Write a cozy? Me?

 

Sometimes the universe converges and the stars align.

I’d been writing hard-boiled mysteries and I thought any lesser character than say, Mike Hammer, just wasn’t going to cut it in the mystery marketplace. That’s when my wife caught me off guard.

“Honey, you’re through with your latest blood-spattered thriller. Why don’t you write one of those British-style mysteries, the ones where someone dies, maybe by poison, but the author doesn’t dwell on the murder. The book is devoted to solving the mystery through shrewd policework, rather than following bloody footprints until the shootout in the end.”

I seized up. A British-style mystery? A cozy? Me?

Still pondering the prospect of writing a cozy, I ate lunch the next day with a group of friends. Brian, a jovial fellow, enjoyed joking with me about becoming the next Arthur Conan Doyle. He cornered me after lunch and asked a simple question, “Have you ever considered setting a mystery in my hometown, Two Harbors, Minnesota? There are lots of colorful people and I’d be happy to help you with settings and background.” I laughed, thanked him, and moved on. I’d never been to Two Harbors and knew little about the town except it was nearly tied with Frostbite Falls as the coldest spot in Minnesota.

My wife and I were dealing with another non-urgent emergency related to the custodial care of her mother, her aunt, my father, and my uncle. We’d run the gamut of issues and had gone from groans and eye rolls, to chuckles as the situations became inane. The latest was a call from my father. “You’ve got to move me. Someone ate my dinner brownie while I was in the bathroom and I can’t stay in a place where people don’t respect your right to have your brownie left alone until you return from the toilet.”

That night was my convergence. I sat down and wrote a chapter of a cozy, set in a Two Harbors senior residence. I brought it to lunch the next day and handed it to Brian. He munched on his sandwich as he read, his eyes twinkling. He pushed it back to me and said, “Nice start. I’ll bring you more fodder tomorrow.” The next day he arrived at the lunch table with a one-inch stack of recipe cards. He split them into two piles: characters and locations.

Months later I had a draft of a cozy. I’d incorporated what I thought was tasteful humor, but I had no idea if “it worked.” A dear retired friend, Nancy, has read all my books and is an avid reader of anything hinting of mystery. I emailed the computer file to her and asked for her opinion. There was an email in my inbox the next evening with the subject line, “WHEN’S THE SEQUEL?” I called and asked if any of the humor had resonated with her. Her response, “I spent the whole night mopping my tears of laughter. Yes! I love the humor!”

The protagonist is Peter Rogers, the recreation director of the Whistling Pines Senior Residence. The supporting characters include an understated police chief, an elderly neighbor who shoots at “vermin” in her urban yard with antique guns, and a host of senior citizens who, through their everyday lives, cause Peter no end of grief.

My most recent cozy, published this past October by BWL Publishing, is Whistling up a Ghost. (Spoiler alert) Peter is now married to his long-time girlfriend Jenny, and they’re moving into an old mansion given to them as a wedding gift. Eerie footfalls in the attic drive Jenny’s eight-year-old son to their bed the first night in the new house. The ghostly encounters continue to vex the newlyweds, who are convinced there is a worldly answer to the seemingly otherworldly events.

Meanwhile, the town finds a time capsule during the demolition of the bandshell. When it’s opened on live television, a gun, a poem, and a newspaper clipping spill out, providing hints about a 1950’s murder, an event that every Whistling Pines resident recalls. Not surprisingly, each resident also has an opinion about the murder and murderer. Peter is asked to sort the swirling Whistling Pines rumors from the facts, sucking him into the middle of a mystery as he and Jenny try to prepare their haunted house for their first Christmas as a married couple. Between the ghost, the antics of the city band, the Whistling Pines residents, and Jenny’s usually reserved parents, Peter and Jenny work through the ghost and time capsule mysteries. Just when they think all the mysteries have been solved, the ghost makes one more appearance on Christmas Eve.

Although I readily admit to skepticism about writing a cozy, I now know they’re fun for both the reader and the writer. In some ways, writing a cozy more challenging than a darker mystery, having to dance around the issue of death while still writing a murder mystery. Creating the senior citizen characters is a riot and my friend, Brian, has a never-ending stack of note cards with more characters, plot ideas, and locations. When I finished Whistling up a Ghost, I thought it would be the last of the series. It isn’t. BWL is publishing Whistling up a Pirate later this year.

Please offer you thoughts and comments about Whistling up a Ghost, the Whistling Pines series, or cozies in general. I’d love to see your responses.

A Legacy

 

https://books2read.com/Her-Scottish-Legacy

 As defined in the dictionary, a legacy is a gift, by will, especially of money or other personal property; something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.

I’m not sure that today’s generation feels the same way about legacies as those of generations past. Our lives today seem more filled with disposable things and things not meant to last. As I look around my house, it’s certainly not filled with antique furniture from my grandparents or pictures that once hung in the parlor. I do have a small packet of letters that my dad wrote my mom back in 1946 when he left for Germany a month after they were married. When my parents died, they left the grandkids money, which according to definition is a legacy, but it’s not the same as something lasting such as jewelry, a pocket knife or a small memento from a life well lived.

Our history is also being lost because of technology. We don’t write letters; we send emails which are read then deleted to make room for more. We don’t have to write diaries or journals for those who come later to know our history. Everything you ever wanted to know is posted on multiple sites on the internet. While information is readily available, it has lost the personal element of the writer who took the journey. If you are one of the few who journal, you have a legacy for your children and grandchildren. You don’t have to have done something incredible like bicycle across the country or climb the highest mountain and then write about it to leave a legacy.

While the definition I found tends to make one think of tangible things, a legacy can certainly be intangible. I was brought up in a strict household where you said “yes, sir” and were expected to do your best – in school or at a job. I tried to instill those same attributes in my children. I can remember once when my high school daughter not so jokingly said “damn your work ethic” because her friends were playing hokey from work and she couldn’t make herself call in sick to her work place.

My love of writing a good story is another legacy I hope to pass down, although it has apparently skipped my children and gone directly to my grandchildren. At age “almost 13”, my granddaughter has been writing stories for several years, some with quite involved characters and plot lines. My 10 year old grandson prefers his stories full of monsters and explosive action, accompanied with original drawings of said exploding universes. That same grandson has my father’s surname as his middle name…another legacy from the past.

Do you have legacies – things passed down to you? Are they from more than one generation in the past? More important, do you know the stories behind them?

Writing “Her Scottish Legacy” led to quite a bit of mystery in the process of Heather and Hunter discovering her legacy, left undetected for over twenty-five years. Available as an ebook at any of your favorite online retailers https://books2read.com/Her-Scottish-Legacy and in print through Amazon. Her Scottish Legacy: Baldwin, Barbara: 9780228616153: AmazonSmile: Books  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did while writing-- especially all the Scottish history and learning about the textile industry of the time.

Wishing you a creative and healthy New Year,

Barb Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

 

 

 

 

Margaret Hanna Guest Author - Finding Mary’s Voice

Visit Margaret's BWL Author Page for book and purchase information

In case you hadn’t notice, I write. At least, I try to write. It isn’t easy, not for me, anyway. Questions abound – What do I write about? Will it make sense? Is what I’ve written what I really want to say? Will anyone read it? Will anyone care?

The pundits say, Write for yourself and the readers will come. Perhaps they’re right.

As of now, I am writing (trying to write) an historical novel, except it isn’t really a novel. Like many movies, it is “inspired by . . .” because it is more or less the life of my maternal grandmother after she immigrated to Canada from England in 1912.

The facts are no problem. Creating the scenes around the facts is not too much of a problem. Finding Mary’s voice is the problem.

Unlike my maternal grandmother, who died when I was eight, I knew my paternal grandmother, Addie Hanna, very well. I had no problem finding her voice when I wrote "Our Bull's Loose in Town!" Tales from the Homestead. Check it out, but be prepared to meet an opinionated woman who doesn't hesitate to tell it like she sees it.

The story is presented through Mary’s diary so finding her voice is essential. I have several letters that my grandmother wrote so you would think that finding her voice would be a snap – just copy her style.

It isn’t that easy. I struggled but what appeared on my computer screen just didn’t sound like her or at least how I imagined she would write. Then someone suggested I uncap my good old fountain pen from my high school days (no ball point pens back in 1912) and write something by hand. With ink. On paper. As Mary would have done.

I couldn’t believe it – Mary’s voice appeared like magic. It’s almost, but not quite, a stream-of-consciousness voice and why not? This is a diary, after all, and a diary is where you pour out your heart and soul.

I wrote the first several diary entries by hand with fountain pen and then transcribed them to computer. Her voice is now ensconced in my head so I can write most diary entries directly on the computer but whenever I run into trouble, when her voice eludes me, I go back to fountain pen and paper and, lo and behold, she is back with me.

This isn’t the first time I discovered the mind-hand connection can be messed up by technology. Back in university days, I wrote my term paper drafts by hand and then typed them (anyone remember typewriters?) before handing them in. One day, I had a Eureka moment – why don’t I “write” the drafts directly on the typewriter before doing cut-and-paste the old-fashioned scissors-and-tape way. I inserted the first sheet of paper into the typewriter, rolled it through the platen and poised my fingers over the keyboard.

Nothing! That piece of paper stared back at me and dared me to put a single letter, never mind a word or sentence or paragraph, on it. It was as if the neural circuit connecting the words in my mind to my fingers above the keyboard had suddenly been disconnected. That first draft was a struggle to put on paper but eventually the new mind-hand circuit grew and it was no longer so difficult.

Then came the computer era. I acquired my first computer in 1982 – two floppy disk drives, 64K memory, 84-character green screen and a word processing program that required embedded dot-commands to format the text. Transitioning from typewriter to computer would be a piece of cake, or so I thought.

Ha! The first time I tried to write, that dratted green cursor blinked back at me, daring me to put a (virtual) word on that (virtual) paper. I could hear it laughing at me. Once again, it seemed as if the mind-hand circuit had been disconnected and, once again, I had to build a new one.

Now, it is normal for me to sit at my computer and type away. The words flow with little effort (okay, not always, but mostly) from what’s in my mind to what appears on the (virtual) paper.

Which brings me back to my recent discovery, that the technology I use has helped me find Mary’s voice. Why is that?

 If there’s a neuroscientist out there reading this, perhaps she can explain.

 I certainly can’t.

How do you say Snow? by J. S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I have often heard that Inuit people have more than 50 words for snow. It's not quite true, but they do have many words for snow.

Back in November, I was checking the weather, and one day I saw a term I'd never heard before: light snow grains. The grains threw me for a loop. I was taking a long walk that morning, and the white stuff resembled prickly snow, so once I got back, I googled snow grains. From there, since I like for my stories to take place in the winter, I looked at how many different kind of snow term I could find in English.

Snow: Frozen precipitation in the form of white or translucent ice crystals in complex branched hexagonal form. It most often falls from stratiform clouds, but can fall as snow showers from cumuliform ones. At temperatures > than -5 °C, the crystals generally cluster to form snowflakes.

Wet snow: Snow with a high moisture content.

Dry snow: Snow with a low moisture content.

Snow grains: Frozen precipitation in the form of very small, white opaque grains of ice. The solid equivalent of drizzle. Their diameter is generally < 1 mm. When grains hit hard ground, they do not bounce or shatter. They usually fall in very small quantities, mostly from Status clouds or fog and never in the form of a shower.

Snow pellets: Frozen precipitation of particles of either spherical or conical ice; their diameter is about 2 to 5 mm. They are brittle, easily crushed, and unlike hail, when they fall on hard ground, they bounce and often break up. Snow pellets always occur in showers and are often accompanied by snowflakes or raindrops when the surface temperature is around 0 °C.

Blowing snow: Snow particles violently stirred up by wind to sufficient heights above the ground to reduce visibility to 10 km or less.

Snow squall: A heavy snow shower accompanied by sudden strong winds.

Frost: Frost is the condition that exists when the temperature of the air near the earth or earth-bound objects falls to freezing or lower (0 °C). Alternately, frost or hoar frost describes a deposition of ice crystals on objects by direct sublimation of water vapour from the air.

Hail: Precipitation of small balls or pieces of ice with a diameter ranging from 5 to 50 mm or more. Hail is generally observed during heavy thunderstorms.

Ice: The solid form of water. It can be found in the atmosphere in the form of ice crystals, snow, ice pellets, and hail for example.

Ice crystals: Precipitation in the form of slowly falling, singular or unbranched ice needles, columns, or plates. They make up cirriform clouds, frost, and ice fog. Also, they produce optical phenomena such as halos, coronas, and sun pillars. May be called "diamond dust." Precipitation of ice crystals in the form of needles, columns or plates sometimes so tiny, they seem suspended in air. They are mainly visible when they glitter in sunshine and occur only at very low temperatures and stable air masses.

Ice pellets: Precipitation of transparent or translucent pellets of ice, which are spherical or irregular shaped, having a diameter of 5 mm or less. They are classified into two types: hard grains of ice consisting of frozen rain drops or largely melted and refrozen snowflakes; pellets of snow encased in a thin layer of ice which have formed from the freezing of droplets intercepted by pellets or water resulting from the partial melting of pellets. Ice pellets usually bounce when hitting hard ground and make a sound on impact. They can fall as continuous precipitation or in showers.

Freezing rain: Rain, the drops of which freeze on impact with the ground or with objects at or near the ground.

Freezing drizzle: Drizzle, the drops of which freeze on impact with the ground or with objects at or near the ground.

Can I tell the difference between  all of them when I'm outside? Most of the time, but I oblivious didn't know about snow grains LOLOL

One thing I can say, it's how cold it gets in my northern corner of the world.  

It's so cold...we had to chop up the piano for firewood.  Ya, we only got two chords.

It's so cold...grandpa's teeth were chattering.  In the glass!

It's so cold...eating ice cream was knocked down to #4 in the "Top Five Ways to get a Brain Freeze".

It is so cold...we can toss a cup of hot water in the air and hear it shatter into ice crystals.

Happy reading! Stay Warm & Safe!

Many hugs!

JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Sleigh Ride! by Eileen O'Finlan

 

Click here for purchase information

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

I can't believe I've lived in New England all my life and I've never been on a sleigh ride. Well, it will have to go on my bucket list. Especially after the fun my characters, Meg, Kathleen, and Nuala had when they indulged in a sleigh ride. Meg, Kathleen, and Nuala are domestic servants in Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1850s. Irish immigrants, they all came from the horrible starvation of An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger. They were lucky to survive. But now they have new lives in America. It's not all fun. They work hard sun-up to sun-down and then some. But unlike their lives in Ireland, they are able to earn good enough livings to send money back to their families, save for their futures, and partake of an occasional indulgence. Usually it involves clothing that mimics that of their employers. But on a day in February they decide to find out why the children of their employers are so fond of sleigh rides and pool their money to hire a sleigh and driver for themselves. Here's a peek at what happens:

Blankets and foot warmers in hand, the three bounded out the door. Two large chestnut horses trotted up the street, stopping in front of the house. The sleigh driver was the same Irishman who had taken the Claprood girls and their cousins for a ride.

“Where to?” he asked, jumping down to assist them into the sleigh.

“Anywhere you like,” Nuala told him. “We're out for enjoyment. It doesn't matter where we go.”

A flicker of recognition showed on his face as Nuala spoke, her brogue giving her away. “You lasses are the helps?”

“Aye,” said Nuala, “but today we're your passengers.”

Looking at Meg, he furrowed his brow. “Didn't I see you at the Claproods'?”

“You did. I work for them.”

A broad grin spread across his face. “This is a grand thing indeed!”

“What do you mean?” Kathleen asked.

“'Tis the first time I've driven Irish lasses. It's always Yanks that hire me. We're every bit as good as they are even if they don't know it, aye? One day we'll be as successful as them. Then you'll ride in sleighs and carriages anytime you want.”

They all giggled at the thought. Meg wondered if it could really be possible.

“What's your name?” Nuala asked.

“Seamus O'Herilhy, at your service, m'ladies,” he said, with a sweeping bow that from most people would have seemed mocking, but from their countryman held an air of genuine respect.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Seamus O'Herilhy,” Nuala responded. “I'm Nuala O'Flaherty, and these are my friends, Meg and Kathleen O'Connor.”

“A pleasure it is,” he said with a smile before climbing onto the driver's box. With a snap of the whip, the horses were in motion.

For the next two hours they traversed the hills and valleys of Worcester. It was obvious that Seamus knew the city well. They headed northwest to the Tatnuck section. Filled with meadows, pastures, and farmland, Tatnuck appeared like a fairyland. Last night's snowfall covered the landscape like a pristine white cape with a million glistening diamonds. Only where farmers had gone about their chores was the seamless white garment rent by plodding footprints.

Wind whipped their faces as the sleigh sped along, the horses picking up speed in the open fields. Meg gazed wide-eyed at the world of white domed by a clear blue sky. The easy glide of the runners with their accompanying whoosh made her grin so hard it hurt. She'd never before felt such exhilaration.

Nuala nudged her. “Aye, but this is exciting!” she exclaimed.

Meg nodded, the bracing air stealing her breath. She glanced at Kathleen. She, too, was grinning as she peered first one direction then another. The big draft horses kicked up sprays of snow as they ad-vanced, their bells resounding in the brisk air. The sleigh slowed as they crested a hill, then sped up again as it raced down the other side. The friends screamed with delight, falling into a fit of laughter upon reaching the bottom.

Public Domain picture