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Carolyn Mulford

Carolyn Mulford

Carolyn Mulford
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Monthly Archives: May 2015

Another Five-Book Day

Carolyn Mulford Posted on May 28, 2015 by CarolynMay 28, 2015

The most common questions readers (and many writers) ask me are:

When and where do you write?

How many words do you write a day?

How long does it take you to finish a book?

Those simple questions have complicated answers, and today is a good example of why.

As usual, my writing day began in early morning. I’m finishing the first draft of Show Me the Door, and I wake up thinking about what’s going to happen.

My priority for the day, however, was writing a disguised bibliography for Thunder Beneath My Feet. I need to deliver it, a bio, and a couple other little things to the publisher by Friday. I started on the bibliography about 8 a.m., sorting my long-neglected files in the living room so I wouldn’t have to spread them out in my office.

Nuggets I’d saved came to light, giving me a possible start on planning a sequel and ideas on promotion. The research done and content choices made, I spent most of the morning in writing the two-page piece.

After a lunch/news break, I edited that and the three other shorts and emailed them to my critiquers for comment.

Around 2:30 I made a quick trip to the pharmacy to renew a prescription. With the traffic light, I thought about when to write and post a blog about the June release of the paperback edition of Show Me the Murder. My copies arrived yesterday.

Back at home, I relaxed in my recliner with pad and pencil to make notes for a crucial interrogation in Chapter 26 of Show Me the Door.

 Back to the office to read comments on my Thunder notes, followed by a supper/news break in front of the TV, an errand, and back to the office to read critiquers’ comments and revise the bibliography.

About 9:30 p.m. I did a quick email check. The prize: the Five Star designer’s image of the cover of Show Me the Ashes. Huge relief. I like it. I really like it. I sent the editor an email saying so.

By golly, I thought. That makes five books I’ve worked on today, each one at a different stage in the writing-publishing-marketing continuum. I should blog about that.

I don’t know how many words I wrote or how many total hours I spent or what percentage of my work time I spent in bed, in the living room, in the office, or moving around. I do know I had a productive day.

It’s 10:30 p.m., and I’m tired.

—Carolyn Mulford

Posted in Mysteries, News, Writing

11th Book Contract Marks 50 Years of Writing

Carolyn Mulford Posted on May 14, 2015 by CarolynMay 14, 2015

Fifty years ago this week I began my writing career as an editorial assistant for the NEA Journal, then one of the country’s best education magazines. I just signed a contract for my eleventh book, Thunder Beneath My Feet, a middle grade/young adult novel set during the powerful New Madrid earthquakes in late 1811 and early 1812.

Those eleven books represent a relatively small part of my output. For twenty years I worked mostly on magazines, including as the editor of Industrial Research & Development News. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria, published this international technical quarterly.

I didn’t enjoy editing technical articles from experts who spoke English as their second (or third or fourth) language and left in fear the bureaucratic writing style would damage my writing. On the plus side, I formed close friendships with wonderful people from different cultures, and the interactions of colleagues from some fifty countries fascinated me.

My Favorite Job

The job I held the longest (almost five years) and liked the most was as editor of Synergist, a magazine published by the National Center for Service-Learning, iWashington, D.C., for leaders of secondary and postsecondary student volunteer programs. Over those years, service-learning blossomed and moved into the elementary schools.

Much of my time went to locating model programs and soliciting (and editing heavily) articles from the outstanding educators who ran them. I also traveled around the country to write and photograph inspiring programs. I resigned to become a freelancer when I thought I had taken the publication as far as it could go under the politicians who then determined what we could publish.

Computers began to replace electric typewriters while I edited Synergist, and editors and designers struggled to stay close to the “bleeding edge” as publications moved into desktop publishing. Such programs as PageMaker enabled quick, relatively inexpensive turnaround and prompted the golden age of the newsletter.

Freelancing

Over the next twenty-plus years, writing and editing monthly newsletters paid my mortgage and covered most of my basic expenses. Relying on my journalistic skills, I took on many topics, including career tips for dental hygienists, innovative programs for chambers of commerce, and issues affecting sales of oil production equipment.

My major steady client over those years was Communications Concepts, a small company that produced a series of monthly subscription how-to newsletters for corporate communicators. I did most of the planning and wrote most of the articles. For each issue, I interviewed four to six people from around the United States and Canada, reviewed a book or two, and edited a contributor’s article.

The publisher gave me considerable autonomy, and the articles kept me up to date on the field. The newsletters also gave me credibility with other clients and led me to a sideline of teaching graduate-level continuing ed writing and editing courses and giving workshops for writers’ groups.

Other freelance assignments included subbing for an ailing magazine editor, writing a calendar for the National Portrait Gallery, writing the proceedings for a Library of Congress conference, writing and editing textbook material, and covering an International Red Cross meeting in Geneva. For several years I financed much of my travel in the United States and abroad by writing and photographing travel articles.

Most of the magazines and newsletters, and several of the newspapers, that I wrote for died years ago.

The Nonfiction Books

I wrote my nonfiction books between 1984 and 1994. My first two (and most profitable), Guide to Student Fundraising and Financial Fitness for Teens, were works for hire. I had a lot of fun but earned few dollars writing (with Betty C. Ford) Adventure Vacations in Five Mid-Atlantic States. Living in the D.C. area, I earned more respect than income from writing a young adult political biography, Elizabeth Dole, Public Servant.

My hair grayed at the same time the opportunities for lucrative, interesting assignments diminished. Both employees and freelancers felt the effects of the changes technology brought to communications programs and of employers’ increased tendency to equate the ability to type and use a spell-checker with the ability to write and edit.

The Transition to Fiction

Now what? I decided to go back to my original goal of writing novels. I hadn’t been a mystery fan until such excellent writers as Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Margaret Maron showed women could carry a mystery as the main character rather than sidle on the page as a male protagonist’s damsel in distress or lust interest. I enrolled in a class for beginning mystery writers taught by author Noreen Wald and began a long transition from nonfiction to fiction.

One of the great things that came from that class was a critique group of novice mystery writers, all of them now published. We met weekly, with two or three always presenting chapters for review. My first draft took a long time, and so did sales for most of us.

Finally a Novelist 

At one low point, I debated whether to continue trying to sell a mystery. I pulled out the manuscript of a children’s book I had written years before and asked the group to critique it as I revised. In 2007, that manuscript, The Feedsack Dress, became my first published novel.

At another low point, I again questioned whether to give up on writing mysteries. While mulling that over, I greatly enjoyed researching the devastating but little remembered New Madrid earthquakes featured in Thunder Beneath My Feet. My initial marketing experience was frustrating, so I put that manuscript aside when I sold my first mystery, Show Me the Murder, in 2011 (published February 2013).

Midway through writing the fifth of the award-winning Show Me series, I returned to Thunder, doing a light revision and then searching for a publisher. I found one on my fiftieth anniversary as a professional writer.

Now I have to finish book five and decide what to write next.

To learn more about the earthquakes and read an excerpt from Thunder Beneath My Feet, go to the navigation bar and click on Other Writings/Works in Progress/Thunder Beneath My Feet.

—Carolyn Mulford

Posted in News, News releases, Uncategorized, Works in Progress

Latest Postings


Earthquakes on My Mind

Carolyn Mulford Posted on December 16, 2020 by CarolynDecember 16, 2020

2020 has been a horrible year. I hope it doesn’t end like another bad year, 1811. That year, rains brought mud and flood to Upper Louisiana. The nightly appearance of the devil-tailed Great Comet prompted rumors of destruction. The brilliant Tecumseh campaigned for tribes on both sides of the Mississippi to unite to beat back the encroaching Americans. The adolescent United States crept closer to the War of 1812. Then a natural disaster struck the middle of the newly expanded United States. In early morning on December 16, a series of earthquakes, aftershocks, and tremors began, interrupting New Madrid’s French … Continue reading →

Posted in Thunder Beneath My Feet

Summer Before Air Conditioning

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 19, 2019 by CarolynJuly 19, 2019

Air conditioning keeps me comfortable during the current heat wave, but I remember how we tried to cool off when nothing but the movie theater was air conditioned. July and August approximated hell when I was a kid. No day was so hot that we wouldn’t work in the fields and the garden. Only the persistent breeze made the heat and humidity bearable. The steamy days heated the house, making it equally miserable. When we got electricity, fans helped a little. During the day the coolest place to be was in the shade of a big elm. (Sadly Dutch elm … Continue reading →

Posted in The Feedsack Dress

Mixing Memories and Research

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 16, 2019 by CarolynJuly 18, 2019

When I started writing The Feedsack Dress, my own memories of farm life and the ninth grade guided the plot, but I needed facts about life in 1949. I looked for them in the same places I would have if I were writing an article. At the library I wore out my eyes scrolling through microfilm copies of the Kirksville Daily Express and two great photo magazines, Life and Look. These answered such questions as the styles of dresses or skirts and blouses a fashionable ninth grader wore to school and how much they cost. Few girls wore jeans or … Continue reading →

Posted in The Feedsack Dress

About The Feedsack Dress Blog

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 16, 2019 by CarolynJuly 18, 2019

When The Feedsack Dress came out in 2007, I started a blog on Typepad that focused on life during the late 1940s and early 1950s. I stopped posting there in 2012, but you can still link to The Feedsack Kids. I’m posting some new blogs and my favorite old ones here.

Continue reading →
Posted in The Feedsack Dress

Giveaway of New Show Me the Ashes Edition

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 30, 2019 by CarolynApril 30, 2019

On May 7, Harlequin’s Worldwide Mystery will release a paperback edition of Show Me the Ashes, the fourth in my series featuring former CIA operative Phoenix Smith solving murders in rural Missouri. In this one Phoenix and friends, including Achilles, her Belgian Malinois, take on a cold case involving a coerced plea deal (far too common), a string of disturbing burglaries, and crippling bigotr The WM editors insisted on one editorial change from the original Five Star hardback and e-book editions: “Tramp” replaced “slut.” The covers of the paperback and hardback editions look nothing alike, which is also true of the covers … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteries, News, Show Me Series

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