Inspiration, who has it and where can I get some?

The subject of today’s post is inspiration! Where can you get some? What can you do with it?

Well, first of all, if you write, you can find inspiration just about anywhere. The inspiration is always there, but it is usually the motivation that hampers our efforts. But I digress.
















A few places to get you started would be:
1. The Internet. Heckfire, you can find a TON of great things to inspire you just by surfing. Find blogs to read, find news stories. They say that more and more people are hitting the web for their newspaper reading so get out there and join them!
2. How about television? I know there are a bunch of great stories that are on each week. I can turn the volume down and make up my own story just by watching their facial expressions.
3. Read! There are so many fabulous books out there with information about anything you will ever want to know. How about a book on sailing? Golf? Building a better birdhouse? Can you just see what your mind will do when you find new information to digest?

And so on. There is no limit to inspiration! I can find something to write about from listening to the birds chirping outside my front door. It depends on what your mood is, and what your plan is. I am sure chirping birds can have a place in a suspense thriller if they suddenly shut up, right?


Since I will be out enjoying spring, I am leaving you with a few pics I've snapped as I drove around town. Maybe these pictures will inspire you to write about a season like this.


Happy Thursday everyone!

Doing the mememe thing

Can I squee a little???

My very first anthology sale has just gone live through the cover reveal by the publisher. Here are all the details:

A Chimerical World: Tales from the Unseelie Court, will have my short story, Treehouse, in it. The ebook is coming out probably in a week or so and the print version shortly after. It will be unveiled at ConNooga Con in Chattanooga TN next month (Feb. 21-23) and will then go on the con circuit for a time, including a stop in Memphis (my hometown!) at Mid South Con in March.

I am so excited and proud, y'all. This was a truly fun story, and different from anything I have ever done. I have to say, I may just be addicted to anthology stories from now on.

I will post more later and let you know where and when you can get your copy, cuz you KNOW you wanna read it!

Post Christmas blues

What can we do on the Thursday after Christmas besides shop? READ! We can dive into those books we got as gifts, or those we have on our Ereaders that haven't been touched yet.

For those of you bored out of your mind now that the festivities are over...here's a little fun for you...post your answer in the comments.

Grab a book
Turn to page 26 (it is the 26th right?)
and give us the twelfth line (or the 12th and 13th since this is the 12th month and the 13th year of the 2000s)

Here is mine:
From The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
"If not for the form's persistence, she could have dismissed it--like the shape of an animal seen briefly in the clouds."

This is a great book for anyone who hasn't read it...and I hope to read the entire Mistborn series because I am enjoying it a lot.

Okay, happy Thursday y'all, give us your lines and list the book, too, so we can find out what it comes from...I am about to hop off here and try to get some more reading done!

Return to Plot

Because I am deep into Christmas cookie dough, I am recycling an article. Enjoy everyone, and try to stay on the Nice List, Murderers. Readers, PLEASE-- Buy books this year!

We all plot our books differently. The ways and means are as individual as our DNA. They say there are only so many master plots in the world. But your take on any of those, well, that’s the fun stuff.

I have created a short list of questions to get the ball rolling for plotting your book. This is by no means complete, nor is it set in any sort of concrete.

1. Create the theme or story idea, what is this book about?
2. Who is telling the story?
3. Who is the supporting character(s)?
4. Are they mentors, villains, sidekicks?
5. How do they know the main character?
5. Where does the story take place?
6. What is the inciting incident?
7. What is the conflict?
8. How is this resolved?
8. How will it end?

Also, under the conflict idea, you need to know what the character wants. What is their main motivation, and why is it that they cannot have it? These are the building blocks of good conflict. A writing instructor once said, give the character two choices, sucky or suckier, and you will have a book that keeps the reader turning pages.

And you can do the plotting backwards, which is a very clever way some authors in the mystery genre start their planning out. If you already know whodunit, you can certainly figure out why, how, and when and where it happened.

Remember, a plot is just the building plan, the architectural drawing of the story. Plot, the scheme of things, is transformed by persons, places or things. Add in color, dialogue, setting, and suspense, or humor and you have a real book in your hands.

Vary the structure to fit your story’s needs, but remember there is a theme to everything. Keep your mystery mysterious, your romance romantic, and your fantasy otherworldly, or you may create confusion for the reader. They like to know that what is on the cover is within the pages, too. Sheesh. Nothing like picking up a book with a sexy guy on the front to find out he’s not a romantic interest for the heroine, but instead a sheep herder/murderer/Martian, and this is a western historical/fantasy. (kidding)

Finally, if you can tell the difference between the following two sentences, you know plot.

“The dog ate my homework.” Or “The dog ate my homework because he hates me.”

Welcome to December!

It is December (again!) and the time has come for some updates. I have news for you pertaining to books, blogs, and radio shows.

First, books. I am in the throes of a new story. Haven't decided if it is going to be a short story, novella, or novel yet, but it feels short. It feels like a novella. It also feels very serial-esque. So who knows-2014 may bring a whole new series from moi. It has been entitled, Apocalypse, and I am quite sure that will change. It is about a mother seeking her daughter during an alien invasion. No, it is not sci-fi, but it is pretty fantasy bent.

My blog has been humming since I started posting stuff about my Christmas stories. This week I posted this and my numbers jumped considerably. Love it when that happens.

And now for the really interesting big news, Maria DeVivo is going to be on Writer Groupie TOMORROW! Maria as you will remember is the awesome author who was our guest with her book, The Coal Elf. Tune in at Writer Groupie here and have a listen. 10 PM Central Standard Time Friday night.

If you still haven't gotten your copy of An Unexpected Performance, I have to tell you, you are missing out!




Hope you have a wonderful weekend, Murderers...I am getting the house all dolled up for the holidays. Great things are a'cooking up here too!

Introducing Kim Smith, founding member of Mb4

So, here I am, how ya like me now?

Something big rises. It stirs the darkness. The occupants in the room feel it pressing against their shoulders, crushing them beneath its weight. Four inhabitants of the swirling creative gases stand together.

That's really how it felt back in February of 2008 when I started this blog with my three buddies, and together we birthed Murder by 4.

At that time, we were all into mystery, suspense, and thrillers. We knew there were few blogs geared specifically to a genre at that time, and our idea was a great one. Mb4 took off and has never looked back.

We've made changes through the years -- but you, dear Murderer has always known you would find us here. I, personally, have been talking to you for nearly five years now. That's longer than some marriages last!

But because of the recent addition of Dora, (isn't she just precioussssss, Murderers?-oh no you don't- no biting-we need her)- and a wealth of new readers on the blog, I am posting this week as if I were a new member.

Some of you have no idea about me, who I am, what I do, how I love the taste of blood...ha.

Back in 2008, I was just releasing the first book of my mystery series, Avenging Angel, book one of the Shannon Wallace Mysteries I called it a cozy, but truthfully, it is more of a New Adult zany mystery. Shannon is a recent college grad looking to situate herself in the career market. She loses her first real job and when her boss is murdered, well, she takes off on an adventure that will make you laugh out loud. Very much in the vein of Janet Evanovich.



Avenging Angel by Kim Smith
I also started up a radio show called INTRODUCING WRITERS (still archived out there). It garnered great author guests(Charlotte Hughes, Katherine Center, Robin Burcell, etc) and a ton of great books were presented to my fans and followers. But after a couple of years of hosting the show, Shannon and Dwayne were slapping my muse around and I realized that I hadn't written anything in a long time. I held shows nearly every night. It was grueling and a bit devastating to my writing career. So, I stopped the show.

In the following years, Shannon and her sidekick, Dwayne, get into two more books, Buried Angel


and Crooked Angel


making a whole trilogy of their adventures. You can still get them, Murderers. They are on Amazon. I also penned A Will to Love, Love Waltzes In, and a slew of short stories.

I guess you could say I was in transition. Something new stirred in the darkness. My heart longed to follow after a different love. I called it my first love, because the very first book I ever penned was a YA fantasy. At least, Victoria Strauss told me so, waaaaaay back in the early 2000s when I first started writing.

Confession time. When the light pierced the darkness, and Murder by 4 really took notice by such greats as WD's 101 Best Sites, and the blog was going great guns, I silently switched genres.

I published a YA fantasy, A Mirror in Time, but lost the publisher who closed her doors. I did what so many indie published authors have had to do. I rewrote the book, re-covered it, and self-published it. http://www.amazon.com/An-Unexpected-Performance-Kim-Smith/dp/1484887514 An Unexpected Performance was born.


Blurb:
A drama award, a theatrical mirror, and two teens destined to be great actors. If they can survive their part in ... An Unexpected Performance.

I also started up a new radio show. Writer Groupie is alive and well, and in the new year will be looking for guests. I host my shows on Friday nights at 10 PM CST.

I have a new website, with a shiny new blog as well, at Kim Smith, author -- I hope you will take time to check it out. I post mini-podcasts about once a week, talking about sorts of subjects.

Some things never change, Murderers, and the fact that I am here, posting, back in the saddle as it were, is one of them. You will get a new book from me in 2014, as Loran Rudder and the Secret Key is about to be born. I have several short stories as well, one is free on my website, for you, if you choose to get it. It's a weird experimental thing called Anenome Hanks.

I don't know what the future holds for this blog, or my writing life, (I am not THAT good, pal)- but one thing is for sure--it will be interesting. I believe it will be stellar. After all, we are Mb4-after all.

I hope you will hang around to find out!

_____________________________________________



Steal this banner!


Kim Smith is the author of Ten Tips for Getting that Book Written, a tiny tome to tweak your muse and get you in the writing chair. A founding member of Mb4, an exciting voice in the writing community, Kim has penned tons of articles about writing and the writing life. She has six books in print and ebook, including the wildly popular Shannon Wallace Series. She can be found every day on her website and blog at http:/www.kimsmithauthor.com-on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/mkimsmith and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mkimsmith or @mkimsmith- she also has a tumblr and linkdin account as well as her writing appears on wattpad pretty regularly. She welcomes your interest in Writer Groupie radio show you can email her to be a guest at kim smith@ kim smith author dot com (no spaces)

Character Editing by Dave McDonald

 Meet Dave McDonald. He writes suspense. Give a read to his journey. You Murderers might see something that reminds you of your journey.

________________________________________________________________________

I have written ten books with the intent of having a shared theme of common people forced to confront major social issues.  The social issues are my motivation for writing.

I wrote SAM’S FOLLY because I felt there wasn’t enough being done in the world to minimize the number of children being abused, and often kidnapped and killed, by pedophiles.

The last thing I wanted to do was to write another cop story.  I wanted my protagonist to be unique; a character who evolves from the darkness into the light.  A character who initially the reader dislikes but cheers for, and eventually loves.

One idea gave birth to another, one chapter begat another, and months later, I had written a story.  But stories don’t become books until the editing surgeon can no longer detect discrepancies.  And although I never thought I’d be able to say this, I’ve grown to love editing.
          

After reviewing the first draft of SAM’S FOLLY, I found my protagonist, Sam Johnson, to be anything but a common or likeable person.  I had created a psychopath.  I didn’t want a DEXTER for my leading man. I wanted a man with a heart.  But my story was centered upon Sam Johnson being a retired ex-contract killer. So my plight was how to create a killer-for-hire who wasn’t a psychopath; a killer that readers would hopefully think of as a hero.

I needed knowledge, a character baseline.

The first thing I did was good ol’ research.   I read a book written by a psychiatrist that defined both sociopaths and psychopaths.  These people have many problems, but their one major flaw is they don’t have a conscience.  An added scary side note is four out of every one hundred people are either sociopaths or psychopaths.  So we all know a few; an enhancement for dead-bolts sales.

Having general ideas about who I wanted versus didn’t want as my main character, it was time to get to specifics.

Lists are normally a good thing.  I listed the character traits of a psychopath and across from that grouping I listed the traits of the character I wanted Sam Johnson to be.  Now all I had to do was create a character that killed people for money and yet knew the difference between right and wrong.  Instead of ‘the Tin Man finds his heart’, my premise would be Luca Brasi (the family’s assassin in the GODFATHER) finds a conscience, a difficult task.

After weeks of floundering, my critique partner solved my conundrum.  He gave me a conscience-blocker Sam could utilize before each murder.  It was a simple and yet powerful tool ironically laden with remorse that was a catalyst for instantaneous action; thoughtless killing.

Then I rewrote the entire book, seeding the story with releases of stored emotions by Sam Johnson along the way; traits to give the reader glimpses of light in Sam’s darkness.

So how did I do?  Readers are the final judges.  I believe one of the 5-star comments about SAM’S FOLLY encapsulates my efforts.

It's hard to write a review without giving away the story. To sum it up, I found myself in an emotional tug of war. I wanted to hate Sam at the same time I was drawn to him. The author, Dave McDonald did an excellent job building a memorable character, defining him, and then stripping away his layers one at a time. In spite of my busy schedule, I managed to read it in two nights because it was simply that difficult to put down.
I do not hesitate recommending this book!

So if you find yourself in need of a character overhaul, research, lists of character traits, the use of emotional tools, and great critique partners are my suggestions for character editing.

Dave McDonald, a romanticist at heart, writes suspense thrillers.

Dave's Amazon page

 

   

 

Ten Tips for Getting that Book Written

Are you looking for some motivation to get in the writing chair? Maybe looking for a way to keep your focus and get that book written? Today I have something for you.

I have just released a new little booklet called, TEN TIPS FOR GETTING THAT BOOK WRITTEN and I think it may be just the ticket for those of you looking for something to light a fire under you.

It has ten tips, AND bonus materials in it.

Plus, and this is the best thing of all, it is only $1.50 !!!

Check it out here at the buy link :

http://www.amazon.com/Tips-Getting-that-Written-ebook/dp/B00DK0TGQQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372242831&sr=8-1&keywords=ten+tips+for+getting+that+book 

Editing: Be Brief

Being brief in your writing is very important in this world of ours and its "catch me quickly" attitude. I mean, come on. Twitter anyone? 140 characters and that's all folks.

So, how do you know when you are NOT being brief? Well, by using words that are not necessary. Sometimes I think we repeat ourselves and don't even realize it. Like saying, the blood pooled around the body and in the next sentence or two talk about how the blood around the body had made the carpet   wet or how it looked like a blood bathtub, outlining the corpse. Isn't that basically the same thing? Couldn't you say it all in one sentence?

Ideas for stories: aka the answers to such dilemmas

Some time ago, I had a very strange dream,whereby upon awaking, a part of my real-life lopped over into my dream. I kept dreaming about a very loud annoying bell, and it turned into my alarm ringing. Or chiming, as it were, as my alarm is my cell phone, and the ring tone is a church bell pealing.
Ugly, I know, but such is my life in certain arenas.

Have you ever had that happen? It's something akin to surreal when your dream-state becomes your reality. Many great stories have come from dreamers/writers who brought their mind-meld ideas to the world of the waking. Situations where ideas for stories fall into our laps don't happen often, at least not for me, so this was just an invitation to dig in and do something with the free material. Never sniff at blessings even when they come from a dream. Do something with it! And if you cannot remember the entire thing, well, fudge it until you make it into something.

And of course, I did.

What came out was a short story I called the Case of the Missing Body, which I am offering at Amazon  as a serial story. I am going to be posting segments about once a month. It is totally YA (young adult) mystery, and safe for family consumption.

(Blatant Self Promo-- the first installment is up now for 99 cents! BUY IT NOW

I hope you will go out and get it, Murderers.

The cover art is mine own. For the first time in my writing life, I was author, editor, cover artist, and publisher. Thank you very much, Amazon, for allowing us to take control of our work. Oops, that's a post for another day.

Interview, much?

As I was perusing the web, nursing a terrible headache, I found an interview done recently with the author John Irving by the Sunday book review in the NY Times. Mr. Irving, in my opinion, was a man of few words. He still writes in longhand, not on a computer as well.

How many times have I had to answer the same questions over and over in interviews through the years? A lot. But do I mind? Not at all. I figure new readers will ask the same questions that the new interviewer is asking, and I do forgive repetition.

Recently, in a group of writers, the question was posed about what the writers thought about interview questions. Whether or not there was one or two that they just simply detested.

I truly couldn't come up with any, but did agree the one that someone posed "where do you get your ideas from" has to be the worst.  Not because it is offensive, but because it is so darn hard to answer. In reality, there is no bad question. All interviews are different, and while some questions seem to be repeated, it is the writer's job to make the answers seem a bit different.

This is especially true if you are doing a book tour and the bulk of your tour is made up of interviews on various blogs.

So, dear Murderers, as I sit here and allow the Ibuprophen to kick in, I wonder, what do you think are good interview questions? What would YOU *if you were interviewing* want to know most?

Know thine characters

OK, so I am up really late on a Monday night (I can do that these days and not miss a beat) - and I have this desire to blog about writing characters. There are quite a few things that I could say about that, but some of the highlights will do for this post today.

Here they are: Make your characters different from one another and make them stand out for who they are. No one likes vanilla people on paper. Know their history. Where did they come from? What sorts of things do they detest? Give them a horrible past and tell us every juicy detail by their actions.

No, don't just TELL us, show us how they are affected by it. Share something happy about them with us, and make us smile. Make us laugh, and we will read your book to the very end. Make everything about their past matter, and throw in secrets. Readers LOVE secrets!

When your characters talk, make them all sound different. I know this is a little like making them different from above, but it is still not the exact same thing. We all talk differently. Accents, speech patterns all differ and make us individuals. Do that for the paper people too.

And, I guess that is all for now. I am thinking way too hard for after midnight, but that's how I roll. I just need to roll myself over to the laptop and do more edits on my latest WIP and then everything in my writing life would be on track.

Hope your Thursday flies by (we all know what comes after Thursday and isn't that super!) and if you have time today, go sit alone in a coffeeshop or a cafe and listen to the people who fill our world.

They all make wonderful book characters with their different loves and hates, with their horrible pasts, and their happy stories. If we could create from the world around us, what a magnificient lot of pages we could make!

 

Wise old owl

Advice for the Rookies from a Rookie

A number of people have asked me recently how I write. They say things like, “You know, I have always wanted to write a book, but I don’t…” And here you can fill in the blanks. Have enough time, enough talent, know what to write about, know if I’m interesting enough, know if people would like my stories, know if they’d like me. So I thought I would write some of my thoughts about writing from an Everyman perspective.

These are just my ideas, not at all Gospel. I am a middle-aged guy with no degrees in literature, journalism, or creative writing. I am a husband and father first and foremost, who has a day job, and who writes detective stories at night. I have been blessed to be part of such an amazing group of writers, and as the new guy on the block I wanted to share some perpective on my writing experience. If these ideas work for you, then by all means take what you can from them.

1. Read. Simple enough, right? But reading is where you learn what you like, and what you don’t like, in a story. It’s where you pick up on language, expand on ideas from other writers, and charge the batteries in your imagination. Read stories you enjoy. If you like mysteries, for example, read several authors to find a style and voice you can relate to. Historical romances your thing? There are some wonderful writers in that genre. The point is, if you want to write, you have to read. And now on to…



2. Pay Attention. Inspiration is a goofy thing. You never know when or from where it will come at you. I can also tell you, from my experience, it is usually subtle. One day a few years ago I was sitting in the parking lot of a car repair shop along the lake just south of Buffalo, NY, on a typically grey January day, waiting for my wife’s cousin to drop off her car and take her back to our house. As we drove home, Lake Erie was an expanse of grey snow and ice heaved at the shore line, stretching out until it was impossible to tell where the frozen lake ended and the cloudy sky began. I thought, this would be a lonely place to die. Eighteen months later my first novel, Lake Effect, was set against the very backdrop I described as my detective hero unravels the case of two children murdered on the icy shore. I can’t tell you the number of times I have come across little tidbits of life that find their way into my stories. Paying attention to the little things makes all the bigger things easier.



3. Stop, look, and listen. And smell and taste while you’re at it. Books are a wonderful way to convey your ideas, but if you want to add texture and substance, you have to use all your senses. It’s not enough to say you ate delicious Buffalo chicken wings, though to be honest that should be enough. From what I understand, there are a few people that have never eaten Buffalo wings before. For those people, you can tell them about the steam rising off the plate of red-sauced chicken parts, awash in a sea of hot sauce and butter, the creamy Bleu Cheese dressing a cooling accompaniment to the tangy, spicy wings. Are they fried crispy, or are they soggy and saucy? Are they mild enough to give to a four year old, or do they leave your lips stinging as they light your throat on fire? The more real you make it, the more into the story both you and your readers will be.



4. Embrace rejection like a 13 year old at a middle school dance. My wife and I have been married for 23 years, have two ten year old kids, and find we agree on the most important things. But she doesn’t care for the Joe Banks series I have written at all. Just isn’t her cup of tea, and you know what? We’re still married, we still love each other, and she still supports my writing. Make your story as good as you can make it, and learn as much as you can from people who tell you constructive ways to improve. Failure, and rejection, is nothing more than the opportunity to do it better the next time. I think that’s true no matter what.



5. Have a sense of humor about it all. A wise old man once told me if you can’t laugh at yourself, someone else will laugh at you. In my day job as a physical therapist in a nursing home, I had a resident walk with me as part of his exercise program. We chatted back and forth for several minutes, and finally Arthur turned to me and said, “You know, this is a nice place. I think it might make a nice nursing home.” He thought about it, then started laughing. It was a genuinely funny moment, and reminded me not to take myself, or what I perceive to be my problems, too seriously.

Then, when you’ve got all that sorted out, keep notes on what you see, do, smell, taste, feel and hear that you might be able to use in a story. Figure out how you feel about it, and how you would react to a situation as you get to know your characters. Then write it all down. All of it. Don’t worry, you can sort it all out later. That’s what the editing process is for.

Author of the Month: Robert B. Parker

© Ron Adams 2011 all rights reserved

Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned From Spenser

(With apologies to Robert Fulghum)

I was saddened to hear of the passing recently of the Grand Master of American Detective Fiction, Robert B. Parker. Parker’s Spenser, and later Jesse Stone, were the inspiration for me to begin my own writing career. Going one step further, I realized that everything I have used in my own writing I learned from absorbing pages and pages of the adventures of Spenser, Stone, Hawk, Susan Silverman, and the other characters brought to life through the skill of Robert B. Parker. This is what I have learned:

1. Characters drive stories. The situations in which the characters find themselves develop as a result of who the characters are. Develop and know your characters, put them into a situation, and the story develops from there.

2. Keep your main characters consistent. Spenser is always the tough guy with a flair for literature and gourmet cooking. His only true weakness is, will ever be, his devotion to Hawk and Susan. Nothing changes, regardless of the case, regardless of the villain. Nobody is tougher than Spenser.

3. Make the villain worthy of the hero. In Parker’s “Stone Cold”, Jesse Stone battles a pair of highly intelligent thrill killers who flaunt their superiority under a false claim of innocence. Only after they make their murders personal does their story start to unravel. Stone is as dogged and unrelenting as the serial killers are cold and unremorseful. A match made in mystery heaven.

4. Show, don’t tell. I know, almost all writers know this. Even my mentor, Suzanne James, encouraged me to use that as my mantra. Nothing will bore the readers faster than long winded meticulous descriptions of a scene. Parker used crisp dialogue and actions to propel the stories forward, and there aren’t a whole lot of writers who have done it better.

5. Set the pace, and encourage the reader to turn every page. Something worth reading happens on every page, and changes in chapters bring changes in scenarios that bring additional momentum to the story.

6. Don’t forget the even the toughest of the tough guys have a sense of humor. The one-liners shared between Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Lt. Quirk and the rest helped bring a sharp contrast to the dramatic tension of the story. They make the characters more real, more engaging, and served to define each personality.

What else have I learned? I was surprised to learn recently the Parker wrote everyday, 5 pages. No more, and no less. There are days where that seems like a lofty goal, but one to which I aspire. I would also like to add, and I’ve recommended this a lot to anyone who has asked me about writing, read. Reading really good writing, regardless of which author you like, will help provide working examples of a style you can use and emulate in your own writing.

So my thanks to Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and rest in peace Mr. Parker. Thank you for setting the bar, for providing me with concrete examples of writing excellence, and a lot of literary enjoyment.

Mystery Author Marilyn Meredith and Her World of Crime

I had the pleasure of meeting Marilyn Meredith, author of eighteen novels, last year through our mutual association in Sisters in Crime.

Marilyn Meredith is the author of award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series as well as other novels. The latest is, Judgment Fire, from Mundania Press. Under the name of F. M. Meredith she writes the Rocky Bluff P.D. series, the latest, Smell of Death, from Tigress Press. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, EPIC and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. She was an instructor for Writer’s Digest School for ten years, served as an instructor at the Maui Writer’s Retreat and many other writer’s conferences.

Please join MURDERY BY 4 in welcoming Marilyn Meredith.



Though I’ve always loved reading mysteries, my first published writing was an historical family saga based on my own family’s genealogy. When I was done, I decided to tackle a mystery. My interest in law enforcement had been piqued when my police officer son-in-law decided I had a good listening ear and coffee to drink. My daughter didn’t want to hear what he had to say, and I was fascinated. It wasn’t long before I talked him into going on a ride-along as long as I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone I was his mother-in-law.

Year earlier, when we first moved into our home in an inexpensive housing tract in Oxnard CA, we were neighbors with everyone whose pay scale left much to be desired: police officers, firemen and Navy personnel (my husband was career Navy). We partied with these folks and I had coffee with the wives where I learned plenty about the families and how the job affected them.

Later we moved from the beach community to the foothills of the Sierra and I went on more ride-alongs. The most enlightening one was with a female officer who was a single mom. I followed her as she did bar checks and waited in the car while she calmed a family dispute. From 2 a.m. until 6 in the morning, she didn’t have a single call. During this time she poured her heart out to me. Much of what I learned from her, my son-in-law, living among cops and their families have been the material that fueled my imagination to write the Rocky Bluff P.D. series.

My goal with this series has been to show how the job affects the families and what’s going on with the families affect the job. I also remembered my son-in-law criticizing police shows and books because as he said, "We’re never working on just one case at a time." The Rocky Bluff P.D. never works on one case at a time either.

The latest in the series, Smell of Death, features a female police officer, Stacey Wilbur, a single mom, two murders that are connected, a missing toddler, a stalker, and the beginning of a romance when Stacey breaks her own rule about dating anyone on the Rocky Bluff P.D. Any of the old-timers on either the Oxnard P.D. or the Porterville P.D. might recognize cases that gave me the seeds that germinated into this novel.

Most people know me by Marilyn, but I decided to use my initials for this series because it’s a bit darker than my usual writing. Smell of Death can be purchased directly from my website: http://fiction/ or Amazon.com.

Marilyn has just completed her virtual book tour of Smell of Death. To learn more about Marilyn and her other writings please visit: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/and the
Stiletto Gang: http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com/

Interview with author John DeDakis by Marta Stephens

“Sometimes, in order to find purpose for the future, you need to unravel the mystery of the past.”







Today it’s my pleasure to introduce John DeDakis, author of the mystery/suspense novel FAST TRACK published by ArcheBooks Publishing. John is the Senior Editor for CNN and writer for the Emmy-Award winning “The Situation Room,” anchored by Wolf Blitzer.

In addition to book signings and readings, John frequently speaks on the topic "From Journalist to Novelist: (Or How I Learned to Stop Telling the Truth and Start Making it Up)." He is a lecturer at American University, Washington, DC where he taught a journalism class of student interns during the summer of 2007.

John, a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Cynthia, a choral conductor. They have three grown children.

MS: John, thank you for allowing me to interview you for MURDER BY 4. I’m fascinated by your background. Your career in news broadcasting spans four decades starting when you were as a student reporter in 1969 for a campus radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You are a former White House Correspondent, and have been with CNN since 1988. When did the fiction writing bug strike?

JD: I always knew I wanted to write, even when I was a kid, but it started with nonfiction. I toyed around with some short stories in grade school, but the bug for writing fiction didn't really bite until about 1994 when I was deep into my journalism career. I'd already been a reporter and White House Correspondent, but then I became an editor which is, by comparison, tedious and not particularly creative. That's when I got serious about writing fiction.

MS: Your career as a journalist/reporter/editor placed you in the center of the events and people who have shaped our nation. Have you ever been moved by any one event or individual to consider writing a political or spy thriller? Why or why not?

JD: Yes. Stay tuned.

MS: Now I’m totally curious, but I’ll move on to my next question. How would you say your personal experiences have influenced the direction of your writing?

JD: They're inseparable. My sister's suicide and the car/train collision I witnessed when I was nine became the impetus for my mystery/suspense novel FAST TRACK. But imagination plays into the process in a big way, too.

MS: What would you say are your biggest challenges as an author and how do you deal with them?

JD: There are several challenges. The first and foremost is to balance writing with the responsibilities of family. That's less an issue now because our kids are grown, but there was a time early in the process when my wife referred to my book as my "mistress." Once the book was published, the challenge became one of balancing the time between writing and marketing. If you want your book to be a success, you MUST be willing to do all you can to let people know about it. But it's extremely time-consuming, yet rewarding. I'm not a born salesman, yet I've found, to my surprise, that I like that side of things.

MS: What would you regard as your most successful method(s) of marketing your book?

JD: By far, e-mail is most effective for me, followed close behind by bookmarks. Before my novel came out, I began amassing a rolodex of contacts which I’ve been adding to ever since. Whenever a person I meet buys my book, I ask for their email, then I follow up with a "glad-we-met" note. I must have about 2,000 email addresses now -- a built-in base to contact when book two comes out.

Bookmarks are effective, too. For example, if I’m in an elevator with someone I think might be interested, I hand them a bookmark and give them the following ten-second spiel: "This is your next book. It’s mystery/suspense about a young woman trying to figure out what to do with her life. The publisher’s web site is right there."

I point to the link at the bottom of the bookmark.

"My publisher has posted a free sample for you to read." Just enough to get a reader hooked. I also highly recommend the book "Guerrilla Marketing for Writers" by Levinson, Frishman & Larsen (Writers Digest Books).

MS: What does a typical day in the life of John DeDakis look like? When do you find time to write?

JD: I'm up early, usually around 6 a.m. I write in my journal, then I check e-mail and write responses. I read the paper, exercise, shower, and have a bowl of cereal. If I'm working on a writing project, I tackle it in the hour or two I have before I have to be at the CNN Washington bureau at 11 a.m. At work in "The Situation Room," the first part of the day is spent getting up to speed on what's happening in the world, so I'm reading a LOT. As we get closer to air time, the pace picks up as the writers file their scripts for Wolf Blitzer to read. We only have four writers for three hours of airtime (4 p.m. -7 p.m. ET Monday-Friday). I share the editing load with one other person. He edits the 4 p.m. hour; I do the 5 p.m. and we share the 6 p.m. The writing and editing go on through all three hours and the pace is frenetic. But then, at 7 p.m., it's all over. After work, I'll either go out to dinner with a friend, or head home to hang out with my wife and/or work on a writing project. The days are always full and never boring.

MS: Your debut novel, FAST TRACK, was first released by ArcheBooks Publishing in hardcover in August 2005; the paperback was released in 2007. First, I’d like to share the blurb with our readers:

FAST TRACK (ArcheBooks) is the story of how sometimes, in order to find purpose for the future, it's necessary to unravel the mystery of the past. Impulsive 25-year-old Lark Chadwick, frustrated because she can't decide what to do with her life, learns she's the sole survivor of a car/train collision that killed her parents when she was an infant. Why was she never told? The only person with the answer -- the aunt who raised her -- has just died, an apparent suicide. With the help of Lionel Stone, an irascible retired New York Times editor, Lark digs into her past. But, as most reporters learn very quickly, someone's lying. Who is it? And why is someone trying to kill her?

MS: I’m immediately drawn to know more about your character Lark Chadwick. What prompted you to write this intriguing novel?

JD: I was doing a writing exercise about a personal experience. As I wrote about the car/train collision I witnessed as a kid, I remembered a radio news story I'd heard about a similar crash in which an infant survived. Since I'd never heard the full story of what happened in the crash I'd witnessed, I began to wonder what it might be like if that infant grew up and began digging into the circumstances surrounding the accident she survived.


MS: Obviously, your protagonist is a woman. What challenges have you faced while writing a woman’s voice?

JD: Not as many as you might expect. I find that emotions are universal -- they're not unique to either gender. In addition, I find that women are more interesting to me than men, primarily because women express themselves in more nuanced and entertaining ways. It helps that I work in a newsroom filled with twenty-something women who tell me their stories. Several of them read early drafts of the manuscript and were able to give me valuable feedback that helped to make my female "voice" more authentic. I write about this in greater depth in an article I wrote on authorsden.com entitled "Confessions of a Cross-Gender Writer."

MS: How much of yourself do you think seeps into your character?

JD: Quite a bit. She's probably what I would be like if I were a woman.

MS: I noticed on your website that you are working on a screenplay adaptation of FAST TRACK. When did you begin that project and how far has it progressed?

JD: I wrote the screen play about 10 years ago. It's gone through two drafts, but they're both too "talky." It needs more work, but for now, the project is on the back burner -- unless Hollywood shows some interest in adapting the book to the big screen.


MS: What’s next on your plate?

JD: I'm putting the finishing touches on my second novel, BLUFF, a sequel to FAST TRACK. It's based on my recent hike along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. After that, I'm hoping my CNN colleague Carol Costello and I can follow through on our plan to do the audio book version of FAST TRACK. We just need to find some time.

MS: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

JD: NEVER GIVE UP! It took 10 years, 14 major revisions, and 39 agent queries before FAST TRACK found a home. If you give up, it guarantees that your book won't be published -- unless you go the self-published route (which isn't for me).


MS: I absolutely agree with you about not giving up. John, please feel free to share any additional information about yourself, your writing and/or your journey with our readers.

JD: Your readers are to be congratulated for enduring my turgid answers. If they want to know more, I suggest going my web site: http://www.johndedakis.com/, my writing site at http://www.authorsden.com/ or my publisher's site: http://www.archebooks.com/. And, oh yes, for the latest news, check out www.cnn.com/situationroom.

John thank you again for allowing us to spend some time getting to know you. Best wishes on your continued success with FAST TRACK and your upcoming novel, BLUFF.



FAST TRACK is available in hardcover (2005) and in paperback (2007).