What Makes a Mystery Memorable

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What are your favorite mystery series and why? I posed that question on Facebook and a Sisters in Crime list to confirm my own observations and help me prepare a session on writing a mystery series. Eighteen mystery lovers responded, most women and most naming two or three favorite writers or series. Few of them said why. One who did was author Eleanor Cawood Jones. She wrote, “I look for in-depth characters and amazing settings. Carolyn Hart’s Henrie O, Blaize Clements’ catsitter mysteries, Mary Daheim’s Alpine, Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles series. The lead characters in each of those have … Continue reading →

Monitoring the New Madrid Seismic Zone

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The New Madrid Seismic Zone remains one of the most active in the United States, averaging approximately 200 quakes measured at 1.5 or more each year. Scientists say the chance of an earthquake measuring 7 or more in the next 50 years is 7-10%. The chance of an earthquake measuring 6 or greater in that time is three to four times higher. If you’re nervous about that next big one, or just curious, you can monitor what’s happening in the NMSZ each day at http://www.new-madrid.mo.us/index.aspx?NID=105. This New Madrid site gives you monthly summaries of the time, measurement, location, and hypocentral … Continue reading →

Reelfoot Lake: The Quakes’ Beautiful Creation

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The powerful New Madrid earthquakes produced much ugliness 200 years ago. River bluffs collapsed. Wave-shaped furrows covered acres of prairie. Sand boils shot rotted vegetation into the air. But the quakes also created beauty. They turned a large swampy area in the northwest corner of Tennessee into what today is the eye-pleasing and spirit-soothing15,000-acre Reelfoot Lake. It formed when the ground sank, creating a bowl that retained flood water when the Mississippi ran backward.   This week I detoured on my drive home from Killer Nashville to visit the Reelfoot Lake State Park near Tiptonville. The shallow lake, a major … Continue reading →

Book 5 Finds New Home

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The fifth book in my Show Me series has found a new home after being orphaned. Cave Hollow Press, an eclectic small publisher, will release Show Me the Sinister Snowman next spring. In this book, former CIA operative Phoenix Smith must play deputy again when Achilles, her K-9 dropout, sniffs out a murder weapon at the scene of a congressman’s “accidental” death. Who tried to hide a homicide? She suspects either a corrupt political insider or an enraged abusive husband and puts herself at risk to prevent more murders. Phoenix goes with her friend Annalynn, an aspiring U.S. House candidate, … Continue reading →

Reviewers Recommend Novel for All Ages

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Who are the readers for Thunder Beneath My Feet? Reviewers have recommended it for tweens through adults. Just what I wanted to hear. When I planned a story set during the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812, I chose to tell it through the eyes of a teenage girl who must grow up overnight and make judgment calls few adults face. I pictured readers as young as fourth graders and expected most to be sixth to eighth graders. I hoped anyone who likes history would enjoy watching the major characters, who range in age from ten to mid twenties, deal with … Continue reading →

Killing Chickens

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I wrote The Feedsack Dress to portray life as the era of the unmechanized, pre-electricity family farm ended. Readers view late 1949 through the eyes of a 13-year-old farm girl called Gail. Like the nation, she is making a major transition, in her case from the small one-room school to the much larger junior high in town and from the homemade feedsack dress to ready-made clothing. Saturday the Sullivan County (MO) Historical Society invited me to help celebrate a special exhibit of clothing made from patterned cotton sacks. I read a scene in which Gail and her mother perform a … Continue reading →

Double Book Launch May 21

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A few years ago I was discouraged because I couldn’t find a publisher for my mystery series. I decided to take a break and write the kind of a book I loved as a kid, a historical novel. I considered several ideas, including a book on the Civil War in Missouri, but that depressed me. I chose to write fiction about a topic I’d written about as nonfiction, the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. I loved writing the book, Thunder Beneath My Feet, but no one rushed to publish it. Then I sold Show Me the Murder, the first of my mystery series. … Continue reading →

Quakes Brought Death on the Mississippi

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Mark Twain wrote of the glory of piloting steamboats in the mid 19th century in Life on the Mississippi, but in December 1811, the crew of the first steamboat on the river feared death on the Mississippi. The New Madrid earthquakes turned the journey of the New Orleans from an adventure into a nightmare. Designed by Robert Fulton and built in Pittsburgh by Nicholas Roosevelt, the New Orleans and its crew carried the burden of proving a steamboat could navigate the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. A clever engineer but unreliable businessman, the great-grand-uncle of … Continue reading →

Guest Blog: Judy Hogan on Trusting the Muse in Writing Mysteries

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Poet, novelist, memoirist, writing teacher, and activist, Judy Hogan draws on life experience for everything she writes. To see the range of her writing and sign up for a chance to enter a giveaway of her latest mystery, Haw: The Second Penny Weaver Mystery, visit her page on GoodReads.com. The giveaway ends April 26. My main guide to all my creative writing is from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own: “As long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters, and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But … Continue reading →

Why Readers and Writers Love Mysteries

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I didn’t become a major mystery fan until near middle age—the time when such writers as Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Margaret Maron were breaking through the male-dominated genre with tough but relatable women detectives. By the time I decided to switch from writing nonfiction to fiction, the field offered many great models of writers with both professional and amateur sleuths. I chose to join them. You don’t have to write about what you already know, but you better write about what you read. As the books in my Show Me series have come out, some interviewers have … Continue reading →

Book Talks: April-June 2016

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Most of these events feature one of my two new books, Thunder Beneath My Feet, a historical middle grade/young adult novel set during the New Madrid earthquakes, and Show Me the Ashes, the fourth in my mystery series featuring a former CIA covert operative solving crimes in rural Missouri. April 7, 7 p.m.: An Evening with Local Authors, Barnes and Noble, Columbia (MO) Mall Marlene Lee, Cathy Salter, and I discuss writing and read from our new books. April 24-25: Missouri Association of School Librarians Conference, Tan-Tar-A Resort, Osage Beach As an exhibitor/vendor, I’ll be chatting about Thunder Beneath My … Continue reading →

Fighting the Second-Draft Blues

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Writing the last word in a first draft brings joy to me and probably every other writer. Dismay—call it the second-draft blues—follows the celebration. Much work remains to be done. How much? That’s almost impossible to say. Evaluating your own writing is difficult, particularly when you’ve just finished the draft. That’s why I came up with a way to look at a manuscript objectively and judge how much revision it needs. I developed this visual assessment system years ago and have taught it in numerous nonfiction workshops. I’ve adapted it for fiction. This week I shared the highlights on former … Continue reading →