Pure Colorado – As a Fictional Setting?

By Catherine Dilts

When creating a setting for a work of fiction, some authors invent their world from scratch. Others place their characters in recognizable cities, down to the street names and businesses. Much depends on the genre.

Thrillers and spy novels demand worlds ripped from the news headlines. Cozy mystery authors typically develop their own small town or neighborhood settings. They might be based on a real place, but everything about the location is fictionalized.

Most of my fiction falls in the cozy category, set in a Colorado you won’t find on a map. The Rose Creek Mystery series is set in Oklahoma, a state I lived in for nearly a decade, but the town is pure invention. Some of my short stories are deliberately vague about their locations.

In a new series, The Ninja Grandparent Placement Mysteries, my co-author/daughter and I are going the realistic route. The story premise is ridiculous, so maybe we needed to be grounded in reality in one aspect of the novels. How realistic? We use Colorado Springs as the setting.

The main location for much of the action is the former UnionPrinter’s Home. We reimagined the renovations that are actually taking place, turning it into an idyllic senior retirement home with an atrium connecting it to a gym. But the elegant red sandstone and white limestone exterior remains the same.

Which brings me to a recent visit to the iconic Denver Restaurant Casa Bonita. For those of you unfamiliar with Casa Bonita, it is not merely a restaurant. It is an event. An adventure. The pink building is a Colorado landmark.

Generations of Colorado residents were heart-sick when the world-famous restaurant declared bankruptcy and closed in 2021, a victim of the pandemic. It’s a part of our heritage. Like the mountains to the west, it seemed to occupy a permanent place in the landscape.

No ordinary restaurateur or entrepreneur could afford to purchase the building and restore it to its former glory. Who could possibly come to the rescue? This had to be a labor of love.

Casa Bonita was featured in a 2003 episode of the animated TV show South Park. When they learned the landmark was going away, Colorado natives and South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker began the effort to purchase the restaurant in the fall of 2021.

Casa Bonita reopened in June of 2023. My family went this month to celebrate a granddaughter’s birthday. All of us had been to the restaurant years ago. We were eager to see the changes.

It looked almost exactly the same! This is a good thing. We were going for nostalgia. It would have been tragic if the South Park boys had remodeled the interior into something unfamiliar. And the exterior is the same pink, with the fountain and the bell tower on top.

One important thing changed: the food was vastly improved. The previous menu was infamous.  As my son-in-law noted, it didn’t matter what you ordered; your plate would be drowned in orange nacho cheese sauce. But you didn’t go there for the food. This time, we were seated and given menus! Our table had lighting that allowed you to see what you were eating. Always a good sign.

One other thing changed. Matt and Trey are determined to pay Casa Bonita employees a living wage. So the price was a bit daunting. But this isn’t a restaurant you pop in on for a quick lunch. It’s a special-event sort of experience. Cliff divers, puppet shows, a live mariachi band, Black Bart’s cave, and more. All those folks have to be paid!

Whether a writer uses actual locations, or invents a world from scratch, may depend on the genre. Will Casa Bonita find its way into my fiction writing? My co-author and daughter Merida Bass agrees, the Casa Bonita experience deserves to be included in a future Ninja Grandparent Placement Mysteries novel. One of our lonely grandparents in need of a family could make the hour drive and wind up at the famous Denver restaurant!

​
Grandpa’s New Year’s Relocation is available now at Basecamp Books and Adventure, and in the usual places online. Grandma’s Valentine Abduction is coming February 28th! Available for pre-order now.

Inside the Criminal Mind

 by Thomas Kies

 On Friday, February 27th, I’ll be joining a panel at Left Coast Crime with Harriet Cannon, Craig Clevenger, and David Putnam, moderated by Laurie Stevens. Our topic-- “Getting Inside the Criminal Mind”--sounds like fun. If you’re going to write crime fiction, you’ve got to have that motive. So, in preparation for the discussion, I began listing the forces that might drive a person to break the law.

The most obvious motivations are greed, jealousy, rage, hubris, and desperation. There are more, like revenge and compulsion, but for this blog, I’m just going to talk about the five I listed. 

Greed and jealousy are siblings. Both come from desire--specifically, the desire for what someone else possesses. It might be money, a car, status, fame, professional recognition, or a romantic partner. Greed whines, “I want more.” Jealousy growls, “I want what you have.” In either case, the criminal act becomes a shortcut, a way to acquire something unattainable--or perceived as unattainable--through legitimate means. Many white-collar crimes, embezzlements, and even murders for inheritance are a result of greed.  Many “crimes of passion” are rooted in jealousy.

Rage, on the other hand, often erupts without careful planning. It simmers beneath the surface until one provocation too many causes it to boil over. A barroom insult, a heated argument, a moment of humiliation, or even being cut off on the highway can ignite it. Crimes of rage are frequently impulsive. They are not the product of elaborate schemes but of emotional explosions. In such cases, the perpetrator may not have intended to commit a crime when the day began. The act is born in a flash of anger—and the consequences last far longer.

Hubris is another powerful motivator. This is the belief that one is smarter than everyone else, immune to consequences, or entitled to bend the rules. Some criminals are driven less by need than by arrogance. They believe they can outwit the system, manipulate the evidence, or charm their way out of suspicion. For others, the appeal lies in the thrill itself—the adrenaline rush of taking risks and defying authority. Hubris whispers, “You won’t get caught.” For some, that challenge is irresistible.

Desperation sets the stage for a more complicated moral landscape. When options begin to disappear and survival feels at stake, people may justify actions they would otherwise condemn. If your family is starving and you have no money, would you steal food to keep them alive? Many crimes arise not from ambition or arrogance but from fear and scarcity. Desperation narrows perspective. It transforms illegal acts into perceived necessities.

Of course, human motivation is rarely singular. Greed can mingle with hubris. Rage can be fueled by jealousy. Desperation can coexist with resentment. Real-life crimes—and the most compelling fictional ones—often stem from a volatile mixture of emotions and circumstances.

Mix in a few additives like drug use or revenge and you can have a deadly cocktail of motives. 

And then there is the uncomfortable reality that some individuals act without empathy or remorse. While I am not a psychologist, it’s clear that certain offenders display traits associated with sociopathy or an absence of moral restraint. Whether we label that “evil” or understand it through clinical terms, it reminds us that not every crime fits neatly into a rational framework.

Getting inside the criminal mind means recognizing that, at its core, crime begins with motive. And motive, however dark, is almost always human. And interestingly, often, when a criminal acts, they don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing but more as an imperative.  Something that needs to be done. 

Embracing Human Creativity

 

By Shelley Burbank: This includes an excerpt from my latest PINK DANDELIONS newsletter. 

Dandelion Seeds 

FROM PINK DANDELIONS

With everything going on right now, and in spite of the tasteless, smell-less, sterile poison that is AI’s non-living“breath” seeping into nearly every corner of our human world, I feel something rising in humanity: a desire to turn our backs (some a little, some a lot) on technology and to return, instead, to our humanity. All our messy, emotional, fleshy, smelly, oozy, soaring, dancing, laughing, swirling in circles on the grass, and lifting our faces to feel the rain humanity.

Do you feel it? Do those words grab you by the hand and swing you around? Do they make your heart lift?

Typing them makes me feel happy. I wrote about this creativity era in my journal yesterday, about how I feel as if we are moving into a new phase of life, one that is more connected with actual, living things: people, nature, animals, human-made art and crafts, voices raised in song, feet pounding a rhythmic dance, long hugs, big smiles, and laughing together over a shared experience.

Our new creativity era has begun, I feel it swirling around me, and it brings a feeling of peace and giddiness at the same time. I want to create. I want to share. I want to be in commune with other creators.

I’m dedicating myself to creativity. I’m letting ego and the materialist/capitalist side of the writing life become just a sidenote to the main event. It feels like turning a corner. Here, something whispers to me, is the human-scaled place to dwell.

Read the entire newsletter 

https://open.substack.com/pub/shelleyburbank/p/our-creativity-era-has-just-begun

_____

So, Dear Type M-ers, one way I am dedicating myself to this creativity is letting go of social media. I know I've talked about it a lot, but I've reached my limit of patience with this poisonous, anti-human, dumpster-fire technology. Social media isn't necessary for the writing life, and it's not really all that effective in growing a readership, despite all the hype that it will and that there are no better alternatives. 

I'm calling B.S. on that "common knowledge."

I don't need to outline all the reasons social media is bad for human beings, especially kids, and for society in general. You've heard it all. I've heard it all. I've come to the conclusion that I can't support these platforms anymore, even if it means I'm undermining my writing career. 

But I don't actually believe that anymore. I think there are better ways, especially since the great algorithmic pivot on the platforms around 2019-2020 which severely limits organic reach.

It's a waste of time. It's emotionally and psychologically addictive. It stokes conflict and outrage. 

So, the other day I posted a "this is why I'm taking a 30-day break from social media" reel in Facebook and Instagram. I moved these apps to the "back" page of my phone apps so I don't see them. I turned off push notifications so they don't pop up to tempt me. I'm officially taking a 30-day break, but I'm pretty sure at the end of that time I'm going to abandon my accounts, leave them there as a "calling card" directing people to my website instead, or possibly even delete them altogether. 

I should delete them. Why? Because that's how we take these platforms down. One deleted account at a time. Oh, by the way, some estimates are that 50% of the ad traffic comes from "bots." In other words, when you are paying for an ad and you get charged for an "impression" that impression might be made by a bot, not someone who might actually buy your book. Even accounts are, by some estimates, 10-16% fake. 

It's a zombie apocalypse in there, you just don't realize it yet. 

____

Meanwhile, new mystery novella (137 pages) has launched and is available in both ebook and paperback on KDP/Amazon. I'm really pleased at how it came out, and early reviewers are giving it very high marks and enthusiastic comments. 

Read the description and buy at https://www.amazon.com/Strawberry-Moon-Mystery-Olivia-Novella-ebook/dp/B0GGYX6CJB

Meet Your Next Favorite Female Sleuth. Strawberry Moon Mystery by Shelley Burbank. Olivia Lively, P.I. Mystery Series

• Coastal Maine Setting
• Female Investigator
• Frenemies & Betrayal
• Literary Mystery

Audible Originals

 by Sybil Johnson

In the last few months, I have been listening to a lot of Audible Originals. I got the Audible subscription because I wanted to listen to Mistletoe Murders. And, they had a three month deal I couldn’t pass up. 

Hallmark has a TV series, which I really like, based on the Audible Original series so I was curious how they compared. Both are good. They are their own things, equally enjoyable IMHO. 

That’s how I got started on my Audible journey. 

Audible Originals, or at least the ones I’ve listened to, are stories that are more akin to the radio dramas of the 1930s and 40s, than books. I’ve listened to a lot of those old radio programs and have enjoyed them. All of the AOs I’ve listened to are full cast narrations (multi actors). They rely heavily on dialog and background noises (soundscape) to tell the story. The background noises like horns honking, people talking help orient the listener to where they are so narration like “Ron and Amy were in a bar” isn’t necessary.

So far I’ve listened to all of the Mistletoe Murders plus its spin-off as well as a couple of Agatha Christie stories featuring Hercule Poirot that were adapted for AO. I have enjoyed all of them. I’ve even recognized some voices of actors that I’ve seen on TV shows. 

All of this got me thinking about what it means to write an AO story. Dialog is key. Some of the ones I listened to have some narration here and there, but mostly it’s dialog and background noises that tell the story. I found this 27-minute audio in a blog post on writing for audio that I thought was interesting. 

Worth a listen even if you have no intention of writing for audio. 

Has anyone written something specifically for audio? I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are.

M Chandos 

Dr. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle once described the business side of his writing as "hateful negotiations". He immensely enjoyed the creative process of writing (not the Great Detective when he got in the way of ACD's important works ie "The White Company"), and he preferred to leave all the business details to his agents, A. P. Watson and Sons. Sherlock was a money-maker and was tolerated because the stories funded ACD's "serious" writing and his world-wide tours promoting spiritualism. 

Most writers write in their spare time, after kids, bills, the J.O.B., house maintenance and the lawn. I'm retired from the big career and from my 10-year sole proprietor LLC as a private investigator. The intent was to let the career pension pay for the house, and the LLC to provide juicy experience as background for writing mysteries, thrillers and PI stories. It has, but spare time still seems to be missing. 

Time for writing must compete for my attention. My wife and I are older now, so there are more medical appointments. It's February, so tax time is looming. I'm in Colorado at 7500 ft., so there is snow to shovel, although, without the J.O.B., clearing my long driveway 50 feet to the road is less important, and it almost never needs clearing at 6 AM like it did when we were both working. 

Writing for me takes concentration. Hours. I'm not like John Stith, who got up an hour before his house to write in the quiet of the early morning for DECADES. He wrote 4+ SF novels of quite respectable quality using that personal routine. I prefer the quiet hours of 8/9 PM to midnight or later. But when you have a DR appointment at 9 AM the next day, an aging dog to walk before you leave, a chin to shave, bedtime has priority. You, well, I, have to make time. 

There are multiple approaches contributing to solving the problem. I am concentrating on several house maintenance jobs that, once done, will be gone. I use the afternoon occasional hours for organizing files, collecting story versions, saving market data, and studying Tons of downloaded resources in the form of screen-copied articles, FBI PDFs, videos, and a broad catalog of interesting topics that seem to stimulate my writing imagination. Articles about cannibal ants, autopsy surprises, Victorian crimes, famous murders, and epic robberies. I think about titles, and I have two pages of cool titles waiting for their stories. I browse quotations and steal Great Ideas. I download interesting photos of people, places, and things. 

I write about PIs in the early 60's and in present day, so I file photos according to era as well as topic. And I read. I try to read twice, first like a reader, driving through the story and enjoying the trip. Non-critical. Sometimes, though, I read like a writer, slower, sometimes backtracking a page or two to understand how a plot point was set up and then executed. And every night, for at least a half hour, I read for fun. I have a tall stack of future reads, classic SF by Harlan Ellison, non-fiction about detective work, and classic tales by Joseph Conrad. And contests. I have been a judge for both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For PWA, I currently have a box with at least 40 short stories that were published last year. The contest runs thru the end of March, so there will be more in the mailbox. I learn what makes a short story work by reading through many mediocre contest stories and happily discovering winning ones.

Excuse me. I see two hours unclaimed tonight. Back to my latest story about a movie collectibles conman who finds his holy grail.

A Really Good Villain

 I (Donis) was told once that the construction of a mystery begins with a villain. I think it isn’t that simple. A mystery isn’t necessarily about heroes and villains, but more properly an exploration of the nature of evil, if I may wax pompous for a moment.  

I am especially intrigued by books that cause the reader to re-examine his ideas about right and wrong.  We’ve talked before on this blog about the need for justice to be done in a mystery novel, but does that mean that the killer is always caught and punished?  Case in point: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Was justice done when the killers were discovered? But no. Justice was done when the victim was murdered, and right was done when Hercule Poirot contrived to see that the murderers were not punished. Same deal in my first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming.  The killer was not the villain at all.

My sleuth in that series, Alafair Tucker, very much had her own ideas of right and wrong, which may or may not have anything to do with legal and illegal. This makes for interesting resolutions to the mysteries, I think. If the author can pull it off, mysteries can really be wonderful explorations of the human psyche. Why do people do what they do?  What seems right to one person can do another tremendous harm. Even an insane killer has reasons for murder that make perfect sense to him.

I'm working on a book now in which the protagonist is the villain in two of my previous novels from the Bianca Dangereuse Hollywood series. Her name is Katy, and in The Wrong Girl and Valentino Will Die, she was very much the bad guy. But she was such a fun character that I couldn't let her go. And now, in her very own book she's the heroine of her own life, but she's still has no moral code other than her own survival. She's a delight to write, but she isn't someone you'd trust to watch your jewelry. 

One of my favorite villains to write showed up in my eighth Alafair book. He was a charming psychopath, so evil that who knows, he might even have been the devil. When the first edition of All Men Fear Me came out, people were always asking me about the man on the cover, but since the publisher chose the cover and I had no more to do with it than to say, "I like it", I could never tell them who he is, only that he is a perfect depiction of the villain in the book. However, thanks to a curious reader who actually queried my publisher about the cover photo, I now know who the man is! 

Here's what the cover artist revealed: "I acquired the actual photo (not a scan or reproduction) from a collector. It is an original 1900s mug shot one of about a dozen that I purchased. The collection is quite intriguing; each mug shot has a frontal face photo, a profile photo and on the back is the name of the arrested and a hand-written description of their crime! Although there were some murderers in the collection of mug shots, this man was arrested for being a 'disorderly person'. His alias was 'Jack the Hugger' and he was arrested in Jersey City, NJ in 1903."

Now there's a story. I imagine old Jack was just a bubble off plumb, and was arrested for walking around Jersey City giving random hugs to people whether they liked it or not. 

Here is what the curious reader said to the publisher: "he must have been a murderer! His face was so creepy that I had to turn the book face down on the coffee table when I wasn't reading it!" She then called back a little while later to clarify that she did not mean to insult the cover--in fact, quite the opposite; she thought it caught the spirit of the villain and the book perfectly!

Chasing the muse

  

Barbara here. I am writing this high over the coastal plain of Belize, with its patchwork of farmland and forests visible through the fluffy white clouds. I am flying home to the frozen north after ten blissfully warm days exploring the country and hanging out by the ocean. To my delight, I missed much of the recent deep freeze in the northern states and eastern Canada, but we’d had plenty before I left and much more to come. I will be flying into a snowstorm in Montreal and Ottawa. From +23 to -20! Welcome to Canada!

I was with a G Adventures tour for the first week, which took me to Mayan castles and underwater caves and then out to Caye Caulker, an island off Belize in the Caribbean Sea, where we spent a day snorkelling and another one cycling around the village, which has a very laidback, Caribbean feel. Belizeans are a very friendly, easygoing people always eager to help. The motto off Caye Caulker is "Go slow". I had some amazing experiences, and during the snorkelling I saw sea turtles, manatees, sting rays, and even a hammerhead shark who swam by right underneath me. Luckily he didn’t stop for a snack.

I tacked three days onto the end of the tour in order to lay low and get some writing done. Life has been so hectic and fraught with political stress that I have not been able to make much headway on my current WIP. But at the quiet resort, I took my manuscript to the pool every morning, settled in a lounge chair, and got three solid hours of writing done every morning before the pool got at all busy. Birds twittered, wind rustled the palm trees, and in the background I could just hear the faint rhythm of reggae. The afternoon was spent at the beach or taking the little ferry down to the village to wander, window shop, or sit in a Muskoka chair on the beach and drink a local beer and eat. My favourite snack or light lunch was shrimp ceviche, packed with lime and cilantro flavour. I ate mostly seafood – lobster, shrimp, conch, and red snapper and discovered some delicious recipes.

I would love to share some of my photos but Blogger says Google won't let me, so you will just have to use your imagination. A big green sea turtle swimming by me, me lying on a lounge on the beach, the peaceful poolside where I wrote.

I have managed to kickstart my creative muse and look forward to capitalizing on the momentum I’ve built up. I think there is nothing better than a change of routine and a defined “writer’s retreat” to get over the lethargy that tends to grip us at the two-thirds point in our book, when we still don’t know how to get to the end and how to catch all the balls we have thrown up in the air.

Stay tuned to find out if I can keep the creative muse around! She’s been very fickle.

Blogging About Blogging

 By Catherine Dilts

Social media blasts out bite-sized tidbits of info with clickbait headlines. The algorithms flood us with posts on the interests we already have and opinions we already agree with. There’s not much genuine conversation.

Blogs allow for more thought.

I read an article recently on The Dos and Don’ts of Blogging for Writers on Writers in the Storm. Good timing. As a contributor to Type M for Murder, sometimes I struggle to come up with interesting articles. “Content,” in the parlance of social media.

I’ve been blogging for over a decade. There’s a temptation to delude myself into believing I already know it all. Still, the article contained helpful reminders. I especially liked Edie Melson’s closing remarks to keep your blog like a coffee shop conversation, or a welcoming front porch, not a performance.

I use my deck more than my front porch.

Shelley Burbank wrote about the pressure for authors to spread the word far and wide about their work in her Friday Type M for Murder post. I share her frustration. Marketing feels like the opposite of cultivating a “welcoming front porch.” The marketplace appears flooded. Some of the competition is stiff, while much of it will likely not stand the test of time. Yelling “buy my book” and “look at me” may sell a few copies, but longevity depends on quality writing.

How much time should authors spend launching a new book? What actually works? Is it worth paying for advertising? How does one make a profit in this business?

My Big Question lately is how much time should I devote to social media? Is it worth taking time away from creating fiction to attempt maintaining a presence? Is blogging worth the time and effort?

At a PPW meeting, Writing from the Peak blog co-editor Deborah Brewer gave her two goals for the articles. The first is Encouragement. How will the article uplift beginning writers, or authors whose careers are struggling? Second, she emphasized Community Building. Writing is mostly solitary. We need to make human connections using our writing organization Pikes Peak Writers. How will articles draw people into community?

Great advice. Is it counterintuitive to write helpful blog articles supporting other writers when our hope is to draw attention to our own work? I enjoy blogging. I don’t like selling myself. I posted a Substack last week that was about fishing for halibut, not writing. I suspect no one interested in ocean fishing went immediately to purchase my cozy murder mysteries set in northeast Oklahoma.

But isn’t that part of creating a front porch atmosphere? Engaging in genuine communication has to involve more of the personal, and less of the standoffish “I’m selling something to you, the customer.”

I’m trying to find the balance.

Deeper communication. I can’t completely abandon social media, but I have to make it work for me. Rein in the beast that can consume way too much of our time with mindless scrolling. I’ll still announce my book and short story publication news. That’s sort of a must-do, making use of free exposure.

Blogging will continue to be my outlet for less sell-sell-sell, and more here’s a cute photo of my puppy, the life-cycle of the cattail, news about record-breaking halibut, or escaped laboratory animals wreaking havoc.  

I’m a writer, not an advertising executive or marketing maven. When the muse is on my shoulder and the writing is flowing, I need to funnel that energy where it’s most important. My writing.

Good News-Bad News

 by Thomas Kies

The good news first. It was officially announced this week that I am now working with a new publisher.  I’m thrilled to be working with Level Best Books who has agreed to publish two of my novels, Exit Signs and Murder Point, and a third book that I’m currently working on. 

Exit Signs was written as crime noir and takes place in a cold and snowy winter in upstate New York, in particular Buffalo, the Finger Lakes, and the Adirondack Mountains.  Neophyte detective Jamie Barefoot is assigned to investigate a two-million-dollar life insurance claim.  The problem for the insurance company?  There’s no corpse.  But Jamie does find government fraud, corporate intrigue, hit men, and seduction along the way. 

Murder Point is a Geneva Chase mystery that takes place primarily on the coast of North Carolina on a barrier island. She’s on the trail of artwork stolen from the Isabel Gardner Museum, a heist from over thirty years ago where none of the paintings have ever surfaced.  While investigating, she’s caught in a hurricane and one by one, people are being murdered. 

According to their website: Founded in 2003, Level Best Books is the publisher of crime fiction novels and short story anthologies. Well-regarded by readers and reviewers, stories published by Level Best have won the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, Derringer, and Robert L. Fish Award for Best First Short Story presented at the Edgar® banquet. Level Best short stories have also been recognized as Best and Distinguished Mystery Stories by the editors of the Best American Mystery Stories series.

Level Best Books is a traditional, royalty-paying publisher with world-wide distribution and in-house marketing support. Headquartered outside of Washington, DC in the historic city of Frederick, Maryland, Level Best also has offices in Boston, Massachusetts and London, England.

I am so proud to now be known as a "Bestie". 

So, that’s the good news.  There have been some stories this week that haven’t been so good for the written word. The New York Times reported this week that the mass market paperbacks that I grew up with are the latest dinosaur to go extinct.  

At one time, they were ubiquitous.  You could find them everywhere, drug stores, supermarkets, airports, train stations. But you would rarely find them in libraries because they were cheaply made with thin paper and bindings that were glued, meaning that, under the right circumstances, the books would simply fall or pull apart. 

But because they were inexpensive and small that made them successful.  I recall getting my reading fix by plunking down sixty cents for a copy of the latest James Bond novel, or a mystery by John D. McDonald, or Stephen King. And the covers of those paperbacks were usually illustrated by a woman in distress or taking off some article of clothing. 

They were small enough to easily fit into your backpack or the pocket of your jacket.  So you could sneak a copy of Valley of the Dolls into your Junior High School without being detected.

Why are they going the way of the passenger pigeon?  Consumers aren’t buying them as often.  They’re buying e-books or the trade paperbacks.  “We follow the consumer,” said Dennis Abboud, the chief executive of ReaderLink. “In the case of mass markets, the consumer spoke. They were just done with it.”

And then there was the story about the Washington Post laying off 300 journalists, which includes trashing their sports section and their book reviews.  Not to sound snarky, but the owner, Jeff Bezos, managed to find the money to bankroll the “documentary” called Melania.  Including production and marketing, he spent nearly $70 million with $28 million going directly to Melania.  

According to some reports, he spent between $45 million and $55 million on his wedding in Venice last year. I guess my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. 

Is it possible he's pivoting his attention to his Blue Origin space company, working on those NASA lunar contracts? Currying favor with government decision makers, perhaps?

All in all, I'm putting that behind me this afternoon and I’m going to raise my glass to Level Best Books.  I’m looking forward to working with them.  But I’ll also grieve for the mass market paperbacks and, once again, mourn the slow death of newspapers. 

Women's Fiction, Chick Lit, and the Dilemma of Genres

By Shelley Burbank

A Little Handmade 'Zine

After a successful launch of Strawberry Moon Mystery--and by "successful" I mean the book uploads fine to readers' Kindles, I've had a few sales, and the two reviews written so far have been very encouraging--I became quite obsessed with the dreaded marketing imperative. 

I imagine there are writers out there who actually enjoy marketing and thinking about marketing and planning marketing campaigns, but I am not one of them. I do it because I feel I need to give my work its best shot. What did my launch week entail? Let's see how many actions I can remember. 

• Seven days of Substack newsletters sent to my mailing list, each one touching on some inspiration or process for the writing of the novella, including the short story that started it all on the summer solstice in 2024. One day was about 1980s 'zine culture. I shared the above photo. 
• Multiple Facebook and Instagram posts, reels, and stories sharing Canva graphics and photos and whatever else I could think up at the time. 
• A Facebook ad campaign that actually did quite well--turned into a few sales but not as many as I'd like considering the number of "clicks" it generated. 
• Changed the description on KDP to hopefully help with conversion. 
• Thanked people who shared their thoughts, pics of the book, or my graphics on their socials 
• Researched Goodreads giveaways (and decided to wait until I had a few more reviews)

It doesn't seem like so much, listed out like this, but Dear Reader, I'm exhausted in spirit. For one thing, much of this involves staring at a screen, going on socials and looking to see how the posts are doing, checking for engagement, and experiencing an unusual number of dopamine hits which leads to burnout, fatigue, and addiction. 

But it's worth it. My book deserves my best efforts. I keep telling myself this. 

One good thing: I got so tired of promotion, I started working on Liv Book 3. I've known what the mystery would be for a long time, but some of my recent "obsessions" are falling into the book in a delightful way. Also, I think Liv is gonna end up flying to Guam in pursuit of her quarry, so I'll be able to share some of my current home base with my readers. 

Meanwhile, I've been looking beyond the Lively series (only two more books to go) to what I want to do after Liv's arc is complete. My mysteries lean towards Women's Fiction, and other manuscripts I have tucked away definitely fall into this genre. 

Problem is, there are some objections to the label "Women's Fic" just as there were objections to "Chick Lit" back in the day. 

"Men's work doesn't get labeled 'Men's Fiction'," people argue. 

True. True. Very true. But there is something specific about these books that range from light, humorous tales to dark, "themey" tomes, from stories about personal growth with a lot of romance thrown in to stories about family relationships and sisterhood with no romance whatsoever that bears highlighting. These books don't fall neatly into a genre category. They aren't all literary fiction, either. They are concerned with women's lives and problems and concerns, often written in commerical styles. 

When we take a look at fiction written by men, much of the time their stories fall either into 1) a defined commercial genre or 2) they are considered literary.  

You could call books that don't fall into a particular genre (mystery, thriller, Western, historical, etc.) simply commercial fiction, but it behooves authors, agents, and editors to give defining labels to commercial fiction in order to facilitate the sales and marketing process. 

There is also the cold hard truth that while many women buy and read commercial and literary fiction written by men, men do not AS OFTEN buy and read commercial and literary fiction written by women. Don't believe me? Well, okay, but take a gander at this Lit Hub piece. https://lithub.com/why-are-so-many-men-still-resistant-to-reading-women/

So what's a girl to do? When it's time to market a book about a female main character who is engaged in a personal struggle for autonomy, self-knowledge, place in the family (community, organization, etc.) pecking order, respect, and growth, it makes sense to call this kind of book SOMETHING, especially if it isn't a literary work, if it is commercial but doesn't follow any particular genre's rules. 

Romance, for example, has conventions that must be met, namely the plot revolves around a romantic relationship and there is a happy ending. Mystery revolves around some kind of injustice or crime and a need to discover who-dunnit or why-dunnit.

Women's Fiction, on the other hand, might have romance IN it, but the plot revolves around the personal growth of the main character, and a happy ever after isn't necessary. If it were written in a literary style, it could just be called Lit Fic, but otherwise its commercial style begs for its own category. 

Just as with the Chick Lit of old, people keep trying to come up with alternative wording that isn't  gendered. I see the point. I also object. Are we really still saying that labeling something as "female" degrades that thing? Do we object to the WNBA even though the male version is simple NBA?

Like all genre labels, the purpose is to give the potential reader the information she needs to make sure the book she's picking up is what she's seeking. The cover signals this. The description helps, too. The label helps the retailer put the book in the right space for those readers to find it. And it helps authors attract potential readers to become fans, too. 

This is the spot I'm in now. I want to rebrand myself in a couple of years, or rather I want to BE rebranded by then, so I'm starting now. Do I call myself a Women's Fiction author and risk the ire of some so-called feminists or not? 

I think I do. 

My mystery covers scream Chick Lit (light Women's Fiction before Women's Fiction was a label). For awhile Emily Henry's books were marketed as Rom-Com, but this was deceptive. Some of her stories aren't romance. They don't all have happy endings. They deal equally as much or more with the main female character's internal struggles and search for meaning, but with a few laughs and some kissing. They are actually light Women's Fiction. 

Heaven forbid we call them Chick Lit, though, even though every reader, of any gender, who ever fell in love with Bridget Jones or the Shopaholic would know precisely what kind of story they'd be getting if we did.

I, for one, want to find the readers who want exactly the kind of stories I'm writing, and the best way to do that is to tell them as specifically as possible what I'm offering--through cover design, description, and category labels. Thank you for listening. 

Sincerely,

Shelley Burbank

Writer of Female Detective Mystery and Personal Reinvention Women's Fiction 

Bookish Fun

 by Sybil Johnson

I think we could all use some fun right now. I know I could. So here are some interesting/fun things I’ve found recently relating to books and/or writing.

If Books Had a Party. A friend sent me the link to this one. It’s about 3 minutes long. I feel very sorry for Audiobook. 

Molly Burns Her Crappy Writing. I didn’t really watch Mike and Molly, but I found this clip a few years ago. It still makes me laugh now. I’m sure a lot of writers can relate.

I Want a Sleuthing Skeleton For Christmas. Two and a half minutes long, this is a fun video from 6 years ago advertising one of the Family Skeleton books by Toni Kelner. The song is stuck in my head now. This is a great series and an interesting way to advertise it.

Youtube audiobooks. This is something I only recently learned about. Apparently, there are a lot of free audiobooks on Youtube. Some are in the public domain. Some are AI narrated. Some are uploaded by authors themselves. I listened to an AI generated audiobook through Youtube last year. It was decent. Assuming you have the audio rights to your book, you’ll have to join the Youtube Partner Program (YPP) and meet certain requirements. I found this guide that explains what you have to do and how you can get paid. Some authors are earning quite a bit from this.

Seattle Public Library Domino Chain. This is from 2013, three minutes long. Book domino chain world record. 

Surprised Kitty Original (formerly known as Tickle Kitty). Seventeen seconds of cuteness. Nothing to do with books, but it makes me smile every time.

I hope you enjoyed all of these.

Con or Legitimate?

by Charlotte Hinger

Steve's post yesterday was about notable quotes from writers. He keeps a booklet full of these. 

Words of wisdom from my family have lodged in my heart. Their advice surfaces from time to time. This has been a strange week in that I've gotten three invitations to speak at book events. One of mother's sayings popped up in my mind. "Never trust anyone who tries to impress you with their honesty."

Huh? Yes, it's true. I've also learned that the more someone tries to convince you they're legitimate the more wary I become. So here's how I sorted these "opportunities."

Above all else--here's my ironclad rule for everything related to publishing. DO NOT GIVE ANYONE ANY MONEY.

The first invitation was an online book club which appears to be legitimate. It boasted of a huge international readership. There was a Facebook and LinkedIn presence. I expressed interest and everything proceeded at good clip until the organizer said the club required a fee to distribute materials to their members. 

Not a chance lady. In fact the discussions cooled immediately when I mentioned that, au contraire, I charged a fee for participating, and sent my agent's contact information. There is a great post about on-line book clubs by Kevin G. Chapman: https://kevingchapman.com/2025/10/03/authors-beware-look-out-for-book-club-scams/

Kevin's post is outstanding. He goes into detail about his back and forth emails from a scammer. Boy, are these people ever clever.

When checking out people, places, or information, always remember to Google deep. Read all the pages listed. It's easy to manipulate search engines for the first and second pages. Another red flag was the lack of any gossip or reviews on sites such as Goodreads. 

So on to the second invitation. It was to speak at brick and mortar store, Inkberry Books, in Niwot, a town here in Colorado. It sounded like a good opportunity. The owners wanted me to discuss Mary's Place--a book dear to my heart. We had to work out an issue about sales. Mary's Place is traditionally published through the University of Nebraska Press. I can't bring in books on consignment without losing money. We both happily agreed that customers would order directly through the store. I'm looking forward to the event. I really admire their aggressive marketing during a time when independent booksellers are struggling. 

The third event is in Colorado Springs. The group is the American Association of University Women. I enthusiastically accepted this invitation to speak at their annual fundraising event. I gave a similar presentation several years ago here in Fort Collins. Talk about readers! This group is shrewd, organized, and very discerning. AAUW works hard to advance equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research.

I'm honored by the number of members who have already read Mary's Place.

My mother is not your mother, but believe me taking her advice is a good idea for everyone. "Do not trust anyone who tries to impress you with their honesty" And always remember my overriding advice to new authors, old authors, and everyone in between. "DO NOT GIVE ANYONE ANY MONEY. 

Revel in other people's words

 Michael Chandos

I love quotations. I have several books of quotes, many of them too dry to live, and computer files of quotes stolen from readings. I also have an old ledger book to jot them down in. Sometimes, thought-provoking quotes are better handwritten. They provoke images and concepts, which is where I start many of my stories. I have built story starters from them, a page or two to capture the image in my head generated by the "famous words", sometimes just a paragraph. Those are collected in a folder and I spend coffee cups of time wandering through them from time to time to see who volunteers to be expanded. 

I like crime, detection, suspense, colorful characters, betrayal, cheating, and stressful story lines. Mysteries and SF, too, for that matter. I'm not often a Category-writer. I like colorful scenes told with just the right amount of words. Grinding plots that force characters to live and struggle in the story. My quote choices reflect that.

Hemingway: "Everyman has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name."  I sensed that in Poet's Corner at Westminster Cathedral. Five hundred years after his death and Shakespeare's name is known worldwide. Willy Shakespeare will live forever (apologies to Oxfordians).

William Gibson: "The US one-hundred-dollar bill is the world currency for bad shit." Very true. As an intelligence officer and later as a PI, news stories about world crime almost always involve the hundred-dollar bill. No matter where you are in the world, if you get in a tight situation, a hundred-dollar bill will generate action. No, not a 20 or a 50. A crisp 100 can open doors and help you find new friends. Just don't wave more than one around within the view of many bad guys.

"What's good for the bad is bad for the good." The baseline for criminal doings.

"Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are."  My sacred promise to my readers."

"TAKE OUT can mean dating, food, or murder." "People hate their enemies, but they kill their families and friends." "Halloween is a perfect time to cover up a murder." "Hell is a Heaven to bad guys." "Beware the fat man in a skinny land." "Can't use a saint to catch a sinner." Crime novel, anyone?

"The hurt and evil people do to each other are an injury and a disease. That's why I act. I'm a medic and a nurse. I heal injuries and treat diseases." This quote is from an early American NOIR PI story, but, damn me, I can't remember the source. John Carrol Daly, William Gault, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas perhaps.

Lee Child: "My books aren't about the detectives working on the crime, but the crime working on the detectives." The POV I try to follow.

"Beware of the older man in a profession where most men die young." A hitman, perhaps?

"He came in last place in the human race."

From the First 48, the best true crime show on TV: "The first thing you learn in homicide is that the only thing that will cover the smell of a homicide is a cigar."

Dennis Lehane: "In high fiction, the hero falls from the sky. In noir, he falls from the curb."

From Pat Novak For Hire: "You live in the shadowlands between good and evil without a preference for either end." 

Contrast Novak: "She said she was 40. She had to be older because you can't get that ugly in 40 years." with Chandler: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

Did you get any images, a brief flash? Sometimes the words from other writers flash an entire scene in my head. I've written short stories around a flashed image. The typing seems so inadequate. Maybe later when all we have to do is wire the image from the author to the reader.

Exhausted

 This is a rerun, Dear Readers, of an entry I wrote on this blog in 2020. I am sorry to say that five years later, I am more exhausted and more fearful and less careful about offering my ever-more-left-leaning opinions than I was then. 

I (Donis) don't know about you, Dear Reader, but I am exhausted. I have generally kept my mouth shut about the state of the world, mainly because what do I know? But now that it's all over (but the shouting, of which there is still a depressing amount to come) I do have an observation or two which I'd like to share.

I grew up in one of the most conservative states in the nation and came of age during the roiling era of the 1960s. I graduated college the first time in 1970. I was deeply involved in liberal causes, especially the push for the ERA, and did my share of marching and sitting-in. Lots of young people in Oklahoma did. My immediate family was and still is very tolerant. However, since I don't want to damage my relationship with any of my other relatives I have spent much of my considerably long life keeping my thoughts to myself, especially when I'm back in my home state and around people I don't know well. In some parts of the world, being seen as an "elitist snob" (i.e. an intellectual) could actually be dangerous in the wrong circumstance, so I'm very careful about offering my opinions, quoting Shakespeare, saying I like classical music, using Latin phrases. I'm not kidding. Even though I admit I'm probably paranoid, I have either been made fun of or been angrily railed at for doing all those things. I'm a little bit afraid of dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers. How sad. 

HOWEVER, HAVING SAID THAT: some of the people I grew up around may be conservative, but the great majority of them are kind, generous, loving, self-sufficient, competent people who would do anything for their neighbors. Many are also a little bit afraid of died-in-the-wool left-wingers. Don't think left-wingers are blameless, either. 

So here is what I've observed about both wings:

It's frightening when others treat you like you're either an idiot or evil. That attitude is likely to make you dig in.

The cancel culture is annoying. I learned years ago that in this country you can never be forgiven for anything you ever did, no matter how much you regret it now, or what you've done since. 

Here's a story I've told a million times, but it seems to fit - when I was a young woman, I flew out of NYC bound for Ireland. As we were over the ocean I got into a pleasant conversation with the older woman next to me, who was so intrigued with my accent that she suddenly asks, "Where are you from?"

"Tulsa, Oklahoma," says I, and she burst out laughing.

"What a place to be from!" she said.

I was surprised and a bit insulted by her tone, but I have to tell you, Dear Reader, that was no fluke. Whenever I visit the East Coast, I'm often teased about my accent. Some East-coasters have made assumptions about my political leanings , and I suspect some have made assumptions about my educational level and even I.Q. based on where I'm from and on my accent, as well.

I don't like to be pigeonholed. Nobody does, so it's best not to go around making snap judgements about people you've just met. You're probably wrong, anyway.

p.s. After she laughed, I responded to the airplane woman by asking where she was from, and she replied, "Teaneck New Jersey." What a place to be from!

p.p.s. My sincere apologies to all my Canadian friends.