Accidental Deaths by J. S. Marlo

  

Wounded Hearts

"Love & Sacrifice #2"

is now available  

click here 

 

 

  

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I write murder/mystery/romance novels. As such, someone will be injured or die by the end of the book, and my perpetrators will go to great length to deflect or cover their crime.

In average, 15,000 people die every year following an accident in Canada. Accidents are the 1st leading cause of death in people under the age of 45, and the 4th overall in all age groups after Cancer, Heart Diseases, and Covid-19. Interestingly, if we separate the statistics by gender, accidents are the 3rd leading cause of death in men but the 5th in women.

Since accidents are relatively common, one way to cover a murder is to make it look like an accident. Here are the six major causes of accidental deaths:

- Motor Vehicle Accidents (1st cause in both men & women): one of my perpetrators tampered with a car...

- Fall (2nd in both men & women): it's fairly easy to push someone down the stairs, but the problem is when the victim survives the fall and can identify the perpetrator...

- Drowning (3rd in men, 6th in women): forcing someone to drown without leaving signs of struggle behind is not as easy as it looks...

- Fire (4th in men, 3rd women): fire tends to destroy everything, except what started the fire...

- Suffocation (5th in men, 4th women): pillows come to mind here...

- Poisoning (6th in men, 5th women): the perpetrators in historical novels could get away with poisoning their victims, but nowadays only a handful of substances will not show up during an autopsy, and these few undetectable substances aren't readily available.

My perpetrators won't stop trying to hide their crimes, but they won't get away with it LOL

Enjoy the small blessings that life brings every day & stay safe!

JS

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

 

It's a big, big world out there...by Sheila Claydon

Click here for my books and author page

A new year, a new decade, what does the next 10 years hold for us? Only time will tell.

Looking back over the past 10 years, however, I realise how much in my own life has changed, and also how many wonderful experiences I've had. Since 2010 I've visited so many different parts of the world, including the big ones of China, Russia, America and India, that I don't have enough fingers to count them.  I've travelled across New Zealand, I've lived in Australia for 6 months. I've been to Canada and onward to Alaska. I've spent weeks in Hong Kong. I've also travelled to more than a dozen European countries as well as to many parts of the UK, some familiar, some not, and my goodness how my attitudes have changed in this past decade.

Most of my travels have come about because of commitments to family or friends. I'm not an inveterate traveller, even though it might seem like it. I am quite happy with a quiet life walking my dog and meeting local friends.  The travels happened, however, and with them a deeper understanding of different cultures - how different we all are, and yet how similar.

Seeing ragged beggars on the streets of Delhi before experiencing the reverence of thousands of Sikhs at the Golden Temple in Amritsar gave me such an emotional jolt that I began to look at India in another way entirely. The same in China, where everyone is so friendly and helpful, especially if, like me, you have white hair. The respect for older citizens in China is palpable wherever you go. Russian people are mostly serious while Canadians and Australians are laid back and relaxed. Alaskans are just different but then so would I be if I had to live at -30 to -40 degrees for a long, long winter. Then there is busy and overcrowded Hong Kong with its wonderful beaches and museums where life is very good for those who earn well. It has many citizens who are less lucky, however, and it is very noticeable that they don't smile as much as the mainland Chinese.

Then there is America.  Like any large country the people in Washington are very different from the people in San Diego or Orlando or Las Vegas or Key West. What they all have in common, however, is their overwhelming friendliness towards people from the UK, and an insatiable curiosity about our way of life.

Finally there's Europe and that is where there is an even bigger discrepancy. The French are nothing like the Italians who are nothing like the Spanish who are nothing like the Scandinavians who are nothing like the Albanians etc. etc. It is so fascinating eat different food,  listen to different music, travel through different scenery, hear different languages, all the while trying to understand and absorb just a little of the different cultures in such a limited time.

I have been extra lucky that so many of my trips have involved staying with or travelling with local people who always wanted to show the best of their country while also discussing some of its worst aspects.  So thanks to them, this decade has not only broadened my mind, it has broadened my understanding.

In the words of the eminent French novelist Gustave Flaubert : travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world or, as the American writer Henry Miller said: One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things. 

My views are only my views of course, and other people will see and experience different facets of each culture, but I do know that my decade long journey has changed me unalterably. I am no longer the English woman who first got on a plane aged 40, and who never expected to travel much further than France. Now that I've talked to the indigenous peoples of Australia, native Americans, Alaskan natives, rural Indians of all religious persuasions, communist Chinese and anglophile Russians, to say nothing of the many different peoples of Europe, I know I really am just a speck on the vast planet we call earth.

There must be many, many stories inside me if only I could write them, but somehow the best experiences never translate into the written word. They have to be lived,

I have occasionally used some of my experiences as a background to my books, however, and Cabin Fever is based on a cruise from Aukland in New Zealand's north island to Sydney in Australia. I haven't done it justice I'm sure...but re-reading it has taken me back to what was a truly wonderful experience, although unlike the protagonists in the book, I was lucky enough to visit friends and family en-route and so experienced so much more than the casual traveller.

Now, as a new decade starts, I'm off to Japan and South Korea, both of which promise to be a whole new and challenging cultural experience. I'm busy reading up on them at the moment but as English writer Aldhous Huxley said: to travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Happy travelling.

Characters or friends?..by Sheila Claydon

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I'm taking a break from writing at the moment despite having a half finished manuscript on my computer...the second book of my Mapleby Memories Series. I don't have writer's block, nor am I struggling with my characters, it's just that this year the needs of family and friends have had to come first, and will continue to do so for a while yet.

A few years ago I would have struggled to deal with this. Writing had become an obsession. The need to type words on a page a daily necessity. So what changed? Well having 12 books published, mainly by Books We love, but a couple by other publishers too, made me realise I really was a writer. I had nothing left to prove. I could do it. I could write stories that other people wanted to read. A trickle of fan mail helped too, making my earlier efforts and disappointments all the more worthwhile.

More than that though, and mad as it might seem to a non-writer, it's the stories I've written that have calmed me down. Now, if I choose to, I can live in a world inhabited by a whole lot of characters who, at times, are almost as real as the flesh and blood people around me. I have never been able to start writing until I can see the main protagonists in my mind's eye. I don't draw up astrological charts for them as some writers do, or create detailed past histories for reference, I just need to see them.  And once I can do that, then they start to develop the story all by themselves.

It's not always easy because sometimes they won't follow my plan no matter how hard I try to make it work. Instead they go their own merry way as if they were a real person with ideas of their own, and that's what I mean about my world. I might not have the time to write at the moment but I can still see all those characters from my books, and sometimes, when I visit a place where I've set a story, or I make the same journey a character  made in one of my books, then I can imagine them there with me all over again.

In my experience writing a book expands my world. Sitting in front of a computer for hours might seem lonely to the onlooker, but then they can't see the host of new friends I've created who will always be with me.

One of my favourite characters is Rachel in Remembering Rose, the first Mapleby Memory, and Daniel in Reluctant Date is to die for!

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My sinuous path to writing by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo BWL Author Page

Many people I meet are curious to know how I became a writer, but I’m afraid the answer often disappoints them—or isn’t quite what they expect to hear.

I would love to say I obtained a degree in English literature, journalism, or creative writing (such a degree would come handy on a daily basis), then wrote and published stories. Instead, I followed a different path, a path I never dreamed would lead to writing and publishing.

As a teen, when I was bored during math class, I scribbled short stories, imagined new scripts for my favorite TV shows, or rewrote the ending of books I read, but without any writing expectations. It was pure fun. A hobby. A secret passion. I believed my path forward was lit with numbers, not words. I wanted to become an accountant, a statistician, a mathematician, or an actuary. I obtained a degree in business and finance, and for nearly twenty years, numbers ruled my world with little room for words.

 Then one summer day, I underwent a routine surgery but developed a severe infection following major complications. I spent many months in bed. To save my sanity, my husband gave me a laptop so I could interact with the outside world.

Well...I found a writing site. At first, I was a reader, then I gathered the nerve (or maybe it was the meds) to post the opening scene of a story. Next thing I knew I started getting comments about my scene, so I posted another one. Writing my daily scene gave me purpose and pleasure amid the pain. What had started as an escape became a torch at the end of a long tunnel, a flame that rekindled that secret passion buried deep inside me. In time, I healed and re-entered the world of the living, but I couldn’t ignore or re-bottle that passion I unleashed. In the following six years, I wrote and shared over two dozen stories—fun stories that served as learning tools for POV, floating body parts, show vs tell, character development...

Thanks to the encouragement I received, I started writing a special story, a story about a female scuba diver who investigates a Ford Model T sunk at the bottom of a lake, a story I kept to myself and showed to no one. After I finished it, I submitted it in a contest sponsored by a new publisher. In my wildest dreams I never imagined it would land me my first publishing contract.

Writing is a precious gift I rediscovered under difficult circumstances, and it changed my life for the better. The journey is ongoing as I write almost every day and sometimes way too late at night. So far, I’ve published eight novels, I’m midway through a ninth, and I’m geared up to start a new romance paranormal series later this year.

So, how did I become a writer? Quite literally by accident.

Thanks for joining me. Have a wonderful day!
JS

 J. S. Marlo's Website