No Good Tale Should Go Untold

Donis here. Sometimes, we writers wonder about the ethics of using a third party’s actual life experience as a plot line. I use real events, both historical and personal, all the time. When I have used personal events, I either disguise them or ask permission of the individual to whom it happened. I do have the writer’s mind, though, and when I hear an intriguing story, I do not forget it, though I ponder long and hard on whether or not I can use it in book. Sometimes I ponder long and hard for decades. 

The third book of my long-running Alafair Tucker series, The Drop Edge of Yonder, is a book that was thirty years in the making. There are at least two pivotal scenes in the book that owe their existence to newspaper articles that stayed with me all that time. I read the first story when I lived in Lubbock, Texas, back in the ’70′s. Two women, an elderly mother and her grown daughter, were out shopping together, walking down the street and minding their own business, when an insane person ran up and attacked the daughter without provocation. The old mother saved her daughter when she jumped on the  man’s back and pummeled him, and bit him, and basically beat the heck out of him.

Somewhere around the same time, I read in an interview with an old British soldier who had fought the Massoud in Palestine after WWII. He described a fighter who came at him tooth and claw and absolutely refused to be killed, even after he shot him and stabbed him and beat him with the butt of his rifle. The fighter finally sunk his teeth in the soldier’s foot and the soldier had to decapitate him to make him let go. The soldier said it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to him in his life. I took both these images and put them together to create one of the climatic scenes of the book.

The opening scene of Drop Edge isn’t quite as old an image in my head as the other two, but it is also a tale that took me a long time to tell. Seven or eight years before I began writing that particular book, I did a family genealogy for my sibs for Christmas, which is one of the things that inspired me to write my Alafair Tucker series in the first place. One of the things I learned while doing research on my family was the story of one of my a great-great grandfathers and three of his companions who were returning from the Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge when they stopped a few miles from home to rob a bee hive in a tree. While they were smoking the hive, they were ambushed by bushwhackers and killed. They were found by their families a few hours later but lay dead in the field over night, guarded from wild animals by their wives until morning, when they were buried where they fell.

The Drop Edge of Yonder came out almost 20 years ago, but I'm still using other people's experiences as plot jumping off points. I'm nearly finished with a first draft of a new novel with entirely an different plot, characters, eras. Yet as I go back and review what I've written, I see that the story is full of disguised events from my own life and the lives of many of my relatives, because no good tale should go untold.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Eat what you want to eat, be with those you want to be with, and stay safe and healthy. For the past couple of Thanksgivings, I've posted my mother's recipe for "impossible pumpkin pie", so I thought I'd mix it up this year and give you my paternal grandmother's recipe for another one of my dearest favorites, old fashioned pecan pie. I'm using a ready-made pie crust for this recipe, because why make it hard on yourself?

My great-grandfather had a pecan orchard on his farm in eastern Oklahoma (the very farm I modeled Alafair’s home after in my Alafair Tucker mysteries). Every fall my family would go out to the farm and spend an afternoon picking up pecans that had fallen from the trees. This usually happened late in the season. The little pecans were sweet and delicious, but hard as heck to crack. By the time I was old enough to remember how it was done, my grandmother had a little pecan-cracking device, which made the task much easier. Pecan pie has always been one of my favorites, and it’s fairly easy to make. However, I warn you, Dear Reader, that it is not low-cal. But then you only live once.

Grandma Casey's Pecan Pie

one nine-inch unbaked pie shell

Filling:

3 eggs

2/3 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of melted butter (if using unsalted butter, add 1/2 tsp salt. A pinch of salt gives the pie depth and keeps it from being too sweet.)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup corn syrup (I like dark corn syrup, but light works just as well.)

1 cup of pecan halves (or pieces)

Pre-heat the oven to 375•F. Beat the eggs, then stir in the rest of the filling ingredients until well-blended. Pour into the pie crust and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until set. The pecans will rise to the top.

The Process

 I, Donis, am working on a new Alafair Tucker mystery right now, and am very interested to see how it's going to turn out. I never know what the entire story will be before I begin. I learned early on that you may think you have it all figured out, but you don't. However, in all my previous mysteries, I at least had a murderer in mind before I actually began writing. I knew who was going to meet his or her doom and how, where the body was going to be discovered and by whom. I usually knew who did the deed, though I'm flexible about that. Before I start, I always think I know why the killer did it, but by the time I reach the end I often discover I was wrong. The motive seems get modified every time.

Thus far I have written about 50 pages for the nascent Alafair Eleven. I know which characters will be involved, I know where the story will be set, what the season will be, what historic events will unfold, what the side stories will be. But I haven't yet discovered a who killed the victim!

A murder mystery isn't really about the murder, of course. It's about the mystery. But without a murder, or some other incredibly compelling reason for your protagonist to get involved, it's mighty hard to create the mystery. Not long ago, I told someone she should "trust the process" with her writing. Even if you don't know where the story is going to go, just start writing and trust that all will become clear as you go along. Have faith that the answer will reveal itself in time.

I should pay attention to myself.

I've taken a few years off from my Alafair Tucker series to work on three Bianca Dangereuse Hollywood Mysteries set in the 1920s, so working on another Alafair feels a bit like coming home. This series started in 1912 and moved forward years or months with each book. Book Eleven has finally reached the spring of 1921, a period fraught with racial tension after the end of WWI, especially in eastern Oklahoma. I've done tremendous amounts of research. For each of my books, I keep a notebook and file full of information that I read up on as I need it, and just before I sat down to write this entry, I was perusing the file, and was interested to see how much information I’ve collected about post-WWI Oklahoma history.  Much of my research won't be used, for as a book advances, some of the ideas I started out with fall by the wayside.   

As I write on, brilliant new ideas for advancing the story will occur to me, and I’ll find myself looking up things I never would have thought of, otherwise.

Is this a "writing process"? I don’t know. Ideas come to me from the oddest places–from something I’ve read, or some off-hand comment someone says within earshot of me (be careful what you say around a writer). Once or twice from a dream I’ve had. In any event, the idea gets in my head one way or another and wiggles around in there for a while. Eventually it begins to take shape and I think, “That might make a good story.” I choose a narrow time period, such as March of 1921, and start reading the March 1921 newspapers from anywhere in eastern Oklahoma to see what was going on in the world and what Oklahomans were thinking about it. This usually adds layers of story to my basic idea. Then I ponder some more, make a few notes, and then start writing. Where the story ends up is as big a surprise to me as to anyone. It usually turns out better than I had planned, so thus far I have no reason to complain.

Mickey Spillane, when asked how much research he does in the interest of authenticity:  “None. My job is not to tell the truth.  My job is to make you believe.”(Note:  I’ve used that quote for years, but when I looked it up for this entry, I see that it’s actually “I don’t research anything.  When I need something, I make it up.” However, I like my version, so there it is. D.)

Go There

In my Type M entry of Sept 30, I wrote about a new monthly feature on my own website I'm trying called “Tell Me Your Story”. Thus far I've hosted five authors who have told us about pivotal events in their lives which have shaped their writing and their careers. One of my guests sent me her story to look over before posting because she felt a bit nervous about putting herself out there so openly. I'm not telling which author it was, because they've all been amazingly courageous. 

It was a wonderful, mind-blowing tale, and I told her she shouldn't worry about what some random stranger thinks she should have done. I really wanted to publish it, because I thought it would help and inspire someone who probably needed to hear it. It did, too, judging by the comments we got on social media.

Well, now the time has come for me to decide whether I'm going to follow my own advice and go there myself. It's not so easy when you're the one in the hot seat. I've spent much of my life trying to do the brave thing, and I wimp out most of the time and regret it. Maybe it's time to go there myself.

My “go there” is  less brave than hers, since I'm using my work-in-progress to fictionalize a really problematic theme that has run through my life – racism. The new book is the eleventh Alafair Tucker mystery, my long-running series set in Oklahoma, with established characters and situations. The series began in 1912 and moved forward year by year, and  I've now reached 1921, the year of the Tulsa Race Massacre. It's also the year that the KKK had a horrifying resurgence in Oklahoma. I can't pretend like nothing happened.

I grew up in Tulsa, a little girl in the 1950s and a teen in the 1960s. I grew up in a segregated world. I knew nothing about anything. My parents were liberal for the time and I never heard anything untoward from them, but some of my other relatives...  Suffice it to say I heard things said that shocked me even then, and some of these things were said by people I loved.

In the intervening years, I've thought about those days a lot and wondered. Did any of them ever go beyond words and do something unthinkable? I hope not. What would it be like for someone who found out their jolly, much beloved uncle or father or grandfather had been a member of the Nazi party? Or a stormtrooper? Or a guard at a concentration camp? People are a mix of wonderful and horrible. If you discover that your loved one did the unthinkable could you instantly stop loving them?  Or would it just be profound disappointment and grief? How could you love a Nazi?

How am I going to handle this? What do people of good will do when they realize they've been blind and ignorant? In doing the research for this era I've discovered nothing has changed all that much in 100 years. It's depressing.

All I can do if forge ahead and pray I can pull it off in a way that isn't offensive and honors the trials so many have endured. I want to be brave and finally go there. Somebody needs to hear it. 

The Hardest Part for an Amateur Sleuth

Donis here, still carrying on, still writing on a mystery and hoping my protagonist is smarter than I am. When I start a mystery novel, I usually know who the murderer is, and I usually know how and why s/he did it. I also have an idea how the killer went about trying to cover up the crime. I’m pretty good about doling out clues at appropriate intervals throughout the story. But here’s the hardest part: Bianca, my protagonist, has to figure out who did the deed.

What’s the problem, you ask? Just have your sleuth sort through the clues, make the right connections, and Bob’s your uncle.

As anyone who has ever written a mystery can attest, it’s not that easy, my friend, because you have to do it in such a way that is realistic and makes sense.

My protagonist,Bianca, is a Jazz age silent movie star, quite unlike my earlier protagonist, Alafair, who is an Oklahoma farm wife with a bunch of children. But like Alafair, Bianca is not a law enforcement professional or a private investigator. She doesn’t solve crimes for a living, nor does she have any official authority to compel people to answer her questions. She also lives in an era when people are constrained by fairly rigid gender roles. So, question number one is: what is she doing trying to solve a murder, anyway? The first thing I have to do is give her a really compelling reason to get involved.

Then I have to give her the means and the opportunities to uncover information and make connections, and I can’t force the action to fit the outcome I want. In other words, I can’t have Bianca doing things that a woman of her time and place - even one with her considerable resources - wouldn’t do. I can’t have her act against her own nature, either, just to advance the plot or create tension in an artificial way.

This is the reason I’ve been known to stare at the screen for an hour when I’m at a critical juncture, thinking, "how can Bianca figure out what a mobster is up to," or “how can I get Alafair off the farm and into that office in town to search for the gun, before sundown, when she has ten kids who want dinner?”

Whatever my heroine does, it must be realistic. Sometimes I just can’t come up with a plausible way to do it, and I have to go at it from a totally different angle or rework the scene altogether.

Forcing the action is a common mistake for a beginning writer. I often see it done in one of two ways. One is the “Idiot College Student Syndrome”. This is when the character has been brilliant throughout the book, but suddenly does something stupid just so you can put her in danger and increase the tension. One by one, five college students went into that dark room alone and were massacred by an ax murderer. In the name of all that’s holy, Number Six, don’t go in there! Call the police, you idiot!

Second is the “Wildly Unbelievable Coincidence”, in which the author hands the sleuth the vital clue in the most implausible fashion. The detective didn’t detect. He just happened to be in the right place. He just happened to stumble across an object. The killer suddenly leaped up out of his chair and confessed. I have to be sure that my sleuth honestly found the answer using the information provided in the story.

This is one of the things I like about an amateur sleuth - she has to be sneaky, persistent, smart, and clever in order to find her answers. In fact, there have been occasions where my protagonist came upon a clue that I was not aware of myself until it appeared on the page. Toward the end of my fourth book, The Sky Took Him, Alafair was sitting in a hospital corridor, having a nice, normal, conversation with the family, when she noticed something at exactly the same time I did, an observation which provided both of us with a vital piece of information. It surprised the heck out of me, but it was plausible, very much in character for Alafair, and worked like a charm. Moments like this are why writing a mystery can be such fun.

I'm working on my twelfth mystery right now, and praying for Bianca to come up with a blinding insight and let me in on it.

How Could You! Or The Perils of Writing a Spin-off Series.

The Wrong Girl, the first book of my new series, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, has been out for a month now, and let me tell you, it's been interesting. The main character in The Wrong Girl, Bianca LaBelle (nee Blanche Tucker) is a spin-off from my previous 10 book series, the Alafair Tucker Mysteries. Blanche/Bianca is one of Alafair's younger daughters, and was featured as a child in The Wrong Hill to Die On (the double “wrongs” are a coincidence...) While she was growing up in Oklahoma, one of many children in a warm, loving family, Blanche was a sweet little kid, smart and pretty. So pretty, in fact, that Alafair was a little worried about what that might mean when she grew up.

As it turned out, Alafair was right to be worried. At fifteen, naive, headstrong Blanche ran away from home with a guy who promised to marry her and put her in the movies, but turned out to be the worst kind of predator. Fortunately, Blanche is as resourceful as she is beautiful, so she manages to escape, and with a lot of luck and a lot of help, she does manage to get to Hollywood and eventually becomes a big star. But for nearly a year after she runs away, she does nothing to contact her mother to let her at least know she's alive and well. She's ashamed, she's afraid, she's half-way excited about the adventure and doesn't want to be hauled back home to face the music. In short, she's fifteen.

I've gotten quite a number of wonderful reviews and fan letters about the new book, but I've also gotten a few letters that basically say How Could You Do That to Alafair! I'm sure that there are readers out there who had the same reaction but didn't write to scold me. Well, let me say that I worried about this before I started writing. The Dangereuse books are quite different than the Alafairs, and not nearly as warm and loving. It's a whole new world. I asked my husband, “If I write it this way, will I alienate some of the readers who love Alafair?”

My husband said, “Yes.” He was right.

But let me assure you all, grown-up Bianca is really sorry about what she did to her parents, and she does make a great effort to make amends. By the time she's famous, she and her folks are very close. I'm glad some of you are so invested in Alafair's feelings! But everything will turn out all right. I promise!

Beginning

Donis here. How interesting that for the past few days my blogmates' entries have dealt with the terrors of beginning a new book. Several of us must be in sync with the same stars, because I am in the throes of beginning a new book myself. I have recently completed rewrites on the first novel in what I hope will be at least a trilogy and possibly a series. The new book is a spin-off of the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, and is called Lust For Vengeance, The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, Episode One. It stars Bianca LaBelle, silent movie star of the silver screen, and is set in Southern California during the Roaring Twenties. And, yes, Bianca has quite the connection to Alafair Tucker. Release date for the new book has been somewhat up in the air because of the publisher’s merger (see below), but last I heard, it should be out around November, 2019.

All my husband's health problems have been taken care of for the moment, and now that things have calmed down at home, I'm trying to begin work on the second Bianca Dangereuse book. Before I ever started this new trilogy, I had an idea of where I want it to end up. But as usual, when I actually begin writing I realize that I really am not sure how I'm going to get there. Beginning a new book is always painful for me. Without fail, I try to get started, I write a bunch of drivel, I write a scene or two that go nowhere, I fall into despair. I'll never be able to produce another readable book as long as I live! Oh, wait. I said that last time. And the time before that. Eventually a couple of those pointless scenes mysteriously come together and suddenly I can see a path through the woods. It's that old magic. All you have to do is keep writing drivel and have faith. Just keep going. Nothing good will ever happen if you don't.

By now, everyone who follows the goings on in the book world has heard the big news about my* publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, with whom I have been with since my first book came out in 2005. Poisoned Pen Press has become the mystery imprint for Sourcebooks. Sourcebooks has acquired the “majority” of the Poisoned Pen Press list—about 550 titles—which will include my own. Along with some additional Sourcebooks titles, these works will become the new Poisoned Pen Press imprint at Sourcebooks, which has expanded its publishing program to include the crime and mystery category. In addition, titles from Poisoned Pencil, PP’s young adult mystery imprint, will be transferred to Fire, Sourcebooks’ young adult imprint.

Poisoned Pen is a well respected, award-winning publisher, but Sourcebooks has a much larger distribution, so I am told that this should be a great boon to the authors and make our books that much easier to acquire. Let’s hope it is so.

On a happy note, I learned recently that my latest Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men, was named one of Barnes and Noble’s best Indie books of 2018.
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*Type M bloggers Tom Kies, Charlotte Hinger, and Vicki Delany also are or have been Poisoned Pen Press authors

Casting My Movie

Happy Holidays, everyone. I hope your Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza was wonderful, and allow me to wish you a wonderful New Year's Day and a happy and prosperous and non-scary 2019.


I'm envisioning you all sitting around in a post-holiday stupor, full of good eats and good cheer, reading good books and watching good movies. For the past couple of weeks, we've had a bit of a theme going on here at Type M 4 Murder, in which a few of us have speculated on who we would cast to play the characters in our novels when (not "if") they are made into movies.

My sleuth, Alafair Tucker, is a woman in her early forties, who lives with her husband Shaw and their ten children on a prosperous farm in Oklahoma in the early part of the Twentieth Century. She never sets out to solve murders, but all those pesky kids keep getting involved in unsavory situations and need their mother to get them out of trouble. Fortunately for me, Alafair is the kind of woman who will literally do anything, legal or not so legal, for her kids.

I made a point of not physically describing my main character, Alafair, except in generalities, even though I have a clear picture of her in my head. After ten books, a few details about her appearance have slipped out. She has dark hair that she can’t do anything with. She has dark eyes and a sun-browned complexion. She’s middle-ages and middle-sized. I didn’t create Alafair or any of the other characters with actors in mind. Alafair and her family are all based on friends or relatives of mine, living and dead.

But that doesn’t keep readers from casting my movie for me.

One fan of the series suggested to me that Alafair should be played by Kathy Bates. Not two weeks later, another woman thought Joan Allen would be a good Alafair. That certainly runs the gamut of physical types. I’d be thrilled to have either of these actresses play Alafair. However, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re both too old. Sandra Bullock is closer to Alafair’s age, though considering that Alafair is a farm wife with many kids, Sandy would have to be deglamorized quite a bit. Of course, if Meryl Streep would agree to the part, that would suit me just fine, no matter how old she is.

Alafair’s husband, Shaw, is one-quarter Cherokee, six feet tall, hazel eyed, with black hair and a floppy mustache. Sounds just like either Burt Reynolds or Tom Selleck in his prime. However, Shaw has a certain straightforward, honest, Western sensibility that reminds me of parts I have seen played by Matt Damon or Matthew McConnaughey. Two blonds who’d need a dye job to portray Shaw, but they’re about the right age. If George Clooney is looking to expand his repertoire, I’d be willing to give him a shot at it. Besides, it would give me a great excuse to visit the set every day.

Alafair and Shaw have two sons, Gee Dub and Charlie, and eight daughters.* Lots of good work for younger actors.

The problem with casting the offspring is that I’m not up on today’s crop of young actors. I’m sure the perfect tall, lanky young man with a mop of dark curls is out there to tackle the role of Gee Dub, but I don’t know who he is. I like the head of hair on Graham Phillips, the young guy who played Alicia’s son on The Good Wife. Could he be a laconic, Western type? As far as a choosing a great actor, I couldn’t go wrong with Freddie Highmore, even if he is English. I mean, he IS a great actor, so surely he could handle an Oklahoma drawl. And he has grown up very well since he was Charlie in Charlie and Chocolate Factory. As for the girls, there are so many wonderful young actresses working these days, and with eight daughters of all ages and all types to be cast, there's bound to be a part for anyone who wants one. Hailee Steinfeld will make a perfect Grace, when Grace grows up a little.

I’ll play the part of Grandma Sally myself.

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* In the interest of space, I'll list the girls here: Martha, Mary, Alice, Phoebe, Ruth, Blanche, Sophronia, and Grace.

Preserving a Taste of the Past - Grape Dumplings!

I'm sticking with our food-in-literature theme this week, Dear Reader, since food is such a big part of my Alafair Tucker Mysteries. Many years ago, as I began outlining ideas for my series, I heard that the wonderful old pear tree in my mother’s back yard had died. All during my childhood, my mother made the most delicious pear preserves from the sweet, hard pears from that tree. I have never before or since tasted anything like it. My first thought on the demise of that tree was that no one will ever taste those preserves again, because nobody cooks like that any more. Or eats this way, either. I'm thinking of my grandfather, who buttered his green onions before he ate them. I decided that I wanted to take the opportunity to try and evoke not just the events of the time, but the smells, the tastes, the sound, the hot and cold of it — the daily one-foot-in-front-of-the-other life of a farm wife with ten children.

The 1910s American country cooking that I write about is heavy, rich, and fattening, and I tend to overindulge in my test products. I was raised on this kind of food, and this is the way that my mother taught me to cook, so it isn’t foreign to me. However, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Dear Reader. This is not at all the way I cook at home. We are very health-foody. I’m all over the organic, local, meatless style of cooking. However, just because I don’t generally eat like that any more doesn’t mean that I don’t have a certain nostalgia for it. For my books, I concentrate on American Appalachian-style food, because just like my mother's pear preserves, the kind of cooking that my protagonist Alafair does is disappearing. That is one reason that I always put a special section of recipes and food lore in the back of each of the books.

When time comes to test and write about the recipes for the dishes that I mention in the books, I have to say that I really enjoy the heck out of myself. Here's one of my favorites, a true heritage recipe:

Cherokee Grape Dumplings

This is the recipe I used to make my dumplings. It is from a traditional Cherokee cookbook. Some recipes call for an egg, which makes the dumplings more noodle-like. I dropped my dough into the juice from a spoon rather than rolling and cutting. My dough was not as stiff as it should have been. Be sure to add a little more flour if your dough turns out too sticky. This is delicious with ice cream.

Grape Dumplings
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp shortening
1/2 cup grape juice (I use plain old Welches purple grape juice, but suit yourself)

Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and shortening. Add juice and mix into stiff dough. Roll dough very thin on floured board and cut into strips ½” wide (or roll dough in hands and break off pea-sized bits). Drop into 3 cups (or more if desired) boiling grape juice and cook for 10 – 12 minutes.

Some Cherokee cooks continue to make their grape dumplings by gathering and cooking wild grapes, or ‘possum grapes’ instead of using commercial grape juice. Here is the finished product, with juice:

Off Into the Woods

Donis here. I've just completed the first draft of the first book in what I hope will be a new series, set in the 1920's in California. It's pretty rough and needs some cleaning up, as my books usually do because the ending I end up with usually doesn't match the beginning I began with...if you get my drift. In other words, things about the story reveal themselves to me as I write. For example, I may start out with Character 1 and Character 2 as uncle and niece and discover half-way through my writing that they aren't related at all.* I think this could be one reason why I am a relatively slow writer. I have tried many times to streamline my process. I would love to be both efficient and good, and be able to crank out two or three entertaining and well-written books a year, like our very own Vicki Delany, for instance.

But outline as I may, I never fail to end up going off into the woods, following some elusive story thread that suggests itself to me in the middle of the story. Sometimes the new idea changes the whole book for the better. Sometimes I waste days writing material that goes nowhere and I have to discard it and go back to Plan A. I'd be much faster, and probably much tighter and to the point, if I'd just stick to the program, but I can't help myself. I'm too full of "what if?"

As an aside, I've noticed that in past couple of years the 1920s have become the hot era in historical mysteries. I can't decide whether I'm feeling happy or feeling unoriginal about jumping on the bandwagon. I didn't plan it that way. Almost a decade and a half ago I started writing the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, a series that began in 1912, and followed it through to 1919. The new series spins off from from there, so I ended up in the 1920s in the most natural way. If it turns out that being on the bandwagon is a good thing, then who am I to complain?

As yet another aside, I'm happy to announce that in two weeks I will be flying back to my native country to participate in the first annual Oklahoma Book Festival on October 20 at the Boatyard in Oklahoma City. I'll be talking about the Alafair Tucker Mystery series, and the new direction I'm taking in my writing. Check it out here: https://okbookfest2018.sched.com/info.

AND since I had to cancel a trip to speak at some Oklahoma libraries last August when My Beloved fell and broke his arm, I'm taking this opportunity to reschedule an event at the library in Woodward, Oklahoma, at noon on Thursday, October 18. We're calling it the If at First You Don't Succeed, Try Try Again Tour. Here's the information on that: http://woodwardlibrary.okpls.org/category/author-visit/

Husband is out of his cast, the arm is functional, he can dress, write, and drive himself, and be left alone for long periods of time. So if you believe, Dear Reader, that the Universe hears your prayers, join me in asking that the Powers That Be keep Donald Koozer healthy and injury free for the foreseeable future.

Thank you.
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*This is just an example. No one in my new book is named either Character 1 or Character 2.

She Needs a Dog

My work in progress is beginning to take shape. This is a relief, because the WIP is the first book in what may become a new series for me. Over the past 13 years, I have written ten books in the Alafair Tucker series, which is set in the 1910s and features a woman with ten children. The first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, took place in 1912 and the most recent, Forty Dead Men, took place in 1919 and dealt with the aftermath of World War I. I’ve reached 1920. Most of the children are grown by now, and for some time I’ve been wondering about how their adult lives turned out.

So...in order to satisfy my own curiosity and shake things up a bit, I decided to follow one of the children into the Roaring Twenties and see what became of her. As it turns out, she left Oklahoma altogether and had a really exciting life.

A new series set in a new location and era means lots of research, and it also means that I have to get to know a whole bunch of new characters. As my blogmates have been so ably discussing over the past week, a good plot is an excellent thing, but memorable characters are the most important thing if you want your readers to keep coming back for more.

When I started out on the new book, I had what I though was a complete cast of characters ready to go, but as I write, new characters keep suggesting themselves. It’s interesting to see how every new character’s very presence affects the tale, just as the insertion of a real person into a group changes its entire chemistry and dynamic. Adding a new character into a book that is well underway gives me a jolt of writing energy. It’s amazing how little it takes to make big changes in the way a story unfolds.

This is not the first time added a new character in the middle of the process. Whenever I have done such a thing, it has been as though the character was on the sidelines the whole time, like a relief quarterback, just waiting to jump into the game and throw the winning pass. Usually it’s a person, but sometimes it’s an animal. I was busily typing along on the MS when it struck me like lighting that my heroine needs a dog, and that dog is going do something that saves the day. In my fourth book, The Sky Took Him, I added Ike the cat after the entire story was written. I had to go back and sprinkle Ike’s presence through the novel and it was a lot of trouble. And yet, I don’t know he did it, but that cat tied the action together with a big red bow. He was a magic character. I can only hope that my new guy has the same juju.

When you create new characters, either for a series or a stand-alone, you may feel a bit like God, making people behave like this or that and causing all sorts of unpleasant things to happen to them.  But no matter how much you think you’re in control, eventually some miracle happens and the characters develop wills of their own and don't listen to you any more.  I think this is not an uncommon experience for writers.  After a while, you can't force characters to respond to the action in the way you want them to any more than you could force a real person to do what you want.  When this happens, you know you've succeeded.  If your character behaves like a living person, then your readers are going to care about her like they would a living person.

Countdown to a Launch

This year's comfy shoes

I love the discussion about fuzzy endings. I think endings are wildly important—more important that we generally believe—and I have a lot to say about that. But that will have to wait for another day. For this coming Saturday, February 24, is the official launch day for my tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men. The big ol' launch party will be held at 2:00 p.m. at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. The most fabulous bookstore EVER for launching a mystery novel, especially since the launch is taking place southern Arizona in the middle of winter, with a forecast temperature of 68º F. I’ll be joined by authors Dennis Palumbo (Head Wounds) and Priscilla Royal (Wild Justice), and Dana Stabenow will join us for for a tribute to the late, much beloved Frederick Ramsay. So if you live anywhere in striking distance of Phoenix, do please come by.

No matter how much lead time I have before the publication of a new book, the release date always seems to sneak up on me, and I have never yet been as prepared as I intended to be. For this book, I'm as ready as I'm going to be, I suppose. I didn't manage to lose five pounds or get a face lift, as I originally planned.

But I do have a spiffy outfit.

Now that I’ve reached the age of invisibility, I’ve decided to cultivate a more Bohemian style. I can no longer be the cutest young thing in the room, but I can be well-dressed, damn it. I usually spend at least a month thinking about the outfit, and trying on a series of ensembles, accessories, jewelry, shoes, and parading them around in front of my patient if somewhat bemused husband as though I were an eight year old girl playing dress-up.

I go to such trouble only for myself. I’m generally a bad shopper, but I enjoy the ritual of preparing for a book launch: hair and makeup—check; smoking outfit—check; mani-pedi—check. One very important thing to keep in mind is to choose comfortable shoes! When the day comes that I tire of the big build up, I intend to take a lesson from the great and beautiful Georgia O’Keefe and look however I look and to hell with everybody. When I go to other author events, it seems that the bigger the names the less concerned they seem to be about their duds. Especially the men. Don and I attended an event for a Very Big Name not long ago, and afterwards Don said to me, "Is he married?"

"I don't know," says I. "Why do you ask?"

He replied, "I was wondering why his wife let him go out looking like that."
_________________

"Forty Dead Men is a tragic, bittersweet story of a returning veteran and PTSD. While there’s a mystery, the story actually revolves around Gee Dub. Even if you haven’t read the previous Alafair Tucker mysteries, you can pick up this book. And, if you’re a fan of the Ian Rutledge mysteries, you might want to meet another veteran of World War I." Lesa Holstine, Lesa’s Book Critiques

Late, Late, for a Very Important Date

Donis here, posting very late today because I thought yesterday was my Thursday to post and I had missed it, but then our fearless leader Rick pointed out to me that today is Thursday--and I have already spent the top half of the day doing doctor stuff. But never fear. Tattered and out of breath, I am here.

The reason I am in such a state of dishabille is severalfold. My beloved husband underwent yet another surgery recently (he's doing fine, thank you for asking), I have been involved in preparing a writer-in-reidence program at my local library for the summer, and I've been gearing up for the release of my tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men,  in two weeks.

I've updated my website, as well as done something I should have done years ago--I created author pages for myself on BookBub and on Facebook where I'll be announcing appearances, news, and giveaways, so I invite you come by and "Like" or "Follow" me, Dear Reader. Which by the way, if you enjoy the work of any author, it always helps her or him if you follow their pages and/or leave a review on Amazon or another site.

Forty Dead Men has not even been released yet, but the early reviews have been excellent, I am happy to say. I you would like to check it out, I invite you to breeze over to my website where I have have posted the first couple of chapters. I hope you will find yourself intrigued. You don't even have to wait for the official release date of the book to acquire an e-copy. Forty Dead Men has an early eBook release on Barnes & Noble. It is first on the list under Nook First Look!

I am off on more life-errands now, so I will leave you with an apology for my tardiness, and a wish for a lovely day of reading. I'll write you again in two weeks. I promise. I made a note on my calendar.

Another Year, Another Book, a Whole New World of Self-Promotion

Donis here,  kicking off my new year. My tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men, will hit the streets on February 6, 2018. You can pre-order here. I am particularly proud of this book, which deals with the psychological effects of warfare on a veteran of the First World War. They called it shell shock back then. Now we call it PTSD. The early reviews have been stellar. Publishers’ Weekly starred review of Forty Dead Men says “Casey expertly nails the extended Tucker family—some 20 people—and combines these convincing characters, a superb sense of time and place, and a solid plot in this marvelously atmospheric historical.”

The official launch party for Forty Dead Men will be at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, on February 24 at 2:00 p.m., when Poisoned Pen Press hosts Yours Truly, Dennis Palumbo (signing Head Wounds, A Daniel Rinaldi Mystery) and Priscilla Royal (signing Wild Justice, A Medieval Mystery) for a three author signing party! We will also be remembering another wonderful Poisoned Pen author, Fred Ramsay, who passed away late last year.

Trying to publicize a new book is a new adventure for me every time. Forty Dead Men is my tenth book in almost thirteen years, and just in that short time things have changed so much that I have to re-learn how to do it with each release.

Do you remember, Dear Reader, when authors had hard-copy press kits that they used to give to prospective agents and editors and to bookstore managers? That is a photo of mine, above. This is a left-over from the press kit batch I used to publicize of my third book, The Drop Edge of Yonder, a mere 10 years ago. NOBODY that I am aware of uses a physical booklet like this anymore. No, now it's either promote yourself on line or in person, and in person is becoming harder and harder to arrange. I have a website and a blog. I don't know how much either helps, but it can't hurt, right? This time I’m doing something most authors these days do automatically, and that is set up an author page on Facebook. It’s hard to believe, but Facebook was less than a year old when my first book was published in 2005, and nobody had an author page. I was finally convinced to create one because I can use it to push promotions and announcements. We shall see how this turns out. In the meantime, Dear Reader, if you would be so kind as to visit my Facebook author page, here, and give it a “Like”, I would be most appreciative.

Also, please remember that especially if you like a book, it is very helpful to the author if you write a nice review for it in Goodreads or on Amazon.

This writing game is tough. And when it comes to publicity, you just have to put your head down and go. What works for one may not work for you, so you try everything you can manage and do the best you can. The really important thing, though, is to do the best you can without making yourself miserable. Life is too short.

Ten Books Later...

Alafair #1

Alafair # 10

When I first began writing the Alafair Tucker Mystery series in 2003, I had a story arc in mind that was going to carry through 10 books. This is a wonderful idea, but as anyone who has ever written a long series knows, after a couple of books all your plans for a story arc have been knocked into a cocked hat. The reason this happened, at least to me, is that I seem to be writing about real people who have their own ideas about how things should be gone about, and once I put them into a situation, they react to it in ways I had never anticipated. Besides, I really want readers to be able to pick up any book in the series and have a satisfying experience without having to know anything about what went before.

My original arc idea went like this: I would to feature a different one of Alafair's ten children as the character of interest in each book. The featured child would somehow be involved in the events surrounding a murder, and as their mother, Alafair would intrude herself into the kid's life, whether s/he wanted her or his parent's help or not, and in the end, Alafair and maybe the child would contribute to the solution of the mystery. As an aside, the featured offspring might end up with a life-partner.

I stuck with the formula through book one. As it turns out, I like to mix it up a bit.

The million dollar question for the author of a long series is this: How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every story stand alone, yet in its place as well? I have found over the course of ten books in the same series that I have even departed from the usual mystery novel format. The later books are constructed more like thrillers than puzzles, they may or may not revolve around one of the children, and Alafair may or may not be able to solve the mystery.

And now that book number ten, Forty Dead Men, is in the can and due to hit the shelves in February 2018, I’m wondering where I want to go from here. I have begun an eleventh Alafair and it is a big departure from the formula, but I have also started working on something completely different. Because if you aren't excited by your own writing, how can you expect your readers to be?

Speaking of repeating myself, let me remind you Dear Readers that I will be making a nine library tour of small eastern Oklahoma towns from Sept. 12 through Sept. 16. The September 16 event at the Muskogee Public Library will be particularly of interest, since after my talk at 11:00 a.m. I’ll be joined by fellow mystery authors Mary Anna Evans, Will Thomas, and Julia Thomas at noon for a mystery writers’ roundtable. Check out my entire schedule at my website. I hope to see you there.

A Trip to the Homeland

Donis here. I would love to write about regional idioms till the cows come home, but I'll spare you, Dear Reader, and share several pieces of news instead.

First of all, I've been invited to speak at nine libraries in the Eastern Oklahoma Library District, so I'll be touring the homeland on the Backroads of Eastern Oklahoma. From Sept. 12 through Sept 16, I'll be visiting libraries in Sallisaw, Muldrow, Checotah, Jay, Kansas, Tahlequah, Eufaula, Hulbert, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. At the final event in Muskogee, I'll be joined after my spiel by fellow mystery authors Mary Anna Evans, Will Thomas, and Julia Thomas for a mystery writers' roundtable. All the towns on this tour are fairly small, except for middle-sized Muskogee, which boasts about 40,000 citizens. The library district asked me to come, I expect, because I'm the only person in history to set a series in Muskogee County. A friend of mine said I should use this list of towns as pronunciation test in order to determine who is a native Oklahoman. Good luck. This will be my first trip to Oklahoma in years. To see the full schedule with dates and times, go to my website at www.doniscasey.com. Hope to see you there!

In other news, I'm currently copy editing the advance readers copy of my next Alafair Tucker novel, Forty Dead Men. I received a .jpg of the cover a couple of days ago, along with the editor's blurb. The book is scheduled to appear in February. Here's what it is about: Some people who have experienced a shocking, dangerous, or terrifying event develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is recognized today as a debilitating but potentially treatable mental health condition. Military veterans are a vulnerable group. But PTSD can deliver a knockout blow to anyone.

World War I is over. Alafair is overjoyed that her elder son, George Washington Tucker, has finally returned home from the battlefields of France. Yet she is the only one in the family who senses that he has somehow changed.

Gee Dub moves back into his old bunkhouse quarters, but he’s restless and spends his days roaming. One rainy day while out riding he spies a woman trudging along the country road. She’s thoroughly skittish and rejects his help. So Gee Dub cannily rides for home to enlist his mother in offering the exhausted traveler shelter.

Once made comfortable at the Tucker Farm, Holly Johnson reveals she’s forged her way from Maine to Oklahoma in hopes of finding the soldier she married before he shipped to France. At the war’s end, Daniel Johnson disappeared without a trace. It’s been months. Is he alive? Is she a widow?

Holly is following her only lead—that Dan has connected with his parents who live yonder in Okmulgee. Gee Dub, desperate for some kind of mission, resolves to shepherd Holly through her quest although the prickly young woman spurns any aid. Meanwhile, Alafair has discovered that Gee Dub sleeps with two cartridge boxes under his pillow—boxes containing 20 “Dead Men” each. The boxes are empty, save for one bullet. She recognizes in Gee Dub and Holly that not all war wounds are physical.

Then Holly’s missing husband turns up, shot dead. Gee Dub is arrested on suspicion of murder, and the entire extended Tucker family rallies to his defense. He says he had no reason to do it, but the solitary bullet under Gee Dub’s pillow is gone. Regardless, be he guilty or innocent, his mother will travel any distance and go to any lengths to keep him out of prison.

The Book Lover's Disease

Don't make me choose

I belong to a women's charitable organization that meets once a month, and the theme for the June meeting is the Summer Reading List. Our assignment is to bring some books we like to exchange with other members. I've been going through my collection to see what I can part with, and it didn't take me long to realize I can't part with anything. I have the Book Lover's Disease. Books are like gold to me, and the idea of getting rid of a book that I enjoyed makes me break out into a sweat.

I know that several of my books can be checked out of the library when I want to read them again, but how can I let go of a book that the author signed? Especially if the author is a friend? I can't, that's how. So what am I going to do? I have been reviewing books for Publishers Weekly and do receive advance reading copies galore. Many of those books are fine, but not my cup of tea, so one would think that those would be give-away candidates. The only problem with that is I've already had that idea and have given them all away to a women's shelter.

I can certainly make a list of recommended reading. As for finding a physical book to give away, I'm just going to have to suck it up and part with something.

In other news, I've finally finished my tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men. Finished-ish, that is. My early readers have done their duty and pronounced it ready to go. The only thing I have left to do, aside from one last read-over to catch typos, etc., is write the accompanying material--the historical notes, the early 20th century recipes, the acknowledgements. Still, I can't help but rewrite, and then go back and do it again. And again. I think that most authors are never really satisfied with what they’ve created. I’ll tinker with the book until I absolutely have to turn it in for the last time. Years after a book is published, I’ll find myself coming up with fresh ideas for a scene and wishing I could go back and work on it some more.

My editor is out of the country until the end of this week. She told me that she wants the book in June, and today is June 1. So whether I like it or not, I shall have to call the book done and let it go. That is, until she returns it with corrections and a two week deadline. Then I'll get one last crack at it.

And finally, let me once again congratulate Type M's fearless leader, Rick Blechta, on winning the 2017 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novella.
 

Siblings

Donis here. I ought to be taking advantage of the last of the good weather here in Arizona, but I'm still working hard to finish my next Alafair Tucker novel. I haven't even been outside much lately, except to drive hither and yon and talk to groups about books and writing (which BTW, check out Barbara's excellent entry on the care and feeding of writers, below). Judging by my husband's behavior, I am becoming crabby and weird, which often happens as I near a deadline. But the dear man has been picking up the slack around our house, and even brought me a present a couple of days ago. I had mentioned that I'd like to have new bedspreads for the twin beds in guest room, and he traveled all the way out to a mall in a neighboring town and bought a beautiful set. I was so happy that my limbic brain took over and I cried, "Oh, nifty newpot!"

Donis

I have not uttered those word for decades. This is a phrase that my sister Carol coined in her dewy youth, and it became usual in my family to use it to describe anything wonderful. Carol was and still is a little bit off center in a most delightful way. She's well known for the way she manipulates the English language. One of my favorites is, "Stop here for a minute. I want to pooch into the store."

Carol

All of my siblings are vocabulary-gifted. When we were young, it was a matter of great amusement to us to sit around the dining table and carry on a conversation in the most convoluted and pretentious language possible. It was hilarious, and it seems to have done something to our brains. I could give you endless amusing examples, Dear Reader, but that is not the point of this entry.

Martha

The point is that sometimes it is brought home to me how much I was influenced by my siblings when I was growing up. I am the person I am partly because of them. I am the eldest of the four, so I imagine they would say the same about me. I'm a little bit sorry about that, because I often think I could have done better by them when we were young. Our family (like all families, I'm sure) had some very rough times to go along with all the good. There were periods where I felt like I should do my best to protect them. So I made a habit of not talking about what was going on or asking them how they were coping. In hindsight, this was not the best strategy. Of course part of it was that I was pretty young, myself, and didn't really know what to do. Still, I can see that all four of us bear some scars.

Christopher

We are all funny and self-depreciating, erudite and self-sufficient to the point of almost being anti-social. Life and circumstances have scattered us. I live in Arizona, my sisters live in Colorado and Missouri, my brother in Oklahoma. Since our mother died, we don't keep in touch as regularly as we did. But that doesn't mean I don't think about them a lot. We survived a lot together, really good stuff and bad. We're like old war buddies who are the only ones who can understand what we went through.

My siblings are the inspiration for many of the events in my books and many of the personal traits of my recurring characters. In fact, I'll admit that part of the reason I invented Alfair Tucker's safe and stable family was to provide the safe place for the children. I didn't know how to do it when I was a kid.

p.s. the photos of me and the sibs were all taken on the same day in 1972 or thereabouts.

Double Brain

By the time this post comes up, I will have launched my ninth Alafair Tucker Mystery, The Return of the Raven Mocker, on Tuesday the 24th at the fabulous Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale Arizona. I will have also appeared at three other venues and am looking forward to another two months of talk and travel. Yes, this is the merry-go-round of publishing. I'll be writing guest blogs and speaking to group after group about how I researched and wrote a book about murder during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.

The irony behind all this is that in my head is currently occupied by the tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, and sometimes I forget which book I'm supposed to be talking about. I call this "double brain".

Raven Mocker is a good book, even if I do say so myself. The next book is going to be even better. (How optimistic we writers are) It is going to have a bang-up ending, if I can pull it off as well as I envision it. A really good ending is wildly important to me, for as I've said many a time, a good beginning will make a reader want to read your current book but a good ending will make her want to
buy your next book.

I learned about the importance of a great end by reading Ellis Peters. She is the woman who inspired me to write the type of historical mystery that I do. She was very good at moral ambiguity, which is one reason I love her books, especially the Brother Cadfael series. The resolutions of those novels are usually very clever and perhaps not what you might have suspected. One of my favorite resolutions was in her novel Monk’s Hood. The victim wasn’t a pleasant man, but he wasn’t evil and didn’t deserve to die the way he did. The killer shouldn’t have taken the action he did. Cadfael figures out who did it and why, and confronts the killer, but in the end … well, let me just say, I was taken aback by what happened. Was it justice? I think yes, and mercy, too.

And that’s the mark of a truly successful mystery. We don’t just find out who did it. We are given a just resolution that satisfies us right down to our toes.

And if the author can pull off a big surprise, that's even better.

How We Learn to Love Books

Rick and Aline both wrote wonderful entries this week about being read to as a child. I'm sure every book-lover has a similar story. When your parents read to you when you're little, you learn to associate the experience with being loved and safe. I, of course, have stories of my own. Rick's story in particular brought to mind the Golden Book of poems and riddles my parents bought for me when I was little more than a toddler.

I had a lot of books when I was a kid. My parents bought them for me long before I could read, for which bless you, parents. This little Golden Book was one of my favorites, and I can still recite parts of it to this day. For instance: “What did the old woman say when she looked down the rain barrel?” Answer: OICURMT (It took me years to figure out what Oicurmt meant). But the poem I loved the most was You Are Old, Father William, by Lewis Carroll. I enjoyed it enough to memorize when I was a little girl. I still remember it, and as the years pass, it means more to me now than it ever did.

My parents took turns reading to me every night, and I never, ever let them weasel out of it for any silly reason like floods or fires or deathly illnesses. They read the same books to me so many times that I knew them by heart. I still remember very clearly an incident that occurred when I was about four and spending the night with my grandmother. I had brought my pre-sleep book with me, but my grandmother--a notoriously impatient woman--kept trying to skip lines. Needless to say this was not going to pass unchallenged. My grandmother also had a somewhat perverse sense of humor, so once she realized that she wasn't going to get away with it, she made a game of leaving out words and changing sentences to see if I'd catch her. I always did. This may have amused my grandmother, but it didn't contribute to a peaceful night's sleep for her little fusspot of a grandchild.

The joy of a good story well told turns a child into a book-loving adult. I spent much of my teenaged years and young adulthood with my nose in a book. So much so that my mother was a bit concerned about the fact that I'd rather read than play or hang around with friends. It was something of a joke in my family that if I was reading, I couldn't hear the phone ring or knocking at the door or gunshots and screaming.

A good book has gotten me through many a tough situation. A well written story teaches a child about compassion, perseverance, bravery, and lets him walk in another's shoes in a way a thousand lectures can't do. I can't imagine a better gift a parent can give her child.

p.s. On another note, don't forget that my first Alafair Tucker Mystery, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, is being offered as a free download at Amazon and iTunes through the month of January. Don't miss your chance!