New Series - mystery and romance combined by Janet Lane Walters #The Writer's House

 

This cover is the Writer's House where a number of writers rent a work room and also congregate. They are giving a seminar on writing a book for a new writer. Valentina Hartley or Val decides to take the course. She  is new to town and is looking for an apartment or house for her mother and five-year-old son in Rockleigh where she now resides with her partner in their business We Research. Val goes to the seminar at the Writer's House where she meets Dana Bradley who interest her in a half house her brother rents. When the talk and questions end, Val leaves since she starts the research early each morning. She discovers the lights for the porch and parking lot are out and calls for help. Believing she remembers the porch, she starts out. The lights come on startling her and she trips. She discovers the obstacle is a dead man and she screams. Val almost appears guilty. She is newly come to town but she swears she has never seen the man before.

For Kyle Bradley, the corpse becomes a puzzle. He has a SS number but no other information other than a computer, manuscripts for three books he's written. Is he in witness protection? When Kyle and his partner investigate, they learn though he had the number, it wasn't for him. They are faced with a puzzle. al has an idea that may help. Will it. By working together and being neighbors, the pair become friends.

At present, there are two other ideas for this series bouncing in my head. The History Writer's Snuff Boxes and the Erotic Writer's Nightgowns. Hopefully more stories will come as I work.

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Don't Write What You Know by Victoria Chatham

AVAILABLE HERE

    At the beginning of their writing journey, whether for personal pleasure or possible publication, authors are often taught to write what they know. Admittedly, that’s a comfortable place to start. It is a way to find your writing feet in describing what’s around you, beautiful days, or maybe not-so-beautiful days when the wind is blowing and rain falling in buckets. It might be an avenue for you to begin writing that family history or memoir.

    Still, when penning a novel, many authors, me included, must write what they don’t and can’t know without doing their research. My first novels were Regency romances, and after having read many, I had to read more. Now I have files full of historical facts and details from 1811 – 1820, and a shelf full of reference books.

    There are several authors who come to mind in this ‘write what you don’t know’ theme. I’m reading a book now written by Dick Francis. All his books have a horse racing background, but he writes so vividly the reader doesn’t need to know horses or racing to enjoy them. Each of his books has a different theme, which would have required much research. Here is a sample of his titles:

     • Flying Finish – international horse transport. 

     • Shattered – glass blowing and making. 

     • Second Wind – meteorology. 

    One quote about Dick Francis I especially like is this from the Daily Mirror: ‘As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing.’ 

    After thirty years of living in Canada, I think I’ve had time to learn much about Western life, but I still must ask questions and do research. A newspaper article from way back about a mother/daughter ranching duo stayed in my mind, and I thought it might work for my new book, Loving Georgia Caldwell. I learned quite a lot about rodeos and ranching when I wrote my other western titles, Loving That Cowboy and Legacy of Love. But for the new book, I decided my mother/daughter duo needed to have something they could do together besides the vital work of raising cattle.

    I’d recently come across the sport of team cattle penning, but what did I know about that? Nothing. So once again, I jumped into the research breach, dear friends. I read all I could on the subject and watched many YouTube videos. I talked to some trainers, who explained how not all horses make good cow horses, which reminded me of a rancher who had a lovely, solid Holsteiner gelding who disliked cows. When they broke through the fence into his paddock the gelding, all on his own, rounded them up and chased them out. After that, he would cut any cow out of the herd or push them wherever asked. I read the rules and regulations for the sport and watched local events. I talked to some competitors about their experiences and reactions and hope I conveyed their responses accurately.

    Other aspects of the book I needed to research were American football and owning a private jet. I have friends who are football fiends (sorry – fans) who were enormously helpful, as was the Netflix series ‘Quarterback.’ Google was helpful in getting to know the ins and outs of private jets, including cabin floorplans, and who knew getting an ‘empty leg’ flight on one was possible? Not me, that was for sure, but if the time ever comes that I’d like the experience, I know where to call.

    Research these days is a far cry from when anything you wanted to know outside of your experience meant a trip to the library or writing a letter to someone knowledgeable in your field of interest. These days, the Internet is a great place to begin. Whatever you can imagine can be confirmed or not by diligent digging, and in that process, who knows what they will find. So, to all you writers, I say get out of your comfort zone and write what interests you. You may be surprised with what you find.

Victoria Chatham

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The Characters in the Stories by Janet Lane Walters #BWLAuthor #MFRWAuthor #writing #characters

 Once the Idea is in order and the Plot is decided upon, the characters must be found for your stories. There are a number of ways characters have ventured into my stories. The oddest one happened about a month ago. As I was falling asleep, a voice spoke in my head. "Hi. I'm Valentina Heartly. With a name like that I should write a romance novel." I haven't found a story for her as yet but the ideas are slowly forming.

Often when developing characters, I use Astrology. Now I don't cast their entire charts but I look at the Sun sign, the Moon sign and the Rising sign and combine these to make a person come to life. Then I use one of the many baby name books to find the right name.

Sometimes the characters are well established and are part of a series. At present I'm working on Murder and Iced tea staring Katherine Miller, now married. Along with Robespierre, he Maine Coon cat, I know her almost as well as I know myself. This time I am using many of the characters from the other stories in the series. There are also new ones. There's the Mayor, his wife, his two children and his "yes" man.

I once found a character in a research book on Egypt from a single sentence. "Mermeshu was his name." Amazingly he took form and set forth on a time travel story.

How do you find and name your characters? Sometimes, for me, this takes the msot time but I love Plots and they come fairly easy.

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Butterflies from my window by Priscilla Brown

 

  

 

 The window next to my desk overlooks a veronica (hebe) bush in the garden border. This flowers almost year-round, and is popular with bees. However, today there are no bees, but there is a pretty butterfly I haven't seen before hovering around the blossom. Interested in the newcomer, I switch from the document I'm working on, and check the internet hoping to discover its name.

 I am disappointed to learn that it is a common brown. Apparently it is 'common'  in south-east Australia, which is roughly where I live, though my area might be too far north for its usual habitat.. Perhaps it is looking for new digs. I do feel that whoever names these attractive creatures might show more imagination.

 For a couple of my contemporary romance novels, I needed to research butterflies. I always enjoy research, but sometimes I have to make myself stop. There's a need to compromise, perhaps to be less precise, making sure the information I'm using is essential to the narrative.  In Where the Heart is, Cristina describes the butterflies in Cameron’s sub-tropical Caribbean garden as ‘neon-clothed’. For Silver Linings,  I found out far more than the story needed about butterflies in the Amazon area, fascinating but I am not writing a guidebook!

And now, my garden butterfly has moved on, two bees are circling the veronica bush, and I  must temporarily give up watching nature and get some work done!

Enjoy your reading, and best wishes from contemporary romance author Priscilla.

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Storm Chaser? Not Me? by Helen Henderson

 

Windmaster Legend by Helen Henderson
Click the cover for purchase information

For many years at every conference, lecture, and workshop I attended, the most often preached guidance was "Tell a good story." With "Write what you know," so close a second that it was just as often in first place as second.

While I have written tales based in the past and say I like to fly with dragons or hang with mages, I'm sorry to admit that in reality I don't. Research helps as does my imagination. But that isn't really knowing. So add "experienced" to part of the definition of knowing and it is easier to follow the rule. 

One setting (or event) that both myself and my characters have experienced is a storm.

Blizzards from my childhood and later years provided the inspiration for the sandstorm that trapped a character in a cave in Windmaster Golem.  

Winds howled outside the cave. Just beyond the entrance, columns of sand wheeled and pirouetted. Relliq watched the otherworldly dance. Anger mingled with dread. Desert storms were known to last for days. Some lasted season after season until the dunes swallowed up entire cities.

The characters in my current work in progress have to survive a different type of storm -- a tornado. When I started writing the scene my personal experience was primarily with blizzards, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Superstorm Sandy was front and center in my memory as I didn't live that far from where she made landfall and had just finished archiving the photographs of its aftermath.

Although I now live in what is called the Dixie Tornado Alley, my experience with tornados was limited to local news coverage of the Christmas Eve tornado in Mississippi and  our town warning sirens going off whenever the national weather service issues a tornado alert for our county.  After the first alert and two hours of "wall to wall" non-stop reporting with the storms going farther south, not much thought was given them on later alerts. Then came Mother Day 2021. 

 

The local news broke into regular programming with details of a tornado sighted in our town and the warning to immediately go to our safe room. My husband got out a map and started tracking the tornadoes path by the roads announced. After I put my mother in an inside room, I alternated between a sky watch and the  news with its minute by minute radar reports. Luckily the tornado didn't zig right towards my side of town and dissipated before reaching an apartment complex and the three nearby schools.

 

Considering the weather events experienced in the world of Windmaster will I become a storm chaser in my real life? After the excitement of what could have been a close encounter with a tornado, my answer is an emphatic "No."

 

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination. 

Follow me online at Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter or Website.

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who has adopted her as one the pack. 

 

To Russia with Love! by Sheila Claydon

Golden Girl, the first book I wrote, featured in my previous blog when I demonstrated how book covers have changed over the years. This time I am talking about my second book, Empty Hearts, a story set in Russia. This book's covers have metamorphosed even more.

As you can see from the slightly tatty image, this is a photo of the original book because in those days (1985) there were no eBooks and no digital images. I didn't even have a computer. This was written by hand and by old fashioned typewriter. Although it is a full length novel it was published in tandem with another author and sold in a romance program where readers bought a specified number of books each month. 

I was still writing under the pseudonym Anne Beverley at the time so you can imagine my chagrin when the book was published with an incorrect spelling. For those of you who know the story of Anne of Green Gables, I am very much in agreement with her insistence that it should always be 'Anne with an E."

From there Empty Hearts followed the same path as my previous book and was published as a Retro romance under the name of Sheila Claydon writing as Anne Beverley (fortunately with the correct spelling!) And it was given an altogether more attractive cover.

Then things became even more interesting because now, in its final form, published as a Vintage Romance by BWL Publishing, Empty Hearts has two covers, and I'm not sure how this happened. Not that it matters at all because the story is the same in each one, but my favourite image is the first one because it is closer to one of the best things that happens in the book. The little boy, Peter, is an important part of the story, and if you would like to read about him and the image the cover portrays, then click on Book Snippets under the blog heading on my Website. As you can see, ice and skating feature a lot in cold and wintry Moscow!

I am ashamed to say I wrote this book without having ever visited Russia! Instead I used information and a map from an article in National Geographic Magazine! Foolhardy, arrogant or just plain naive? I'm not sure. It's certainly not something I would do now. Every book I've written since then is set in a place I've visited so I can be sure to get most of my facts right. Having said that, I have spent time in Russia since I wrote Empty Hearts, and while I was there I decided I didn't need to be too embarrassed about my writing behaviour after all as my research (or rather the information in the National Geographic article) was pretty solid!

Empty Hearts...the story

By trying to make a new start, Holly just may find a family of her own.

Holly is struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life when she is offered the chance to travel to Moscow to research a new book. That she will also have to look after diplomat Dirk Van Allen’s five-year-old son, Peter, seems a small price to pay...until she meets them both.

Determined to find a way into Peter’s stony little heart, Holly thinks that softening his father’s attitude towards her might help. When Dirk sees through her ploy and starts to play her at her own game, she realizes she is way out of her depth with this mysterious, intriguing man.

Writing the Weather by Priscilla Brown

Men are off Cristina's essentials list during her working holiday at a luxury Caribbean resort. 

But can the resort's zany charmer of a pilot break through her defences?

https://books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-Is

 Today, 31 August, is the last official day of winter in Australia. As I write this a few days prior, here in temperate New South Wales the blustery wind seemingly straight from Antarctica makes us long for spring. However, signs of the season change began to appear mid-August; fruit trees, ornamental and productive, display blossoms white or shades of pink - until the wind catches them. The yellows of daffodils and jonquils are such optimistic colours, and deciduous trees are starting to show lots of buds.

The weather may be the most widespread topic of conversation in areas where the weather is changeable. On a chilly wet day, we may exchange comments with strangers under umbrellas at the bus stop; or start a conversation about the heat as we drop onto a shared seat after jogging around the park.

One of my personal writing-related files contains sections in which I jot down words or phrases which interest me. I use the three hand-written pages of weather-associated words for ideas, to edit and re-write as necessary for the weather to fit or augment the plot and the characters, and to help me avoid cliches such as lashing rain, howling gale.

Those weather conditions in which we situate our people are usually there for a crucial reason: have them enjoy, or struggle against, to stop them from doing something, to put them in danger, to act as a source of tension between them, and ultimately to move the story along. Such circumstances create atmosphere, physical and/or emotional, affecting characters' moods, influencing the plot. For several of the weather episodes in my novels, I've needed to do considerable research, which for me is always an enjoyable task. I do some on line from weather and news reports, and from reading and viewing local information, and where possible from visiting the area.

During a trip some years ago to the Eastern Caribbean, I had no thought of setting a novel in a location entirely exotic for me; the contemporary romance Where the Heart Is emerged later. While I gave Cristina a dreamy Caribbean beach (plus a dreamy man) in gorgeous weather, I also involved her in a hurricane with a perilous wet and windy mountain rescue by motorbike. I didn't experience the extreme weather event I put her and the motorbike rider through, but I did gain background knowledge valuable for future use. And in this story, the sub-tropical climate contrasts with the temperate spring of her rural Australian home.

As I sign off on this post, the wind is still strong enough to blow a dog off a chain, and tonight will be a two or three dog night. Maybe these are Australian expressions? The number of dogs theoretically (perhaps practically!) to keep you warm in bed.






Hoping your weather is kind to you, Priscilla

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Why I love research—Part 2—Tricia McGill

Find links to all my books on my BWL author page

I think I may have mentioned it before, but I am an avid Dr Who follower. Some complained when, after his last regeneration, he became female for the first time in the series’ history. I like Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, and think she does a remarkable job. She brings just the right amount of humour to the role. As is usual practice on social media, rumours have been swirling that she is about to give up the role—which apparently has proven to be just unfounded rumours.

A week or so ago the episode that sent me off on my random

research journey was the one titled “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”. The Doctor and her sidekicks met up with Tesla in 1903 New York. For those who have no idea what or who the Time Lord Dr Who is, and surely there are not that many, he/she travels through time and space in the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). How I wish I had thought up the brilliant idea of using an old-fashioned police call box as a time machine. I do tend to wonder why at times people don’t seem that surprised when it suddenly appears nearby.

Tesla’s archenemy Thomas Edison was there too, annoying Tesla as apparently he did in life. A mysterious being is about to shut down Tesla’s generator plant at Niagara Falls, and to add to that Tesla has intercepted a message from Mars. Scarier, is that these huge metallic creatures interfere with the whole procedure. (I often get a bit confused with the monsters in the series, but they frequently appear in differing shapes and sizes). Obviously they come from somewhere far out in space to put a spanner in the works.

 

Anyway, it sparked my interest and influenced my search for more information on the renowned genius. Nikola Tesla was born in modern day Croatia (Serbia) in 1856. Doctor Who portrayed the man as a hero who did not fully receive the recognition he deserved. Among Tesla’s scientific achievements was his research findings that led to the Tesla coil, and his contribution to the alternating current electricity Supply system.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mad-scientist-hall-of-fame-nikola-tesla-5648455?IR=T

Unfortunately, there was a dark side to his personality, which is mostly underplayed. He was a firm believer in the study of arranging reproduction with the human population so as to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics thought of as desirable. He was a believer in eugenics. In 1935 his beliefs were published and these reports were uncovered by The Smithsonian a few years back.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikola-tesla-the-eugenicist-eliminating-undesirables-by-2100-130299355/

His belief was that eugenics would be universally established by 2100, aimed primarily at weeding out the less desirable strains of humanity. Rings a bell does it not with another power hungry maniac. Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the fact that he had an amazing mind. He designed and tested his inventions using just the power of concentration. He never made a sketch, yet could build precise models of his inventions. Sadly, his intelligence was sharpened by this intense power of concentration, which tortured him from childhood. There is little doubt he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

In late life, he claimed that he contacted superior intelligent beings from Venus. There is no getting away from the fact that Tesla’s inventive mind improved the lives of billions of humans around the world.

Perhaps to be a genius one also has to be tagged a mad scientist.

 

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Why I love research—Tricia McGill

Find all my books here on my Author page at BWL

A week or so ago I went by ferry along the Yarra River from Docklands in

Melbourne to Williamstown just down the coast a bit. The ferry chugged along at roughly the speed I would imagine was taken by the early settlers. I love my city despite its ever-growing concrete and glass towers. The story goes that John Batman wrote in his journal on 8th  June 1835 two days after sailing up the Yarra River, "So the boat went up the large river, and I am glad to state about six miles up found the river had all good water and very deep. This will be the place for a village."

That last sentence later became famous as the "founding charter" of Melbourne.

Batman signed a so-called treaty with 8 Wurundjeri Aborigine elders to gain 600,000 acres of land around Port Philip, or Melbourne as it would become, and another 100,000 acres around what is now Geelong on the other side of Port Philip Bay. For some time Batman's Treaty, as it came to be called, was assumed by some historians to be a forgery.

By 1838, just 2½ years after John Batman’s announcement that “This will be the Place for a Village“, Melbourne’s population and infrastructure had already grown. By then Melbourne had 3 churches, 13 hotels, 28 business places, and 64 dwelling houses.   On October 27, 1839, the ship David Clark arrived from Scotland in what was then called Hobson’s Bay with 166 adults and 63 children—a voyage of more than four months. The new arrivals were taken ashore in the ship’s boats at the beach opposite Williamstown, and walked overland two miles to the banks of the Yarra River, where 50 tents were pitched in three parallel lines, each numbered to avoid confusion. The newcomers could only reach Melbourne via a punt on the Yarra. What began as a collection of tents and huts on the banks of the Yarra River that was used for bathing and drinking water, by 1850 become so polluted it was the cause of an epidemic of typhoid fever resulting in many deaths.

 
So as you can guess my imagination worked overtime that February 2020 day as the small ferry chugged peacefully along the Yarra River, where towering buildings now reach skywards in splendour, as I try to picture what it must have been like for those early settlers working their way in their vessels along the river where it is likely kangaroos, or emus sat and stared at the intruders. Or possibly natives who were conned by Batman out of the land that had been solely theirs for thousands of years.

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Solo Writing Retreat by Eileen O'Finlan

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It's time to seriously focus on the sequel to Kelegeen, so I spent the last week of February secluded in a hotel suite in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the sequel will be set, to work undisturbed and undistracted.  I arrived at the Residence Inn in Worcester late on Monday afternoon.  Once I was settled in, I got right to work.  The suite has a great little work area with the most comfortable chair ever – I wish I could have taken it home!

The first hurdle was getting on the Internet.  I was given my WiFi password when I checked in, but getting to a screen that actually asked for it seemed an impossible task.  I finally stumbled upon it, put in the password and I was off and running.  The table is right in front of the windows, so during the day the sunlight helped a lot, which is a good thing since the lighting in the suite left a lot to be desired as did the lack of dish liquid and a frying pan, but I digress. 

I wanted to get as much as I could out of this week, so I made it an early night.  I had not realized just how exhausted I’d been until I tried to wake up the next morning.  Even after my brain woke up, my eyelids refused to open.  I think it was around 11:00 a.m. before I dragged myself out of bed.  Yikes!  Most of the morning already gone before I could even eat breakfast, shower, and dress. 

Assuming, I’d have no problem getting online, I fired up the laptop only to find that I had no Internet connection.  After trying in vain to retrace the steps that finally connected me the night before, I gave up and asked the guy at the Front Desk for help.  He obligingly came to my room and had my laptop online in about two seconds.  For those who don’t know (until then, that included me) when you can’t reconnect to a public WiFi connection, try going to a site called purple.com.  It reroutes your computer to get you back online.  Who knew?  I sure didn’t.  Good thing Front Desk Guy knew.  Thank you Front Desk Guy!

I spent the rest of the day with my eyes glued (not literally – I mean, ouch and yuck!) to Erin’s Daughters in America:  Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century by Hansia R. Diner.  Between reading, note-taking, and checking information online, the afternoon flew by.  I did make a point of ungluing my eyes long enough to walk all the hallways on all four floors of the building just to keep my circulation going.  There was little chance of falling asleep at the desk despite feeling like I could nod off at any minute (still in the extreme exhaustion phase) since the air around the desk felt as icy as if I’d opened the windows.  I hate being cold, but, hey, it kept me awake and working.

I went to bed extra early that night, hoping to make up for my late rising.  It didn’t work.  Well, I did get up a little earlier than the previous morning, like around 10:30.  It dawned on me that I needed this week as much to rest as I did to research and write so I decided to stop mentally berating myself for sleeping late and make the most of the time I was awake. 

When I finally finished Erin’s Daughters, it was time for my tour of the four floors.  I remembered seeing photos of various places in Worcester in the hallways of each floor so this time I took my camera.  Meg, my main character, would have arrived from Ireland on a ship and docked in Boston Harbor, then taken a train to Worcester.  I know the current train station wasn’t built until 1911 so I’ve been trying to figure out where the station would have been in my story.  One picture might have given me a clue.  It’s the outside of a building with the words Boston and Albany – New York – New Haven and Hartford – Boston and Maine engraved in the façade.  Hmmm…could this have been the original station?

Research brings both answers and questions.  The more I find out the more I need to know.  So along with my notes I have a growing list of questions, most of which have to do with the who and where in Worcester in the 1850s. 

After checking the website for the Worcester Historical Museum I found that they have a plethora of information on Worcester in the 19^th century.  I gave them a call, only to find I was speaking with a woman who took the online course in Church History that I just finished teaching.  What were the odds of that?  She informed me that the museum’s archivist is an expert on Irish immigrants in Worcester.  Pay dirt!  I made an appointment to meet with her so the last night of my solo retreat was spent writing out those all-important questions I want to ask her.

Oh, and one more thing – Chapter 1 is well underway.  The sequel has officially begun.