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Carolyn Mulford

Carolyn Mulford

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      • Show Me the Murder Chapter One
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    • Show Me the Deadly Deer
      • Show Me the Deadly Deer: Chapter One
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    • Show Me the Gold
      • Show Me the Gold Chapter One
      • Show Me the Gold Discussion Questions
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      • Reviews
    • Show Me the Ashes
      • Show Me the Ashes: Chapter One
      • Show Me the Ashes: Discussion Topics
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    • Show Me the Sinister Snowman
      • Show Me the Sinister Snowman – Chapter One
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      • Show Me the Sinister Snowman: Order Information
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  • The Feedsack Dress
    • The Feedsack Dress
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  • Thunder Beneath My Feet
    • Thunder Beneath My Feet
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    • Historical Background
    • Chapter One: Thunder Beneath My Feet
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    • Blog: Historicals
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      • “An Aura of Death”
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Category Archives: Works in Progress

Works in Progress

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.

Posted in The Feedsack Dress

Deciding What to Write Next

Carolyn Mulford Posted on July 30, 2015 by CarolynJuly 30, 2015

After working on a manuscript almost a year, I’m waiting for my two chapter-by-chapter readers’ to offer comments on a one-gulp read before doing the final polish. This gives me time to start catching up on repairs (e.g., hinges on cabinet doors), life-business tasks (e.g., comparing rates for car insurance), and cleaning (e.g., the whole house).

More important to me, the short break gives me an opportunity to decide what to write next.

For three years I’ve concentrated on the Show Me mystery series. The latest manuscript completes a five-book arc. In the six months covered in the books, my major characters’ lives have changed significantly. Before I build a new three-book arc (three more years of work), I need a break.

Short stories?

A short project appeals to me. Short stories? Not my favorite medium, but I’ve used them before to explore the desirability of characters and situations for novels. One idea I really like could become a series of hefty short stories rather than a novel.

If I opt to go that route, I won’t seek a publisher, a time-consuming, frustrating, and likely fruitless process. Instead I’ll publish each short story online and, if readers like them, eventually turn the collection into a volume.

One idea that intrigues me is writing a short story from the point of view of Achilles, the Belgian Malinois popular with readers of the Show Me mysteries. Maybe I’ll try one short and, if it works, test it on my website as a free read. Or perhaps turn it into a children’s book.

Historicals for young readers?

Another possibility is to write more MG/YA historical novels. These run a third to a half as many words as the adult books and take less time to write and revise. For several years, I’ve been thinking about an MG/YA set during World War II. Or I could do a sequel to The Feedsack Dress, which many readers have loved, or to Thunder Beneath My Feet, which will be released in January.

Historical novels require considerable historical research. The libraries here provide excellent resources, and I enjoy digging into the past. On the other hand, research adds one to three months of work time to a manuscript.

Revise an earlier manuscript?

During another break several years ago, I pulled out the manuscript of The Feedsack Dress and revised it with the help of my critique group. Then I sold it.

I’ve learned a lot as I’ve written the Show Me series. Enough to turn an earlier manuscript into a viable series opener? Even a major revision would take much less time than writing a book-length manuscript from scratch. If, upon rereading the old manuscript, I still like my characters and plot, I’ll give the manuscript another chance at life.

Stay tuned. I’m determined to plunge into a new project by Labor Day.

—Carolyn Mulford

Posted in News, Rewriting and Editing, Works in Progress

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


I Am a River

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 19, 2025 by CarolynApril 19, 2025

Each week I lunch with a group of friends and discuss a topic. Last time the coordinator posed this question: What is the shape of your life? The answers included a rectangle, a vase, a cloud, and an octagon. Usually I wing it, but this time I wrote my response. The Shape of My Life I am a river, Birthed in a puddle, Nourished by rain, Pushed to overflow And grow broader And deeper.   Springs and creeks fed my flow. Widening waters gathered force, Thrusting me against unyielding barriers And cascading me over rocky falls.   Other streams joined … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized

Where to Find My Books

Carolyn Mulford Posted on April 1, 2025 by CarolynApril 1, 2025

While only one of my books, Show Me the Sinister Snowman, continues to be published in print and electronic editions, several of my novels are available from online sellers. Most of the copies are used, but columbiabooksonline.com, my supportive local bookstore, has a small stock of new Show Me hardbacks and paperbacks. I also have a few copies of all my novels except The Feedsack Dress, my historical children’s book, and Show Me the Murder, the first in my mystery series featuring a former spy returning   home and solving crimes with old friends. Fortunately e-editions still exist. Barnes and Noble … Continue reading →

Posted in Mysteries, The Feedsack Dress, Uncategorized

Looking Forward 60 Years Ago

Carolyn Mulford Posted on February 28, 2025 by CarolynFebruary 28, 2025

Reminders of my attempts to start my writing career arrived last Christmas. A friend, Joyce Campbell, sent me letters I had written to her while we were serving as Peace Corps Volunteers (teaching English) in Ethiopia from September 1962 to July 1964 and in the months after we returned home (Chattanooga, Tennessee, for her and Kirksville, Missouri, for me) after traveling through Europe. On December 21, 1964, I wrote, “Has anything turned up for you yet? People don’t seem terribly impressed with Peace Corps experience for job qualifications it seems to me. I’m going down to the University Placement Bureau … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing

Mid-Continent Earthquakes, Past and Future

Carolyn Mulford Posted on December 16, 2024 by CarolynDecember 16, 2024

About 2:30 a.m. December 16, 1811, an earthquake threw people in New Madrid, Missouri Territory, out of bed and crumbled brick houses and cabin chimneys, forced the Mississippi River to run backward and change course, disturbed sleep along most of the East Coast, and toppled dishes from shelves in the White House. That marked the beginning of some of the most powerful, prolonged quakes the United States has experienced. These weren’t the first in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which is centered near where Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky come together. Geologists and other scientists have found indications that powerful … Continue reading →

Posted in Historicals, News, Thunder Beneath My Feet

The Turkey That Bullied Me

Carolyn Mulford Posted on November 26, 2024 by CarolynNovember 26, 2024

I grew up with animals as friends, the first being our dog Roamer. He and I wandered around the yard, the barnyard, and the garden. Roamer barked at squirrels and chased rabbits from our vegetables. He made me ponder one of life’s great puzzles: Is it okay to sympathize with Peter Rabbit in the story but condemn him when your own carrots are at risk? Roamer knew not to chase our chickens or cows or pigs, and he joined me in playing with an orphaned lamb and the kittens whose parents kept the barn free of mice. What he didn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized

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