendar began filling up with engagements. Both book and narrator were in big demand, and we led busy, exciting, and fun lives, meeting with children and their families.
Christmas time was especially exciting. One little girl at Moody Preschool told me, “Nana is Santa without a lap.”
One of Nana’s favorite hangouts, especially at Christmas time, was Hendley Market. The weekend before Christmas we would greet Hendley customers with furry hugs and sloppy kisses. Even at the end of her life, when Nana was disabled, Cheryl Jenkines (of Hendley Market) insisted that we keep up our tradition. Nana adored scooting all over the store, smiling and licking her adoring public, spreading her unique doggy cheer to everyone. That was two years ago, and right afterwards, Nana crossed the rainbow bridge.
This year, Cheryl invited us back to Hendley Market to sell books, and we accepted, even before we found out that Texas Old English Sheepdog Rescue would have a beautiful seven-year-old female sheepdog for us. Last week we picked up Cassie and brought her to her forever home, where she is settling in (without being naughty in the process).
Next weekend, Cassie will accompany my husband and me to Hendley Market, not to try to fill Nana’s paws, but to make new friends and put big smiles on the faces of children and dog-lovers who are shopping for gifts.
If you’re in the area, please stop by Hendley Market, 20th and Strand, 1-4 pm on Dec. 21. And if you’re interested in Naughty Nana, you can purchase it new at https://palmcirclepress.com on the bookstore page. It comes autographed, pawtographed, personalized, and with literacy activities upon request.
One thing’s for sure. December and sheepdogs make a perfect party!
Saralyn Richard (https://saralynrichard.com) is a multiple award-winning author of seven mystery novels, a children’s book, and numerous short stories, poems, and essays published in anthologies and magazines. Saralyn is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. She has taught literature and creative writing to high school students and adults. Saralyn and her husband live in Texas, where they enjoy their ninth dog and third sheepdog.
Read a Short Story a Day with John M. Floyd’s Collections
by Paula Gail Benson
Barb Goffman, an excellent short story author and editor, has suggested that the best way to learn the craft is to read a short story a day for a year. Barb’s collection from 2013, Don’t Get Mad, Get Even, is an excellent place to start. May I also recommend John M. Floyd’s work?
If you haven’t encountered John from his stories, excellent posts in SleuthSayers, or his programs (in October he gave a class on Plotting the Short Story for the virtual Mystery in the Midlands: Writing Short Mystery Fiction 2025), then definitely you need to check out one of his collections. John, a former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, has written over one thousand stories, been nominated for an Edgar Award, received a Shamus Award and six Derringer Awards, and has been recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Crippen and Landru has recently released River Road and Other Stories, John’s ninth collection, which includes his work found in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Strand, and the Saturday Evening Post.
Fifty Mysteries: the Angela Files compiles the Solve-It-Yourself stories about Angela Potts written for Woman’s World magazine. Although each is less than one thousand words the mysteries are well developed and thought provoking.
Dreamland contains Floyd’s Law and Daughter series along with some of his work in genres other than mystery.
Rainbow’s End and Other Stories offers thirty stories that features Floyd’s skill with the plot twist. Readers will enjoy his dialogue, diverse settings, and invention.
For quantity and quality, John’s work is inspiring. For anyone wanting to learn the craft and anyone wanting to enjoy great storytelling, these collections would be fabulous gifts.
The ties that bind us – to research
By donalee Moulton
My third mystery, Bind, is the first in the Lotus Detective Agency series. Here’s the pitch:
Everything that happens in a yoga studio is not Zen. Sometimes it’s grand larceny. Three yogis, two cops, and one damn cute dog join forces to discover who’s stolen a Patek Philippe watch from what was supposed to be a secure locker. Time is ticking.
As I was writing Bind, indeed, as I was envisioning what the book would be, I patted myself on the back for picking a theme, a location, and characters I was more familiar with than in my previous two books. Less research, less investigation, less fact checking. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My first mystery, Hung Out to Die, follows Riel Brava, born and bred in Santa Barbara, California, and transplanted to Nova Scotia where he is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation. It’s business as usual until Riel finds the company’s comptroller hanging by a thread. Actually, several threads. It doesn’t take the police long to determine all is not as it appears. Riel is drawn into helping solve a murder. He’d rather not. His reluctance, in part, has to do with the fact that he is a psychopath. The nicer kind, not the serial killer kind.
To make Riel and the murder realistically come to life, I spent a lot of time researching cannabis production, psychopathy, death by hanging, and upscale coffees. I even spent some time exploring the inner workings of a donair. Riel eats his first in the book; I’ve never had one.
In a twist, my second book, Conflagration!, is a historical mystery that centers around Marie-Joseph Angélique, an enslaved Black woman accused of setting the lower town of Montreal on fire in 1734. Philippe Archambeau, a court clerk assigned specifically to document her case, believes Angelique might be innocent. Or not. A reticent servant, a boisterous jailer, and three fire-scorched shingles prove indispensable in his quest to uncover what really happened.
Of course, the reality of history and the mystery I created immersed me in life nearly three hundred years ago. It also required learning about the French justice system of 1734 and specifically the trial of Angélique.
You can see why I patted myself on the back when the idea for Bind took hold in my imagination. A watch goes missing from a changeroom at a gym, an expensive watch with a loud, arrogant owner. The theft connects three yogis in a way full lotus never could. As the search for a thief unfolds, so do seemingly unrelated questions. Why does Lexie have such an intense interest in a much-younger trainer at the gym? Who is the unnamed, unknown man who keeps leaving Charlene messages? Why does no one know Woo Woo lives in a mansion?
I thought research would be minimal. The women in the book are my age, they live in my neighborhood, they do yoga. Like me. What more could there be to research? Plenty as it turned out. One of the main characters, Lexie, is a comedian with a popular podcast, so now I’m learning about podcasts. Another main character, Charlene, is an auditor, and suddenly I’m delving into what auditors do exactly and how they do it. Another character, Woo Woo, is a reflexologist…. Well, you get it.
It’s authenticity that makes writing come to life, and authentic writing requires writers to hunker down and delve into worlds they don’t know well and don’t know at all. I mean who knew a watch could cost $100,000. I had no idea. I do now.
Real Life Inspirations
What inspires creativity?
Writers are often asked where their ideas come from. Fact is, ideas are all around us in everyday life. For me, it’s the ones that stick in my mind and lead me to ask “what if” questions, which can turn real life events into an entertaining story.
While the books in my Samantha Newman Mystery Series are completely fiction, each one contains the seed of an event that really happened. This is especially true for Book 3 in the series, The Body in the News.
In 2017, I was attending my first Killer Nashville conference as a finalist for the Silver Falchion Mystery award for Book 2, The Body Next Door. I had a great time meeting new writer friends, participating on panels, and engaging with new readers. But news that a Category 4 hurricane was poised to hit somewhere near our town kept me checking the weather reports every few hours.
Sure enough, by the time the conference ended, the news back home was pretty dire.
The year was 2017, and the hurricane was named Harvey, one of the costliest storms ever.
With heavy hearts, we set out for home. Problem was, after making landfall, Harvey did a few dipsy-doodle moves that made it hard to know which route to take. The path of the storm was still to our south. We tried to dodge it by heading northwest, only to learn that it was aiming for Memphis, too. As it traveled toward us, we backtracked southeast toward Tupelo.
By then, news of the devastation at home was bleak. Every major artery leading into town was completely underwater. Even if we drove all night, there was no safe way to get there.
Houston Chronicle
When we finally made it to town, the sights were appalling. Businesses were ruined. Neighborhoods were destroyed. How and why could such devastation happen in our proudly modern city? After centuries of Gulf storms, large and small, our area should be able to ride out another one, right?
Wrong. That’s when I learned about 100-year and 500-year flood plains, the reckless land developers who built new neighborhoods inside them, and the homebuyers who were mostly ignorant of the risks they were subject to in their new communities.
All of which inspired me to create the investigative reporter in Book #3 in the series, The Body in the News. He’s working on a report that will place blame for the mess on greedy land developers. And because our gal Samantha Newman is working with him at the TV station, the threat of violence spreads her way.
And on a lighter note… a real life murder
The Body Next Door—Book #2 in the series—is having a publication birthday today! It too was inspired by a true event. You may have heard about it a few years back: a man living in a high-rise condo was murdered by his enraged girlfriend. His demise would have been just another sad statistic, except for the way she killed him: she bludgeoned him to death, piercing his skull multiple times with the heel of her stiletto shoe. (If this idea fascinates you, here’s more from Texas Monthly.)
In my fictional version, the cause of death is different, but the setting and circumstances of this preposterous-but-true story are similar in The Body Next Door, which became the most award-winning of the Samantha Newman Mystery Series.
What about the inspiration for Book #1, The Body Business? I’ll save that kernel for another post.
In the meantime, here’s wishing you many moments of inspiration that turn everyday happenings into something magical.
Readers, what inspires you most in life? Writers, have you used a real life experience to power your stories?
Gay Yellen’s award-winning writing career began in magazine journalism. She later served as the contributing editor for the international thriller, Five Minutes to Midnight (Delacorte), which debuted as a New York Times “Notable.”
Her multi-award-winning Samantha Newman Mystery Series is packed with suspense and laced with touches of romance, heart, and humor. Available on Amazon or through your favorite bookseller.
Guest Blogger: The First Therapist by GP Gottlieb
The First Therapist by GP Gottlieb
One day many years ago, my husband suddenly told me he wanted a divorce. Between the moment he said that he missed his freedom and the slamming of the door when he left, I learned what it meant to watch your life crumble into tiny pieces.
I imagined writing about it one day in the future, but it was the old, “College professor gets tenure and has an affair with his teaching assistant” story, so not a new tale to tell.
I still remember going to a therapist that week and sitting in her dark-paneled, stuffy office. It was just a ten-minute drive from the house I’d soon have to leave. I loved that house, a “painted lady,” built in 1897, and had spent a lot of time choosing paints and wallpapers and furniture. I considered writing about my woes, but who needs another, “Divorced woman forced to leave the home she spent five years fixing up” story?
During my first few weeks of therapy, I told the therapist about my life and my marriage. Of course we had issues, but I thought that we’d work through them together. I wished the therapist could have been more sympathetic, but no matter what I told her, she’d respond with a version of, “How did that make you feel?”
I wanted to say, “I’ve just spent thirty minutes telling you how it made me feel,” but I was raised to be polite, so I answered her with words like “angry”, “abandoned,” and “betrayed.” If I wrote a story about a woman who sat weeping about the end of her marriage, my fictional therapist would say something like, “Oh honey, that must have been so hard,” or, “It sounds like a tragic situation – but I’m going to help you get through it.”
My character would cry and say, “Yeah, it is tragic,” and she’d come away from the appointment feeling a tiny bit better. I never came away from my appointments feeling better, but I couldn’t write about those feeling because who needs another story about a therapist who doesn’t help her patient?
One day, about three months after I started seeing that therapist, I went over for my appointment, and the door to her office was locked. I thought she must have gotten tired of my whining, but slowly, over the next few weeks, stories started to circulate in the small town where we lived.
According to my friend who was a dance teacher, the therapist’s daughters hadn’t come to class for several weeks, and there was gossip about the husband being abusive. One chatty neighbor told me she’d heard something about him having underworld connections. I thought it sounded interesting, but how could I tell that old chestnut about a therapist who disappears under murky circumstances from a military-heavy, fundamentalist town?
According to a friend in my mommy group, the therapist survived her husband’s attempt to murder her and had gone into the federal witness protection program. Why had I been so whacked out just because my husband wanted a divorce? What was I even complaining about? That’s why I could never write about getting divorced – there are so many worse things happening in the world, so many other stories to tell.
I hope the first therapist survived her experience. I turned her into a character in an early draft of my first novel but later took her out because it sounded like the old “husband tried to kill her, and she ended up in witness protection” story.
I moved away from that town and settled in another part of the country but still imagine running into that therapist one day. It would probably turn out that she’d went home to her family in Texas, but I’d still be interested to hear her side of the story. And although it isn’t nice of me, I imagine asking her, “How did the experience make you feel?”
GP Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series (Battered was re-released September 2025 in Paperback, Kindle and Nook). She’s a member of the Blackbird Writers, on the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland Board, and a member of SinC Colorado and SinC Wisconsin. She likes posting on Facebook, reads voraciously, and has interviewed over 260 authors for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Her stories have been published in Pure Slush, Another Chicago Magazine, Grande Dame Literary, and other journals and anthologies. Over 250 of her essays on travel, music, culture, writing, and things that annoy her are available in various publications at Medium.Com.
Switching Gears and Finding Joy
My current work in progress is a historical mystery, my first foray into writing in that genre. It’s also the book I’ve wanted to write since I was fifteen years old. There are a lot of reasons the project has stalled over the years, but now that I’m fully into it, I’m finding so much joy.
As this is the first time I’ve ventured into history, I’m finding out how essential the research is. And savoring it! One example—I spent at least a half hour learning how the old-fashioned cash registers work. I’ll probably never need to use this information in real life, but my character needs to operate a cash register in her family’s shop, and I can’t have her standing before a customer, looking inept.
Everything about the writing feels different, too. Word choices and expressions must reflect the idioms of the day, more than a century go. It’s a treat to say things in different ways, not having to resort to modern-day slang or curse words. I find myself playing with language as I imagine a first kiss between two restrained and proper young lovers.
The best part is that the setting is my home town, and two of the characters are my grandparents, whom I didn’t have many years to know. I’m passionate about “getting them right,” and I’ve channeled them, conducted interviews with family and community members, and reacquainted myself with my family.
Overall, the writing of this book is fulfilling a dream, and I’m certain that the end product will be better for the story’s having percolated for decades.
Have you ever switched gears and found joy? I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Saralyn Richard is the author of seven mystery novels, including the Detective Parrott series, the Quinn McFarland series, A Murder of Principal, and the children’s book, Naughty Nana. Visit her website at https://www.saralynrichard.com and sign up for her monthly newsletter for unique opportunities, giveaways, surveys, and fun.
My Accidental Career
Have you ever bluffed your way into a job?
In my ongoing task of digging through the overwhelming amount of my family’s old photos and papers to form some semblance of an organized archive, I’ve recently encountered episodes of my life that I haven’t thought about in years. Including the one that turned me into a professional writer.
It started with accepting an emergency assignment for a job I knew nothing about.
One Friday morning in L.A., a friend called me at work to ask if I could fill in for a journalist who was scheduled to cover the opening of a new tennis camp in Lake Tahoe over the weekend. Apparently, the designated reporter fell ill at the last minute, and the magazine was desperate to find a replacement.
Would I take the gig?
I knew zero about the game of tennis, but the magazine didn’t know that. They hadn’t asked. That’s how desperate they were.
The job meant a few extra bucks for me, and I had no weekend plans. So, that evening, I borrowed a racket from a friend, packed a bag and boarded the next puddle jumper from L.A. to Tahoe to cover the event.
This was in pre-Internet days, so there was no way for me to access information about the game of tennis or the new camp, a reality that hadn’t sunk in until I was on the plane. I told myself that a reporter’s job was just to ask questions, which helped calm my nerves. After all, I’d written lots of reports in high school and college. What could be so hard about writing this one?
By the time I arrived, it was almost midnight. I’d already missed the welcome dinner and any chance to find out anything in advance of tomorrow’s Opening Day’s activities.
The first thing I learned when I arrived at the courts the next morning was that the camp’s purpose was to teach tennis professionals how to teach tennis. All the attendees were accomplished players. All fifteen or so of them were there to get certified as tennis pros at various country clubs around the nation. Since they were already seasoned athletes, the training was sure to be exceedingly rigorous. And I was expected to participate.
After a long and excruciating first day on the court, I was ready for bed as soon as the sun set. When I woke the next morning, my legs were completely in spasm. I rolled off the bed onto the floor and belly-crawled to the bathroom, then hoisted myself into the bathtub. After a few minutes of soaking in warm water, the cramps relaxed just enough for me to hobble to the courts in time for a second round of torture. All the pros were already warming up, practicing their sleek forehands, twisty backhands, powerful overhead smashes, cunning lobs, and the rest of the words in my new sports vocabulary.
I returned to L.A., turned in my report, and collected the check. The next month, Tennis Illustrated published the article. A few weeks later, they called to ask if I’d be interested in being their editor. The offer was almost twice what my job as Assistant to the Director of Production at The American Film Institute paid, so I accepted.
And then I really panicked. I wasn’t really sure what an editor did. And all I knew about the tennis world was from those two days at the resort. How could I possibly run the magazine?
Luckily, the friend who had loaned me his racket came to the rescue again. Not only did he know tennis, but he’d also been the editor of his college newspaper. He gave me his extra racket along with a manual of editorial squiggles (which I came to learn were called “proofreaders’ marks”) so I’d know how to mark copy.
That is how, while I was still in my twenties, my life as a professional writer began. After a couple of years of covering big tournaments and interviewing tennis greats, I moved on to the masthead of a lifestyle magazine, where I earned a national journalism award. And then I turned to writing novels, which also happened to me out of the blue. But that’s a story for another time.
Today, with my multi-award-winning Samantha Newman Mystery Series—and beloved writing colleagues all over the country—I’m thrilled to be part of the publishing community. And I’m working on another book. But that is another story for another time.
To all the aspiring writers out there, keep writing. You never know when good luck might lead you to your best life.
Gay Yellen’s award-winning writing career began in magazine journalism. She later served as the contributing writer for the international thriller, Five Minutes to Midnight (Delacorte), which debuted as a New York Times “Notable.”
Her multi-award-winning Samantha Newman Mystery Series is packed with suspense and laced with touches of romance, heart, and humor. Available on Amazon or through your favorite bookseller.