Hard-Boiled, Soft-Boiled, Cozy, or Classic?

by Shelley Burbank

Apparently Amazon KDP Cares . . . When It Suits Them

My little novella, which has sold some copies since January (but nothing spectacular as anyone can see by checking out the best-seller rankings for both ebook and print versions,) caught the attention of Amazon KDP the other day, somehow. And not in a great way. 

For those of us who self-publish our books or have some say in how our small press publishers categorize our books, figuring out the "right" categories for Amazon is a bit daunting. Put your book in too wide a category and you have zero, absolutely zero chance, of being ranked where potential readers could actually discover you organically. You need to find categories into which your book DOES fall, but which are sub-genres, a bit more granular on the meta-data side of things. If your books don't neatly fall into a sub-sub-genre, you have a bit of a problem on your hands.

I use Publisher Rocket to look at potential categories. It's helpful, but not without some landmines, as you can see in this example. 

My Olivia Lively books are private detective fiction. That's a pretty wide category. They aren't cozy, though the style of writing and the Maine coastal setting kind of fit cozy. However, cozy mysteries, by definition, involve AMATEUR sleuths--not professional investigators, police detectives, FBI, or forensic specialists. 

So when it came time to pick categories, of course I chose Private Detective Fiction but didn't feel right picking Cozy Mystery. 

I picked Female Sleuth, as well. Another big category. 

Then I looked for a category that wasn't so crowded. I saw Hard Boiled Mystery and thought, "Hmmmm. Maybe..." I looked up the conventions. 

Private Detective? Check. 

Corruption plot? Check. 

Detective hired to do the dirty work of a suspect? Check. 

Morally-flawed detective character? Check. 

City setting? Half-check. (Portland is a city, but it's not exactly Chicago in the 40s).  

Male detective? Nope. First person? Nope. 

I thought this particular novella actually fit the hard-boiled detective bill pretty well. I would have called it Soft-Boiled Mystery (if such a category existed on Amazon) because a soft-boiled detective is usually a woman. From a post by writer Lisa DiSilverio: "The tone of a soft-boiled book is relatively light and sometimes veers into slapstick as in Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series." https://www.lauradisilverio.com/mysteries-hard-boiled-or-soft-boiled/

Here's the thing. When I wrote my first Lively, I looked for comp titles, and Stephanie Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum books came pretty darn close. So did Elle Cosimano's Finlay Donovan. These defy currenty categories, too, in my opinion. Finlay can be a "cozy" in that she's an amateur, but Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter, in the biz but not a detective. There's not much else cozy about these books. They deal with gritty subject matter, but they are also humorous crime fiction. 

Each of our main characters are, however, female sleuths. And they have romantic interests. And they get into some hot water along the way. And there's some humor. And some high heels. 

I consider Olivia Lively to be soft-boiled detective fiction because a) she's a female b) she's a private investigator c) she deals in moral ambiguity d) she works in a city, not a cozy small town. 

So this brings me to KDP. I got an email from them yesterday saying they determined my choice of hard-boiled as a category was "misleading to readers" (like there's a lot of them being misled, eyeroll), and that they had removed my book from that category. The actual wording was, " . . . did not match the nature of the content, and may cause a misleading customer experience."

Normally this wouldn't bother me so much, but, BUT . . . I've seen so many books miscategorized in MUCH more egregious ways.

A quick look today at the top spots in Cozy Mystery yield a couple of actual cozies but not all. Here are the top five.

Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Also ranking #1 in crime THRILLER, Animal Mysteries, and Amateur Sleuth but I think it could be a cozy? At a stretch? It's not obvious from the cover, and I'm not sure cozy mystery readers would pick this up in a bookstore.)

Coming in Hot by Deany Ray (this is definitely a cozy vibe and cover)

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. (A NYTimes Best Seller and Read With Jenna book club pick. NOT a cozy vibe or cover. Too slick and NYTimes hardcovery--and now a Netflix tie-in. Though there is a mystery in it, it's not generally considered a mystery novel but more of a feel-good story.)

Flesh and Blood: A Kay Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell (Not a cozy. Professional investigator. Gritty. Dark. Bloody. It's in the title. MUCH more mis-categorized than my quiet little novella.)

Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh (Cozy title, cozy setting, but also a professional detective AND a classic, Golden Age of Mystery re-issue. It's more of a CLASSIC mystery or traditional detective mystery.)

There was a Sue Grafton Kinsey Milhone on the list at #20. (Another of my comp picks, and probably the closest, actually.) Kinsey's a private detective, not an amateur which is de riguer for cozies. Supposedly. Unless you are a famous author, a best-seller novelist, or have a big publisher behind you--then apparently, nobody cares. 

Now, least you think I wish any of these books or authors ill, I don't. In fact I kinda want to read all of them! 

It's Amazon's hypocrisy that bugs me. Categories are squishy. My "category mistake" was so less obvious than so many others, and it begs the question: Why are they picking on a basically undiscovered author doing her best to pick a category that isn't even that well-defined, not any more defined than ANY of these categories, anyway? Did someone "report" me? How did my little novella even get on the radar? 

Maybe It All Comes Down to the Covers

So, you might ask, what ARE the books allowed on the Hard-Boiled Detective Mystery list? 

You can go look for yourself, as I'm only going to talk about the ones at the #2 and #5 spots [as of this particular moment in time/date]. Enter the Martina Monroe Private Investigator "Crime Thriller" series by H.K. Christie. They are books in a series with a female private detective with flaws (her character's drinking and a DUI to my character's sorry taste in bad men) who returns to her hometown (a more cozy kind of set up). 

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Hard-Boiled-Mystery/zgbs/books/10468

These books look really good. What makes them different from my Olivia Lively books? Um, the dark covers? Maybe the writing style, but I can't tell that from the description, and neither can you or any of the so-called "misled readers." 

Another similarity? My novella is a literary mystery cold case. The #5 Christie book is a cold-case murder investigation. Okay, there are bodies, not books, at the heart of the Christie book. But are they really so different INSIDE? Again, I don't know how down and dirty these books get. I try to keep my books swearing and open-door-sex-scene free (because my parents read them and honestly? I don't think we actually need to rely on the crutches of foul language and sordid sex to get our points across. I take it as a personal challenge to talk about moral issues without getting "blue.") 

So HOW did my book even get on the KDP radar? Maybe they had AI search for swear words and bodily fluids and scan the cover for black and murky, and, not finding any, decided I'd miscategorized my book? 

I'll never know.

I Guess I Better Smarten Up

The lesson I'm learning here? After I'm finished with the Olivia Lively series, I'm going to make sure my books are firmly in a category, nothing squishy, nothing unique, nothing with one foot in two worlds. My covers will scream the category. My titles will scream the category. My metadata will line up precisely . . . somehow. It won't be by looking at the top books in the category, obviously, since that doesn't matter if you are a Jenna Book Club pick, NYTimes Bestseller, etc. Instead I'll scan the middle of the list and make sure my novels conform. 

I don't aspire to be a best-seller. I just want people to find my books. I thought Strawberry Moon had a better chance of getting eyeballs on it in a smaller category like Hard-Boiled Mystery, and since it ticked quite a few of the boxes, I went with it. So yeah, that category was probably a bad move based on my chick lit cover. It should have been black and muted, murky, and more "thriller" like, and probably readers looking for gritty, hard-boiled fiction wouldn't be attracted to my cute girl in sunglasses and the big pink moon on the cover. 

My bad, KDP! I'll do better next time. 

Has anyone else dealt with this issue? Drop a comment.  

Welcome, Judith Starkston, Author of Achilles's Wife

Judith Starkston

 Today, I (Donis) am proud to host Judith Starkston, author of Hand of Fire and Priestess of Ishana. Her fabulous new novel, Achilles's Wife, has just become available for purchase as of March 16.  Judy writes historical fantasy and mythic retellings set in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Hittites. Her six novels bring women to the fore—whether Deidamia or Briseis from the Trojan War cycle of myths or a remarkable Hittite queen whom history forgot, even though she ruled over one of the greatest empires of the ancient world. Check out Judy's website at www.JudithStarkston.com.

Achilles’s Wife book cover image

The case of the Missing Mycenaean Palace: Setting Historical Fiction in Myth

My latest novel, Achilles’s Wife, arises from Greek myth and reinterprets the story of Achilles’s life before the Trojan War—when his divine mother conceals him on a remote Greek island to keep him out of the brewing Trojan War. But as a feminist novel focusing on female leadership and motherhood, its main character is a young woman, Deidamia (Mia), a princess on the Greek island of Skyros, daughter of King Lycomedes. 

Choosing a Royal Setting

Princesses and kings live in palaces or castles, of course, and a royal dwelling represents power and leadership, so it was important to me to “build” a palace that gave my overarching theme of governance—good and bad—a vivid physical rendering in the readers’ imaginations. 

Being the historian I am, I also wanted to be historically accurate for the Mycenaean, Late Bronze Age period when this mythic king and his daughter would have lived, if they were ever “real,” which they certainly could have been.

A Missing Palace

So, I found myself writing a novel set on the Greek island of Skyros because that is where, according to tradition, the myth I’d chosen took place. I soon encountered a problem as I researched this setting: the missing Mycenaean palace.

Archaeology from a Previous Era

There’s not a great deal published in scholarly research about the archaeology of Skyros. Moreover, the gorgeous archaeological site that has been excavated on the island, called Palamari, dates to the Early Bronze Age. Its final habitation is about 1700 BCE. I was aiming for somewhere more or less around 1250 BCE within the Late Bronze Age to be a credible palace for Lycomedes. But this is a mythic retelling, not precise historical fiction, so I used my knowledge of Mycenaean architecture and borrowed some of the vivid setting details from Palamari. Voila! A fine palace of Lycomedes.

Or so I thought. Then, deep into writing this manuscript, my husband and I decided we wanted to travel. Our last international trip had been pre-Covid. In about a month, I planned a trip to Skyros and Santorini. In the process, I tracked down a Greek archaeologist, Christina Romanou, who fairly recently had published about the Palamari site. I was looking for help identifying local people familiar with the dig. I have found such connections hugely helpful in my past research travels.

Locating the Missing Mycenaean Palace

Ms. Romanou was very helpful. She gave me names of people who’d worked on the dig and could be located at the archaeology museum or guarding the site. But more significantly for my novel in progress and my inner accurate historian, she told me about the likely location of Lycomedes’s palace. It turned out there was evidence of where a Mycenaean palace had once stood, whether the mythical king lived there or not.

Palace atop rocky mountain, medieval ruins visible (photo: author’s own)

Not Much Left

The Palamari site I’d previously focused on for the palace lies on the northerneastern portion of the island. Long before my characters would have arrived on the scene, the residents of this city abandoned it (possibly when a volcano-caused tsunami consumed a huge chunk of the settlement). My Mia and Achilles could explore the dramatic ruins of horseshoe-shaped bastions and stone walls. The site is so atmospheric that I incorporated this haunted city as a key location in my plot, even when I had to give up on it as the site of the Mycenaean royal seat. But Palamari did not solve my missing palace problem.

Also on the eastern coast, but toward the middle of the island, rises a steep, rocky mountain. It’s currently topped with Classical, Medieval, and Ottoman ruins and a still-functioning monastery. I’d never heard a word about a Mycenaean palace there. 

However, Ms. Romanou gave me the essential information. Soundings taken on the acropolis area of that mountain revealed Mycenaean ruins. The many layers of later use have wiped away any significant trace of this palace, but at least we know where it was. I spent hours climbing (600 steps or so from the base of the mountain, through village to acropolis) and crawling around the acropolis area where the soundings place a palace. I was ready to site my imaginary palace and citadel.

My Fictional Palace Becomes Real

Instead of a broad bluff over the sea, my novel portrays a rocky mountaintop location. Since my characters, early in the novel, do some illicit escaping from said palace, this took some major rewriting. There are, after all, many steps and dangerous heights to scale, although there is a lovely river valley cutting in midway from the facing mountain range, so Mia did not need to go all the way down to the beach.

 

But my rewriting developed in other unanticipated ways. I love to write from concrete details. I had been suffering from a sense of amorphousness of place. I don’t write as well without the inspiration of real locations: the smells, the sights, the textures, and the geographic realities. Finding the true location and spending a lot of time there in person ended up meaning even more to me than success in achieving historical accuracy. Myth retellings need to create a lifelike immersion. I felt this story becoming fully convincing once I held that rocky mountaintop on Skyros in my heart. 

Palamari site, “haunted” city with horseshoe bastion (photo: author’s own

The Novel, Achilles’s Wife

Here is a brief book description of Achilles’s Wife:

In an ancient kingdom, a princess takes inspiration from a visiting young woman to challenge her father’s views and reach for leadership—and then discovers her muse is a man. 

The goddess mother of Greek mythology’s most famous warrior, Achilles, will do anything to prevent her son’s fated early death. In a desperate move, she hides Achilles, against his will, on an island—disguised in a girl’s body.

Tormented by inner discord, the miscast “girl” befriends Mia, the eldest daughter of the island’s king, launching a transformation of Mia’s own. Armed with a new vision she believes comes from a girl, Mia contends with family secrets, a controlling father, her destiny to rule, and the wrath of a goddess. 

When fate reveals Achilles’s identity, a divine mother’s fury drives Mia and Achilles into marriage. Mia must navigate her love for a man with a divided heart and a dangerous measure of immortality. Balancing governance and motherhood, Mia will face an unbearable choice.

________

Achilles' Wife is available on Amazon, Bookshop, or at Judith's website,  https://www.judithstarkston.com/

To Edit Or Not To Edit, That Is The Question

 by Sybil Johnson

Fellow author Marla Cooper recently wrote a blog post about relaunching her Destination Wedding mystery series with the publication of Terror in Taffeta. (It's a good book.)

In the post, she mused a bit about how much to edit the book. One of these days I plan on getting the rights back for my first 5 books and re-releasing them with new covers. I’ve thought about how much I should edit them or whether I should edit them at all.

Certainly, I would correct any typos, though I don’t think there are any. My editor and were good at catching those things, but who knows, something might have slipped through.

The covers definitely have to be changed. I love the ones I have now. When I self-published the 6th book, I had the same artist who created the other covers create the new one so it would fit in with the look of the series. When I republish, though, I think I’ll have to change the look so the new editions are distinguishable from the old. I’ll be sad to see those old covers go, though. 

There is at least one continuity error between the books to do with a description of one of the buildings. I noticed it awhile back. I’ll go through all the books and correct the descriptions so they are consistent. 

Other than that, I don’t know if I should edit anything else. A part of me itches to “improve” my writing. But, I really think I should generally let them be. They are good stories and reflect my writing style at that time.

What do you all think? If you republish a book, what kind of edits would you make? Or would you let it stand as is?

When We Become the Device

 My phone sends a nightly report of that day's screen time. Usually I'm around two hours and change. But that's screen time on my phone. Like most other writers, the majority of my screen time is at my laptop. While it's easy to complain about all the time we spend staring at screens, much has changed in how we consume information. Unless you're involved in physical labor--the trades, cooking, gardening--how else would you work?

 

According to Demand Sage, worldwide, the average person spends 6 hours and 54 minutes on screen time. While the time for Americans is 7 hours, 2 minutes, we are digital sloths compared to much of the world. South Africa leads at 9 hours, 24 minutes; Brazil is second at 9 hours, 13 minutes; Philippines at 8 hours, 52 minutes. Measured behind countries such as Colombia, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Bulgaria, and Saudi Arabia, we in the USA clock in at number 19.

Discounting work, even if we wanted to limit screen time, it becomes a challenge. We get most of our news from the web, though what gets delivered is often throttled by search engines and we have to dig deeper to get past click-bait. The phone is a portable TV, so it's a convenient way to watch programs, movies, and videos. Then there's social media. Add gaming. On-line banking. Hooking up. Checking the weather. Scrolling through photos. Seems every business and venue wants you to download their app.

Even before AI, the phone became a crutch. City maps have practically disappeared and we rely on Siri to tell us how to get to our destination. Rather than hunt for radio stations on the car dashboard, Spotify delivers tunes based on our algorithms. 

What we consume through screen time affects our mood, deliberately since the harder our emotional buttons are pushed, the more likely we are to engage with what's online and be rewarded with dopamine hits. 

AI studies our engagement on an unprecedented scale and not just by documenting what sites we've visited, but by eavesdropping, sifting through our email and social media, mapping our locations, cataloging our photos, cross-indexing biometrics gleaned from smart watches and fitness trackers, reading our eyeballs whenever we're close to a camera. The level of surveillance we've embraced would astonish and certainly dismay George Orwell. 

We've become so reliant on AI to tell us where we are, to remind us what to do, to nudge us about healthy options, to validate who we are, so that in a not-too-distant future, AI via the phone will tell us how to feel. Which brings me to my writer friend Nick Arvin, who embarked on an ambitious project on Substack to write and publish 52 short stories, one for each week of 2026. The stories have an off-center Twilight Zone mood, a bit creepy, not quite horror but definitely unsettling and worth reading. In this week's offering, Arvin presents "A Device For Feeling Feelings", describing how reliant people will become on their devices, to the point they're uncomfortable trusting their emotions without getting affirmation from AI, even in matters of romance.

Writing as Time Travel

One perk of writing historical mysteries is that I (Donis) get to live in a time and place that no longer exists, and believe things that no one believes any more. I think sometimes that there is something of acting in writing fiction. Actors and novelists both have to dig deep to inhabit our characters and make them real. Sometimes it takes research into people and ways of life one would never come across in her ordinary life, such as a former computer programmer-turned novelist like Vicki Delany inviting a police friend over to her house to teach her Close Quarters Combat, or actor William Hurt spending a couple of weeks in Angola Prison in Louisiana for a movie roll.  

Author or actor, if you want your character to come alive, something inside you has to live her life with her.

I just wrote a scene in which one of my characters does something that he absolutely believes is right, and in the context of the story, he is right.  But I, Donis Ann Casey, would NEVER consider justified.  One of the joys and perhaps one of the great challenges of writing is that you can explore lives, places, times, people, attitudes that are entirely different from your own. The book I’m writing now features a protagonist who leads a life that couldn’t be less like mine, nor does she believe the things I do  And yet I know her intimately. I grew up around her world and loved a lot of people who were just like her.

I wonder sometimes if readers think I have the same values and ideas as my protagonists. I always wondered how like their characters other authors are until I actually started writing fiction myself.  Now I think the answer often is, “not even close.” I read an interview with Salmon Rushdie in which he said he didn’t have to be religious himself in order to understand quite well how a religious person thinks, and not only to understand him, but have great admiration for him. 

That's how I feel about those who lived their lives in a world that no longer exists.

Spring in the Air?

by Catherine Dilts

Here in Colorado Springs, we’re having a false spring. The temperatures are setting records. However, it’s all a lie.

Any day now, we’ll get that crushing drop in temperature, preferably combined with precipitation. Snow, please. But we’ll take whatever we can get, as long as it's wet.

Peonies and tulips think it's spring

When the weather is bonkers, the trees and bushes leaf out prematurely. Then the inevitable cold returns, causing branches to snap under the weight of ice and snow. Oh no! My peonies and tulips are emerging! Go back, before it’s too late!

The unusual weather is making writing difficult. Typically this time of year, I can accomplish impressive writing sprints because I’m still in hibernation mode, hunkered down in my writing cave. This season, I’m struggling to stay focused on my computer screen.

I do write year-round. It shouldn’t be impossible for me to be creative just because the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I do my best work sitting on the deck in the morning as the sun rises, surrounded by flowers.

It’s not the same when the trees are leafless and the flower pots bare. And a bit too chilly to sit outside in early morning temperatures of high thirties to mid-forties. Spring is the time for hummingbird feeders, but I can’t put mine out until the middle of April.

There are plenty of writing projects to keep me busy. Re-reading a Rose Creek novel final draft before submitting to critique group. Providing feedback to a friend planning to pitch to an agent. Hammering away on the outline for a new trilogy. Drafting the next Ninja-Grandparent mystery.

I have to focus my energy. I’m finally getting my books placed in stores. (Basecamp Books & Adventure, and a new "maker" shop Hidden Gems.) That will be wasted effort if I don’t continue to write books.

Hidden Gems 5020 N. Nevada Ave. Suite 120, Colorado Springs, CO 80918

I’m sharing my experience traveling with our two new family members, an English Springer Spaniel and a feisty tuxedo kitten. That’s writing, but not fiction. (See my Substack for Traveling With Pets.)

I’m reducing my gardening plans due to those new additions. But I still hope to fill my grow boxes with flowers, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and basil. I started seeds yesterday. Gardening, even a limited deck “farm,” keeps my mind busy with green dreams.

Bird Watching

Okay, so I’m not sitting idle. Listing my have-to-dos and am-doings has helped. Thanks for letting me vent. Life has been busier with a few extra challenges in the form of our puppy and kitten. They’re both napping right now.

Perfect. Peace and quiet. Time for a writing sprint.

Scams, Scams, and More Scams

 by Thomas Kies

I recently received these unsolicited emails. 

Hello Thomas,

I’m reaching out on behalf of The Great Books Society of Denver, a lively community of 680 readers who meet monthly in Englewood, Colorado.

Your work, Random Road, came up in one of our recent discussions, and in true book-lover fashion, we thought: why not go straight to the source? The gritty realism, layered mystery, and complex humanity in your novel resonated deeply with our members. We would love to feature your book as our monthly pick, giving it exposure to an engaged, thoughtful audience who are genuinely excited to read and discuss new works.

Featuring your book with us provides direct engagement with a dedicated community of readers who love to discuss and recommend books, increased visibility among literary enthusiasts who value discovery and thoughtful conversation, and the opportunity for your work to become a memorable part of a month-long reading experience.

If this sounds like your cup of tea (or glass of wine, we don’t judge), please let us know, and we’ll share the next steps to make it happen.

Warm regards,

Organizer | The Great Books Society of Denver

So many compliments. By the way, in a follow-up email, they listed a tiered list of prices for their services. This wouldn’t be a scam, would it?

Hello Thomas Kies

Your book Darkness Lane was recently highlighted by one of our club members. Would you let us know if it’s available for our 7 Day Read Along and upcoming Club Literary Prize?

Organizer, Vienna English Club

Author scams are rampant.  It was a topic of multiple discussions in San Francisco a few weeks ago while I was there attending Left Coast Crime. 

Dan Berry recently wrote a column for the New York Times Book Review talking about scams.  He said that one scammer had reached out to him claiming to be Margeret Atwood (full disclosure, I got one of those too).  Berry contacted Atwood’s agent who wrote back saying, “Oh, this is so terrible and mean. Preying upon people’s hunger for success and/or their hope to improve their writing.”

What are some of the most common author scams these days?

• Fake Literary Agents/Publishers: Scammers pose as legit agents, offering publishing contracts in exchange for upfront "reading" or "editing" fees. 

• Marketing and PR Scams: Companies promise Hollywood film adaptations, Netflix pitching, or massive marketing campaigns, often targeting indie authors. 

• Vanity Presses: These houses demand high fees to publish, promising success but providing little to no real editing or distribution. 

• Paid Review Scams: Offers to purchase "guaranteed" reviews on sites like Amazon or Goodreads, according to The Darling Axe.

• Impersonation Scams: Scammers use AI and LinkedIn/social media to impersonate well-known publishing professionals, often using using well-known, bestselling authors. 

• Award/Contest Scams: Fraudulent literary awards that charge hefty entry fees

Why are these SOBs targeting writers?  Dan Berry summed it up by saying, “…the victim’s vulnerability. A lonely heart yearns for love and companionship: an author yearns for sales and validation. 

Yes, I know this is the second time I’ve published a blog about scams.  I apologize.  It’s just that I know there are people being cheated and it really cheeses me off.   www.thomaskiesauthor.com 

Investing in a Writer Mentorship Program

"Janice is Skeptical" by Shelley Burbank

Hi Type Ms. Shelley Burbank here. 

Following is a segment from my recent PINK DANDELIONS newsletter.

I may be delusional, but I’ve just done something so out of character, I can only think it’s either gonna be the smartest thing I ever did for myself or the stupidest. After forty years of autodidactic literary study, I signed up for a one-on-one writing mentorship program that will eat up the last bit of writing money I’ve earned and hoarded over the years, using it all in one last big spend.

I feel like I’m blowing on dice at the craps table at Ceasar’s Palace and hoping for sixes. Hey, it can happen.

What do I want to get out of this experience? Well, for one, I’m finally going to get some honest, professional feedback from a developmental editor trained in a system I find extremely cool and satisfyingly complex. I’m HOPING this feedback enables me to crank my writing up to the “next level.”

My goal is to write books that are so emotionally compelling and beautifully-written that readers stay up all night finishing them, can’t wait for the next one to come out, and tell all their friends about them. I want to write stories that delight a small but mighty group of dedicated and intelligent and thoughtful readers. And I want a publishing contract with an imprint big enough to pay me a decent advance and/or with a marketing budget that helps grow this readership further than I’ve been able to do for myself.

This mentorship should help me get there, if getting there is possible for me.

****

When is much, too much? 

The previous segment is only a small bit of a much longer (maybe too long) newsletter. Something about only sending one per month spurs me into cramming everything into one long email. This is something I am of two minds about. 

Is it more value for the subscriber? Or is it overkill?

In my newsletter, I've also started posting scenes and vignettes of a "piece" I'm calling The Peony Hotel. These follow the adventures of a literary novelist at mid-life, recently divorced, who runs away from Maine to Guam for a fresh start. She's taken a job ghost-writing a series of YA historical books for a famous gospel superstar, and her three children back home in the USA think she's lost her mind. 

This is the most fun way for me to share my experiences here in Guam which, after a year, I finally feel I know just enough to have some perspective on the place. Plus, it's a mid-life crisis/coming-of-second-age story. 

These may or may not end up as scenes in a novel one day. Who knows. 

If you are interested in reading more about my mentorship program, the Peony Hotel, and other writing-related and creativity-related content, please check out the PINK DANDELIONS newsletter on Substack. 

Cheers!

Shelley

Prepping For Malice

 by Sybil Johnson

I’ll be attending Malice Domestic once again this year. For those who don’t know, it’s a mystery convention celebrating traditional and cozy mysteries. This is my 10th or 11th one or something like that. I’ve lost track over the years.

Malice is my favorite mystery convention. I look forward to it every year, even though it means a plane ride across the country and a 3 hour time difference. An added bonus is I get to visit the pandas at the National Zoo.

I’m particularly excited for this year since I know both the Guest of Honor, Annette Dashofy, and the Toastmaster, Ellen Byron. They’re both great writers and people.

I’ve been lucky to be on a panel every year I’ve attended as a published author. This time around I’m moderating a panel, MUSEUM MACGUFFINS: Art & Artifacts in Mysteries. On the panel are Lynda Allen, D.R. Ransdell, Lane Stone and Jeff Tanner. The topic is an interesting one. Should be quite fun.

I feel the role of the moderator is to keep the conversation flowing, ask interesting questions, and make sure everyone gets in on the conversation. In order to do this, I need to know about each panelist so I’m checking out their websites and reading at least one of their books. After all that, I should be able to come up with interesting stuff to talk about.

I had better get back to it.

For the full Malice schedule: https://www.malicedomestic.net/ Clicking on 2026 Schedule will bring up a pdf of the current schedule.

How Far Should We Go?

 By Charlotte Hinger

I hate hate hate writing a novel synopsis. Curiously, I love writing query letters and judging by the reception I get, I'm good at this.  

A novel synopsis is a totally different process. Mine sound dull and stilted. Like what you would write to a college professor or your grandmother. No phazazz. 

A couple of days ago, I finished a synopsis of a historical novel for my agent. It was mediocre at best. My judgement, not hers. 

Then inspired I turned to ChatGPT. I asked my new BFF if it could create a synopsis. "You bet," it replied eagerly. I uploaded my book--all 115,000 words. It created a wonderful sparkling synopis in seconds. 

WOW!

Then I ran my mystery through this process with the same instruction: Create a one page synopsis. Again, a terrific result. 

I would never write a book with ChatGPT. In fact, I'm so frustrated with Microsoft's CoPilot attempting to interfere when I write that I'm ready to tear my hair out. And yet, and yet--I find myself paying attention when it insists a comma is needed here or there. On the other hand, it doesn't understand the impact of incomplete sentences. Or phrases, or a whole bunch of other things involved in creative writing. 

Thinking back, I've resisted adopting any new development regarding writing. I didn't want to give up my bouncey Royal portable typewriter that was a gift from my parents. When I switched to computers, I clung to my Apple 2e. Then I went through PCs at a record pace. These choices involved equipment, AI is in a different realm.

 I've discoveredd I'm very superstitious. Those synopses!! It was just too easy. I'm a Kansan, after all. Our state motto is Ad Astra Per Aspera. To the Stars Through Difficulties. If it isn't hard, it doesn't count. 

I wonder if I asked how my novel could be improved, what would ChatGPT say. Do I dare ask? Would I throw a hissy fit if I didn't like its suggestions and turn to Anthrotopic's Claude instead? 

For that matter, I've questioned the HUGE number of five star reviews some authors have on Amazon. Are they for real? If I asked ChatGPT to post a thousand fawning reviews on Amazon, would it do it? 

Does "it" resent not having a real name? Should I ask?

Calling Dr. Freud - or - Novel Writing for Fun and Psychoanalysis

Over the course of my novel-writing career, it has occurred to me to wonder about the psychology of those of us who create whole worlds on paper and populate them with characters who do exactly what we want them to do. Are we indulging in self-psychoanalysis without being totally aware of it? I’ve often said that what readers say to me about my books tells me more about them than it does about the books. So I’d better admit that what I write says a lot about what’s going on in this unfathomable (to me) l brain of mine. 

Things change in the course of a life, and what did the trick for you when you were younger may not fill the bill after a while, and time may come for a change. The one constant in my life has been the love of storytelling. I started writing short stories when I was very small. The first story I remember writing was about a girl who turned into a cat. It had pictures and everything. I was an English major  in college, and have always been a prolific reader, but I always felt I had to be practical and concentrate on having a successful career, be self-sufficient, make a living.  I surely did not want to end up like my mother, who drove herself crazy trying to be the epitome of a perfect 1950s wife and mother. So for the bulk of my life, my fiction writing was just for me.  I have a trunk full of short stories dating from the early 1960s, but  before I wrote my first mystery novel, all my published works consisted of professional articles, including a book on U.S. Government tax publications. I’m sure you remember. It was riveting.

I was always fairly successful at my various career endeavors, but I found none of them particularly fulfilling. It took me half a century to realize that maybe I really didn’t want to be a captain of industry or a leader of men. So the day came when I asked myself, Donis, what has always given you joy in your life?  And I had to admit that I’ve always been happiest when I was telling a story.

So I took a leap. I sold my business and went home to write. And interestingly, the book I decided to put my heart into was entirely different than anything I had ever written before. All the books and stories I had written before had to do with cool people, usually unmarried, childless professionals, often scientists, always intellectuals, mostly messed up and angst ridden.

But this time I wrote a historical mystery series set in rural Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century, featuring a farm wife with a very large family: Alafair Tucker, who couldn’t care less about cool. How I conjured up this character I do not know, for she could not be less like me.  And yet she obviously is me to some extent, since she lives in my head.    

Am I wish-fulfilling? I don’t have the slightest desire to romanticize her lifestyle. It was tough.  Alafair lives the life I never did, or never could. I couldn’t abide it.  However, it seems I imbue her with all the virtues and strengths I do not have.  She knows what she knows and takes action.  Then once she has, she doesn’t second-guess herself.  I agonize over every decision and sometimes take no action at all.  She’s kind and tolerant of human weakness.  She takes care of everyone.  She’s patient with the follies of others.  Me: not so much. She’s a moderately well-adjusted mother of children, who doesn’t worry about her own shortcomings nor her place in the world, instead of what I am, which we won’t go into.

I never set out to deliver a message or make a statement when I write.  I just want to tell a ripping yarn. However, every time I finish an Alafair Tucker novel I do find myself wondering what Dr. Freud would say about the story.  Alafair is always much more successful at confronting her fears than I am. And she is never afraid to fail. She sticks herself out there. 

For the first time in my fiction writing career, I created a character who isn’t hip or svelte or rich or independent or even particularly young. Or male. She goes against all conventional wisdom. Yet I had immediate success with Alafair’s first novel, The Old Buzzard Had it Coming.  Why it couldn’t have happened when I was young and thin and beautiful I don’t know, but we come to our authentic place in our own time, I guess.

Maybe I want to spend time with Alafair because she reminds me of some of the women in my past whom I loved, but didn’t fully appreciate. She is funny, reflective, wise to ways of the world and the ways of kids, and a bit sad because of the losses in her life, like my own mother was.  She’s the center of her family, loving and giving to a fault, adored by her children, and a legendary cook, like my late mother-in-law.  With the best of motives, she’s all up in your business and can drive you crazy, too, like a relative of mine who shall remain nameless, lest she recognize herself (though she won’t. They never do.)

I may have created Alafair out of pieces of women I love, but she’s much more than the sum of her parts.  The great British mystery novelist Graham Greene said, “The moment comes when a character says or does something that you hadn't thought of.  At that moment, he’s alive and you leave it to him.”  I first put Alafair on the page, but then she stood up and walked away, and now I just follow where she leads. And what that tells me about myself I do not know.

Calling in the experts

 I have been really struggling with my current WIP, Sins of the Father, the thirteenth Inspector Green novel. The word count suggests I am three-quarters of the way through, which means I should have at least a vague idea how I'm going to "land this sucker". The last quarter of a book is all about catching all the balls I have tossed up in the air, pulling them together into a satisfying, dramatic climax, and tying together the loose ends. The central question of the story must be answered as well as most of the subordinate questions. I don't mind some ambiguity that leaves a few puzzle pieces unplaced, but it's a fine line between that and leaving readers dangling and frustrated.

But meanwhile, Sins of the Father is still out in the weeds, looking for direction. As I wrestled with the question "What next?", I realized that part of my problem is not knowing what my characters, especially my police characters, would be doing in the real world. I try to write reasonably realistic stories which means trying to follow proper police investigative procedures and avoiding having the cops make outlandish or frankly illegal moves. But in this book, I have embroiled them in a plot that involves them in situations outside their normal investigative protocols. I know a reasonable amount about police protocol, but in this story, I have ventured far beyond my comfort zone. I have rogue cops, secrets, cover-ups, and inter-jurisdictional complications with other police forces. It's the nature of the story I have developed, but I still want to preserve some appearance of realism. I don't want readers with some knowledge of normal procedure and acceptable conduct to throw the book at the wall in exasperation. Would such and such an action be grounds for dismissal? How much can an officer get away with? Would police forces keep secrets from each other without consequences? And so on.

I don't have answers to these questions as I plough ahead with the story, but I have a solution. Once I have finished the first draft the best I can, with fingers crossed it's not too outlandish, I hope to send the manuscript to a couple of retired police friends for their input. Both of them love mysteries and hopefully will be able to offer suggestions if I have bent credibility too far. It is fiction, after all, and some suspension of disbelief is acceptable in the interests of a good story. Sometimes it's a matter of setting up the motivations properly. Instead of thinking "Oh, he would never do that!", I can reframe the issue as "under what conditions might he do that."

I still don't know what should come next, but I have some idea of where I want to end up. I just have to figure out how to get there, and leave the realism aside for the time being. Trusting the cops will set me straight.

Traveling With Pets

by Catherine Dilts

Why do I always imagine I can write while on vacation? This trip had an added challenge. My husband and I have never traveled with pets.

We began on February 28 in Colorado. The plan was fairly loose, with the only reservations being for a Grand Canyon campground on March 2^nd. Maybe we’d find places to camp along the way. Maybe not. But we were driving a new-to-us RV. Any place you can pull over and fit becomes an impromptu campground.

Planning a winter camping trip, we figured we might not face the intense crowds of summer travel in national parks.

Traveling with a forty-pound, seven-month-old English Springer Spaniel and a two-month-old Humane Society rescue kitten had its moments. A car-sick puppy, a kitty so tiny I was afraid he might get stepped on.

Most of my fiction includes cats, dogs, and horses. I’ve felt slightly hypocritical extolling the virtues of animal companions in my stories, while not having a pet in over fifteen years. I did manage to do a little writing on this trip, but not on any of my fiction projects. Instead, I kept a journal and began a series of articles for my SubStack account.

I have noticed that my posts that include a photo of an animal get more views and reactions than anything else I throw on social media. Starting this Sunday, March 15, I’ll release one article a day for over a week at https://substack.com/@catherinedilts. These have nothing to do with my fiction work. They’re all about my experience of travel with pets.

Is it a waste of time to write and post articles that won’t promote my fiction? Or will this create that human connection that’s supposed to make people care about reading our books and stories?

I’m kind of past caring whether my social media presence sells books or not. If this venture isn’t about pure self-expression and having some fun, then I don’t really want to engage any longer.

Writing about the stresses and joys of traveling with pets has definitely been fun. The work of writing can roll along without me for a few more days.

And roll along it does, with Grandpa’s New Year’s Relocation available now at Basecamp Books and Adventure, and in the usual places online. Grandma’s Valentine Abduction released on the first day of my vacation. 

Vision Board Before Writing

"Masquerade" by Shelley Burbank

Hi Everyone. Shelley Burbank here. 

March has begun, and I'm wallowing and wading in my next Olivia Lively mystery. The first book was set in spring. The second in summer. The last one will be winter. 

This third mystery will be an autumn tale. 

Now, I love Maine in the fall, but it's a little difficult to feel that mood when living on a tropical island in Micronesia. I needed something to evoke woodsmoke rising from chimneys, pumkins decorating front porches, dusk falling quickly, the crunch of leaves beneath L.L. Bean boots, and all things Halloween. The answer? A "mood board" created on the front cover of the notebook I'm using to draft scenes, create character sketches, take notes on thematic elements needed for the plot, and synopses of chapters. 

This particular book will find my main character, Liv, in her darkest place. Her character arc (why do I always want to write "arch?" A plot is a structure of sorts, a bridge, taking my heroine from "here" to "there," but it's symbolic not literal, like an archway. Of course, in literary terms, there is also ARC--Advanced Reader Copy) over the course of my planned four-book series makes the third installment the logical place for the Dark Moment. And autumn has all those dark, witchy, Halloween vibes, too. It fits.

Anyway, I love making collages. I make them for my personal journal covers, and this particular piece was a fun way to spend a morning/afternoon. I let my verbal brain take a break while I played with mood and vibe and color and voila! The result is how I want readers to feel when they read the book: a little edgy, a little creepy, but also the cozy "pumpkin spiciness" of Gilmore Girls. And Guam. 

The idea for a certain plot/theme popped into my head while I was listening to a podcast episode about a goddess cult back in ancient Sumeria. That's actually all I'll say. I've typed more and deleted because I want no spoilers. Guam becomes a destination as Liv investigates the crime in Book 3, but whether or not it's a red herring I'll have to leave unanswered here. I'm not even TOTALLY sure myself what will happen here, but I'm pretty excited to share some of my current home with my readers.

And readers might not have to wait for the book to learn more about Guam because an idea for a short story (please, please, dear Muse, let it remain a short story) in the Olivia Lively world, but this time featuring her ASSISTANT/APPRENTICE, Marion! Yes, Marion is getting her own short story. I'm grateful to my Muse for gifting me with that brilliant idea. I already had the title from a t-shirt I found at a local tourist spot. 

I'm going to attempt to make a piece of art based on the photo I took, and I'm hoping maybe it will be good enough for an illustration for the short story if I use it as a lead magnet for building my email list. (Of course current subscribers will also have access to it, and I might also load it up to KDP for a .99 purchase for people who don't want to give me their email address.) 

The other option would be to submit it to a mystery magazine. 

Which do you think would be more likely to attract new readers? A. Free short story in exchange for email sign up or B. publication in a mystery magazine

Let me know what you think because I really can't decide. Sometimes people sign up for freebies, then unsubscribe after they get the freebie. I'm hoping to find readers who actually enjoy my stories and want to read more of them. Which is the better option? Help! 

Do YOU use vision boards for your life/work/writing? I'd love to hear more about that, too. Drop a comment! 

 

Viva Las Vegas

 by Sybil Johnson

I spent last week in Las Vegas, one of my favorite places to vacation. I’m not a partier, I just find it endlessly fascinating. Things are constantly changing on the Strip. Casinos come and go. Restaurants come and go. Shows come and go. The only thing guaranteed is that you’re going to walk and walk and walk. 

Sunset over the Strip. The Excalibur casino to the left, part of the New York New York casino on the right

It was nice to get away for a while. We went to several shows: Cirque de Soleil’s Ka, David Copperfield and a showing of the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. The Sphere is, well, a huge sphere just off the strip near the Venetian. They have concerts there and show The Wizard of Oz. It’s an immersive experience. They cut out about 15 minutes from the original movie. It’s also processed so it seems 3-D and has occasional 4-D effects. Quite fun.

As I said, casinos come and go. The Mirage casino no longer exists. The new Hard Rock casino is being built in its place. Here’s the beginnings of a giant guitar.

 

The Flamingo is still around. They have a very cool bird sanctuary on the grounds which includes, yep you guessed it, flamingos.

 

We also went to the Arté museum, which is an immersive art experience. Well worth the visit.

Here in Southern California, we have driverless taxis called Waymos. They are modified cars. In Vegas, they have Zoox, which are vehicles that are made specifically to be robotaxis. There is no space for a driver, just space for passengers. Right now, they are in a test phase, giving free rides to limited places on the Strip. As soon as they get the go-ahead, they will start charging for the rides and, I would guess, go more places. You can read more about Zoox here.

All in all, it was a good trip. Now, back to work.