My Weblog

Hot Times

By Elaine Viets

Our air-conditioning died and Don and I waited two days for a new system. It was a blast from the past, a return to the old-fashioned summers I'd forgotten.
We live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where air-conditioning is not a luxury – it's a necessity. This is one of the hottest summers on record. The temperatures are in the mid-eighties, which feel like the mid-nineties. The humidity is a sticky, steamy 66 percent.
That's a lot like summers in the Midwest when Don and I were growing up. Neither of our families had air-conditioning back then.

How did we stay cool?
We didn't.
In the good old days, summer was a miserable season, and sleep was nearly impossible. Many city people would take their bedding and sleep in the local parks. Heaven help the petty thief who got caught in the midst of those cranky, sleepless adults and crying babies.

Some soaked a sheet in cold water, wrapped themselves in the wet sheet, and then crawled into bed. It worked, but it was no fun waking up in soggy sheets the next morning. Other sufferers dragged their mattresses to "sleeping porches," fire escapes, or balconies, to catch a bit of breeze.
Don and I did not sleep on our narrow condo balcony, but we turned on the overhead fans and took lots of cold showers during two long, sweaty nights, hoping to fall asleep while we were still fairly cool. The second night was a four-shower night.
It took our air-con crew more than nine hours to install our new system, including three brutal hours for them in the broiling sun on the flat, tarry condo roof. By seven-thirty that night, Don and I were cool.

But those hot days revived old memories of life before air-conditioning:
Fans hummed night and day, and in densely packed cities and suburbs, we could hear our neighbors' radios, TVs and arguments. Especially arguments. The neighborhood rumor mills would be churning the next morning at the ladies' kaffee klatches – which were held over iced tea. Remember, many women back then were stay-at-home moms.
Women got up at dawn, while it was still reasonably cool, to do the day's cooking, roasting and baking. Some women, like my grandmother, had a "summer kitchen" – an old stove in the basement, and they cooked down there. That's where the ironing was done, too. Those cool-looking cottons required hours of hot labor.

People went to the movies. Movie houses were air-conditioned long before many other businesses. Any air-conditioned business was popular in the summer. Our local Rexall Drug Store boasted a proud sticker of a shivering penguin that said, "Come in! We're cool." They were, too. And their fountain had good Cokes.

Other families escaped their sweat boxes by taking drives. Cars back then had vent windows – the "poor-man's air conditioning." See the vent windows in this old Mercury station wagon? Hot-and-bothered front seat passengers cooled down, thanks to them. (Click the car to see the full photo.) We kids got to sit in the back of the station wagon with the big tailgate window rolled down. We were not as well-behaved as the little darlings in this ad, either. My brothers and I bickered the whole time: "Mom, he's looking at me funny." "Mom, she's got her foot on my side!"
Seatbelts didn't exist yet. Cars in those unregulated days were unsafe at any speed.
So here's my old-fashioned family going for a drive: Dad, hot and sweaty after a day's work, is at the wheel. Mom, tired of coping with the heat, household chores, and squabbling kids, is in the passenger seat, trying to ignore us. We kids, hot and cranky, are pushing our parents almost to the breaking point. Almost. We knew if we went too far, Dad would turn around and drive right back home. Not cool.

My father would drive us to a soft-serve ice cream stand in Cool Valley, a tiny St. Louis suburb that really was cooler than our house back then. It's been mostly paved over now. We all got chocolate-dipped cones, which we ate outside the car so we wouldn't drip it all over everything. There was an art to eating a dip cone: if you bit into it wrong, the chocolate would fall on the ground.
Here's the only good thing I discovered during our return to the past: I craved ice cream. Really craved it. Ice cream tastes better if you don't live in air-conditioning.
But I'll give up that small pleasure for a cool house.

Last day to win The Art of Murder, my new Dead-End Job hardcover mystery set at a museum. Go to www.elaineviets.com and click Contests.

Dkyes in the Wild

By Dharma Kelleher

I'm delighted to have Dharma Kelleher as a guest Femme today. Her debut novel, Iron Goddess, was released yesterday by Penguin Random House's Alibi imprint, so here's your chance to get in on something hot off the presses

Take it away, Dharma!

-- Toni / Leigh

 

 

I am frequently asked what inspired me to start writing. As a teenager, I wrote simply for the sheer joy of creation. But soon the complications of life (i.e. coming to terms with my being transgender and a lesbian) took center stage and I stopped writing for the better part of twenty-five years.

By the time I hit my forties, things had settled down for me. I had built a new life as a woman. I was married to an awesome lady. But one thing still troubled me: the lack of diversity in lesbian fiction.

The majority of lesbian fiction published is composed of coming out stories, romances, erotica, and cozy murder mystery. But there’s so much more to being a lesbian than coming out, falling in love, having sex, and stumbling over dead bodies.

I wanted something that depicted more of everyday life as a lesbian. At the same time, I wanted books that didn’t focus primarily on the main character’s sexual orientation.

About this same time, my wife introduced me to the wonderful world of motorcycles. For a few years, I was a member of a local all-women’s motorcycle group. Not surprisingly, about half the women in the club were gay. And this got me thinking about writing a story about a lesbian biker.

I began to flesh out this character, Shea Stevens, and her back story. She comes from a family of outlaw bikers, but she’s became estranged from them. She’s a misfit, an ex-con, trying to make a life for herself as a bike builder. The fact that she’s gay is the least interesting thing about her. This is the kind of story I had wanted to read.

This book became Iron Goddess and it’s really not lesbian fiction, per se. A similar story could be made by making Shea straight. But that’s not the story I wanted to tell. I wanted a story that showed a lesbian dealing with issues that had nothing to do with her sexuality.

At its heart, Iron Goddess is about family and the complications that brings up. Family of origin. Family of choice. The family of community.

When we first meet Shea, we see the bonds she has with her business partner Terrance and her employees. We get a glimpse of her relationship with her girlfriend. But when circumstances propel Shea to reconnect with her estranged outlaw biker family, she finds herself torn between her old, chaotic life and the new, more civilized life. It is the way in which Shea navigates these disparate worlds that gives the story its heart.

My critique group jokingly calls my writing “biker noir.” I simply like to write gritty stories about renegades, outlaws, and misfits, because these are the interesting people. These are the people I can relate to. And in writing their stories, I’m exploring, if metaphorically, my own journey of being a renegade, an outlaw, and a misfit.

 

 

Dharma Kelleher writes gritty tales about outlaws, renegades, and misfits. A descendant of playwright Eugene O’Neill, she started writing as a teenager.

A former radio news director, she now works as a freelance editor.

Her hobbies include riding motorcycles, getting inked, making snarky comments on Facebook and Twitter, and shocking people with her latest haircut.

She lives near Phoenix with her wife. Learn more about her and her writing at dharmakelleher.com.

The Other CSI

Catriona is currently finishing a thriller and a Sisters in Crime Report and getting ready to go to Britain in two weeks' time to launch a mystery and attend Harrogate, so she has stepped aside to let a real investigator take the reins. (She only writes about it, you know.)

Dr Neil McRoberts, UC Davis

Forensic science has been delivering ratings toppers and bestsellers for years. But here’s something new: a wave of attacks sweeping the nation, millions of helpless victims, a complex legal tangle, the very latest in DNA-based investigations, and sniffer dogs too.

It’s the other CSI: Citrus Science Investigation.

With geeky, corduroy-clad plant-pathologists in place of Kay Scarpetta.

Citrus trees around the world are being killed by a bacterial disease first named in Chinese as Huanglongbing (HLB) or “yellow dragon” disease. Infected trees produce elongated shoots on which the leaves grow at a slightly tilted angle and are yellow rather than green. If you squint at shoots of this type and use a little imagination they do sometimes give the impression of the scaly neck of a golden dragon.

Once a tree is infected with the HLB bacterium a slow death is inevitable. There is no cure, none of the varieties of citrus we eat have useful levels of resistance, and long before an infected tree finally dies its fruit becomes inedibly sour and unpleasant-tasting.

Florida was the first of the US’s major citrus-producing states to detect HLB, back in 2005. In the decade since then it has spread to every county of the state and caused the Florida orange juice industry to shrink to a third of its former size. Citrus trees in private gardens are no less at risk and everything is pointing to a future in which Floridians will no longer be able to pick fresh oranges from their own trees to squeeze for their breakfast juice, or grow their own grapefruit to go with it.

A similar fate awaits other citrus-growing states. HLB has been detected in backyard trees in LA.

One of the problems is that HLB is an invisible killer; infected trees don’t show symptoms for months or even years. Meanwhile the disease spreads to all neighbouring trees, which in turn harbour their secret and keep the spread spreading. Not surprisingly, major efforts are being made by state and federal government departments and by the citrus industry to track down the tree killer and stop it.

photo-credit Steve Garnsey USDA-ARS

Thankfully, the presence of the bacterium can be confirmed through the use of DNA detection methods, in which minute traces can be detected with CSI-like precision. But this is where our disease detective story has the potential to turn into a legal drama. Trying to persuade a grower to kill a healthy-looking tree, perhaps one heavy with valuable fruit, is far from easy and experience with other diseases shows a history of legal challenges as well as quarantine programs that become mired in litigation.

And there’s another problem: a tissue sample taken early enough to be useful in stopping the spread has to be taken from precisely the right spot of the tree where the bacterium is at work. By the time the tree is infected enough for any old sample to do, it’s too late.

Luckily, infected trees smell bad before they look bad . . . to the right kind of very sensitive nose. Enter the sniffer dogs.

Just as dogs can be trained to detect explosives, drugs, and cancer, so they can be trained to detect HLB and the training program, based in Florida, has so far done just that with 10 dogs – mostly German Shepherds – and has 10 more coming. The dogs romp through a citrus orchard until they detect the presence of the disease, then they sit down and won’t budge unless they are rewarded with a few moments of play with their favorite toy.

Mira, Coast-to-Coast K9

The dogs, the citrus growers, federal and state legislators, and those corduroyed plant pathologists are all working hard. But in the meantime a killer is at large.

 

READING SEASONS

I think of winter as a great reading time, and so do the publishers. I envision being trapped inside by the Arctic weather (which doesn’t happen often in Texas), or being iced in (which happens often enough). Then there’s beaucoup time to read. And summer! Who hasn’t heard the phrase “beach book”? However, I am a year-round reader, and I suspect most of the people I know are also in that category . . . though I am afraid I know quite a few people who don’t read at all. Maybe I am suspecting them unfairly.

That depends on what poll you read. According to the Los Angeles Times, a poll of over 1,000 people reported that 72% of the adults had read a book in the past year.

According to another poll, 42% of adults said they hadn’t read a book since college. This makes me so depressed I can hardly function.

But an article by Andrew Merle, “The Reading Habits of Ultra-successful People,” states that Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk are all habitual readers. But Merle points out that these very successful people read for self-improvement and education, not for entertainment. (I guess Oprah’s picking the book for her book club would be closest to entertainment reading in this group.)

Merle quotes another writer, Tom Corley (RICH HABITS) in this brief work. Corley found that the lower the income, the more people read for sheer entertainment, not for self-improvement. Well, that’s me. I have beer tastes in reading.

I’m proud to belong to the (whatever) percentile of Americans are still buying and reading books, specifically fiction. And I’ve done this steadily since college. I belong to The Few, The Proud, the Readers. I suspect you do, too. Do you really know someone who hasn’t read a book since college?

Charlaine Harris

Mary Stewart, Libraries of Yore, and the Joy of Literary Suspense

A few months ago, I was offered the chance to read a book in manuscript by mystery writer Julia Buckley. The book's title intrigued me: A Dark and Stormy Murder. When I read a description of the plot, and that it had to do with a young writer working for a famous writer of romantic suspense, I had to read it. I read it -- in one sitting. I loved every page of it, and I was happy (as Miranda James) to give the book a blurb. Then I asked Julia (we're on first-name terms now) if she would like to write a blog for the Femmes in time for her book's on-sale date of July 5th. (Take my advice--reserve your copy now!) Here is what she wrote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my youth, I loved visiting the local library. It was within walking distance, and my sister and I would take tote bags to the little building—a house that had been transformed into a library—and fill up the bags with our treasure. That was in the days that big chunky hardbacks dominated the shelves, and you didn’t find only recent books, but ALL the books that an author had written over twenty or more years.

This was how I discovered authors who had published books decades before I was born, and how I came to love that 20^th Century triumvirate of romantic suspense: Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney, and Victoria Holt.  All of these women wrote novels that transported the reader to faraway, often exotic places, along with a young heroine who was generally out of her element (as was the new Mrs. DeWinter in Rebecca—and Daphne du Maurier’s books were in fact the predecessors to this sort of novel) and who was flung, against her will, into a world of danger and intrigue.

One of the reasons Stewart was considered the best at romantic suspense—indeed, to have essentially created a new genre for subsequent generations—was because she combined a beautiful prose-writing style with a gift for writing about setting, a talent for creating ingenious plots, and a literary sensibility that made the reader feel enriched beyond the story itself. Mary Stewart enthralled her readers on many levels, and her books have always been my favorite in the world.

A great example of her literary suspense can be found in her novel THIS ROUGH MAGIC.  Stewart brings her love of Shakespeare and The Tempest not just to the title (taken from Prospero’s vow that “This rough magic I here abjure"), but to the epigraph at the beginning of every chapter, which always has thematic relevance to the contents of the chapter.  The story is set on Corfu, in the same Mediterranean Sea where Prospero’s magical island was located. Stewart’s criminal is eventually revealed to have the primitive motivations of a Caliban, while the dolphin that the heroine befriends is a lovely modern Ariel, a creature of air and water who seems to herald good fortune. In addition, a retired actor lives on the island, and he is most famous for his role as—what else? Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Stewart’s intertextuality makes her readers feel literate even while they are being drawn into a darn good adventure tale.

Readers of Stewart know exactly what I mean, and a quick glance at Amazon reveals that her books are still selling, two years after her death at age 97, and long after her retirement from writing. Not only are the books selling, but her ratings are almost solely in the five star range, because she is simply that good.

So why am I writing about Mary Stewart?  Well, because I like to do it.  But also because I wanted to create a mystery series that could somehow pay homage to her. So in my new novel, A Dark and Stormy Murder, my heroine is a young woman who idolizes a Stewart-like writer named Camilla Graham. Since I cannot begin to write as well as Stewart, I decided I could at the very least create a character who could. My heroine, Lena London, goes through a series of serendipitous events that allow her to live with Graham in her house and become her writing partner.

I suppose this is what they call wish fulfillment, and I imagine all writers do a bit of it. And why not? The joy of writing is that you can transport yourself to whatever place your imagination chooses.

Funny You Should Ask...

 

Hank Phillippi Ryan: What's the funniest book you've ever read?  Maybeeeee…Bridget Jones' Diary? But that can't be right. While I'm thinking, I'm also wondering why it's so easy to name funny movies. My Cousin VInny, and The Court Jester, all the Tracy/Hepburns, well, I won't go on.

But humor in a mystery is very very tough. Murder does not elicit laughter. So it takes a careful touch, and a delicate instinct, and oh, yeah,  you've gotta be funny.  The fabulous Debra Goldstein, who gave up being a judge to write mysteries, knows from funny. But let her tell it.  

 

Artfully using Humor

by Debra H. Goldstein

 

 

I love to laugh.

Although I’m a reserved person, get me going and my laugh roars through the air until I gasp for air. My laugh may not be as infectious as Uncle Albert’s giggle in Mary Poppins, but it’s pretty close. Except for the fact that it leaves me choking, I truly believe laughter is the best medicine.

That’s why I think so highly of writers who artfully use humor in their books. Elaine Viets and Donna Andrews are two who do this masterfully. Isolating their plotlines into snippets– woman on run from her ex-husband ends up doing dead end jobs or decorative blacksmith sleuths in avian themed mysteries – fails to do justice to the dry lines, puns, and wicked images that add humor and dimension to their books. With a phrase or an image, both subliminally make readers chuckle and become hopelessly addicted to their writing.

The awards each have won demonstrate how well they execute their craft by making the incorporation of humor appear simple. It isn’t. One has to decide if the primary laughs will come from dry wit (Mark Twain), situations the character is put in (Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldie Shultz), or characterization (Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, Grandma Mazur and Lula).

Even though one of these things may be stressed, a combination of them comes into play.

For example, a Stephanie Plum book would not be same without inclusion of its New Jersey “burg” setting, Stephanie’s bounty hunter interaction with characters who each have distinctive features, and the dry one liners from Grandma Mazur, Lula and romantic interests Ranger and Joe.

In the first chapter of my recent book, Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery, Carrie deals with heavy concepts, but they are couched in light language: Hopefully, the reader will smile at the mental image created by “The first time I thought of killing him, the two of us were having chicken sandwiches at that fast-food place with the oversized rubber bird anchored to its roof,” while understanding her mother once thought of murdering Carrie’s father.

As the book progresses, self-deprecation and inclusion of a comic foil let readers enjoy the book while digesting its serious issues. When I was trying to find a way to counterbalance Carrie’s youth and analytical lawyer nature, the most humorous contrast I could think of was a group of retired Mah jongg players who appeared in the first short story I ever had published, Legal Magic. These women have had a weekly Mah jongg game for forty years. They know and tolerate every possible thing about each other and are at the point in their lives they aren’t afraid to say exactly what they think. Their down to earth observations and comments provide a lighthearted contrast to Carrie.

Humor is subjective, but those who do it well don’t merely tell jokes or use offensive scenes for a
laugh. Rather, they incorporate elements of comedy into the story or novel instead of simply writing a routine that a comedian might deliver on a late night show.

There are many writers whose characters play off each other or the situations they find themselves in in such a way that the story twists and turns, but readers can’t help but smile.

Besides the ones already mentioned, some who immediately come to my mind because of their effective comical touch include Carolyn Haines, Carolyn Hart, Sparkle Abbey, and Terrie Moran Adams.

Can you think of others? Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of Should Have Played Poker.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Aw. My Gramma Minnie played may-jongg. I thought it was so gorgeous, so exotic, so intricate. Anyone know how to play it? And yes, a comment wins a chance to--what is the word for victory in Mah jongg?

 

Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery:

 

Carrie Martin's mother appears in Carrie's corporate law office, twenty six years after abandoning her family. She leaves Carrie with a sealed envelope and the knowledge she once considered killing Carrie's father. Before Carrie can seek answers from her father, her mother is murdered at the retirement home where her father lives.

 

Instructed to leave the sleuthing to the police, Carrie's compulsion to discover why her mother returned and why she was murdered quickly put Carrie at odds with her former lover  - the detective assigned to the case. As Carrie and her co-sleuths, the Sunshine Village Mah jongg players, attempt to unravel Wahoo, Alabama's past secrets, their efforts put Carrie in danger and show her that truth and integrity aren't always what she was taught to believe.  

 

Judge Debra H. Goldstein is the author of Should Have Played Poker: a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery (Five Star Publishing/Cengage - April 2016) and the 2012 IPPY Award winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. She also writes short stories and non-fiction. Debra serves on the national Sisters in Crime, Guppy Chapter and Alabama Writers Conclave boards and is a MWA member. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband, Joel, whose blood runs crimson.

Summer!

by Donna Andrews.

Today's the summer solstice. The good news is that now the summer of 2016 has officially begun. The bad news is that from tomorrow on, the days start getting shorter.

Welcome to summer, the season of half-full yet half-empty glasses.

It's the time when those of us who have been cooped up indoors for way too much of the time all winter look forward to getting out and enjoying the sun and the fresh air. And we can enjoy it, as long as we bring along our sunscreen and bug repellant, wear long sleeves and long pants to keep away the ticks and mosquitoes, and chug enough liquids to keep ourselves from keeling over from dehydration.

And even grownups feel a surge of joy at the impending end of the school year, with its echoes of freedom and long, lazy hours ahead . . . until we remember that come the end of the school year, someone has to watch the kids, chauffeur them, entertain them, or at least stop them in mid-flight occasionally to administer sunscreen, bug repellant, and hydration.

When I was a kid—even through college—summer meant reading time. I'd start the summer off with a visit to the library, or the bookstore, and prepare to hole up in my room with a stack of novels. Lately, my writing schedule has been such that at the beginning of summer, instead of stocking up on books for long days of reading, I'm battening down the hatches for a long spell of draft writing.

In many ways planning a book's the most enjoyable part of writing it. I remember once hearing a writer—pretty sure it was Barbara Hambly, but willing to consider that I'm misquoting her—talk about another writer friend who had trouble getting started on projects. As long as the project was still in his head, it was the best, most brilliant thing he would ever write, the masterpiece that would make him known to a larger audience and let him go down in the history of the genre. But that magic sense of possibility and wonder can disappear as soon as you put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) to hammer out a draft. Drafts are messy, embarrassing, painful, by definition imperfect, and much less satisfactory than plans and pipe dreams in every way. Well, almost every way. There is one thing about drafts that makes up for all their shortcomings--they're real. 

The planning phase is essential--even for those writers who don't formally outline--but it's hard to measure your progress, to quantify how much you've done and how much longer you need. So I'm always glad when I decide that yes, I'm ready . . . or the calendar tells me that ready or not, here comes my deadline, so I'd better start laying down some words.

If I seem a little distracted when you meet me, or grow a little less active on social networking, blame it on the book. Then again, sometimes you'll see me out and about more than ever, posting and Facebooking and tweeting like crazy. Let's hope, when that happens, that it's happening because I've finished my quota for the day, and not because social networking is such an excellent form of writing avoidance.

 

Must love art, artifacts, and long walks along the Danube

by Dana

I just returned from three weeks in central Europe.  We started in Berlin, a favorite city, where I attended my first Eurovision Song Contest party at a friendly little bar.  The best way to describe the contest is "the Hunger Games meets the walk-off in 'Zoolander.'"  From there, we caught up with a tour in Warsaw.  But when people ask me my favorite part of the trip, it's always difficult.

For example, one highlight for me was seeing the "Woman of Willendorf" in person.  I've read about this artifact from the first year I studied archaeology; in fact, I mentioned it in my very first Emma Fielding novel, Site Unseen.  It's not my area of expertise, but it makes us ask so much about Paleolithic art (it's at least 25,000 years old), notions of fertility, religion, and human culture that it's hard not to be beguiled by it. 

The "Venus" of Willendorf

It's not as exciting, necessarily, as this golden brooch with the head pendants (also in the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum) but it was on my "unicorn" list of things I've always wanted to see.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, another gold fibula...

 

But there are surprises, too, that bring new obsessions, like the detail from this window in the St. Vitus cathedral in Prague by Mucha.  

 

I'd had preconceptions about Mucha's work (pretty, Art Nouveau, and advertising), but seeing the museum in Prague, and his "Slav Epic" really turned my head around.  Yay, new perspectives! Yay, shaking up what I thought I knew!

 There were moments where several of my interests (literature, sculpture, folklore, and history) combined rather wonderfully, like this memorial to Kafka:

Franz Kafka memorial, in the Jewish Quarter, Prague

And then this restaurant sign, just a block or two away:

 

One of many references I saw to the Golem of Prague

 

There are always grand views, and palaces, and high architecture, a sense of the great scale of history you encounter when you travel.

 

walking down from Prague castle

There are also wonderful moments walking around in quieter parts of town, and finding a cafe to visit (like this in the Jewish Quarter in Krakow).

Cafes in Kasimierz, Krakow

And then there's the architecture you don't expect, that blows your mind.  Our guide arranged a quick look for us at Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna.  I tend to get sick of gilding and cherubs and overdecoration pretty quickly, and this thrilled me.  Every floor, every door, every window is different.  No even surfaces, all inspired by nature, and the perfect antidote to the Baroque.

 

Hundertwasserhaus, Vienna

Going Back Where I Started

By Elaine Viets

I'm going back to the dark side, and I can't wait to tell you about it.
Brain Storm, my first mystery featuring Death Investigator Angela Richman, will be published August 2. Death investigators work for the medical examiner. They take charge of the body, photographing it, documenting the wounds, and more. The police investigate the rest of the crime scene.

Why return to this gritty world?
Because I was in the mood for hardheaded forensics. To return to the dark side, I took the Medicolegal Death Investigators Training Course for forensic professionals, given by St. Louis University's School of Medicine. The intense training gave me the latest forensic information. Here's one day at this two-credit college course:
We learned about gunshot fatalities, explosion-related deaths, motor vehicle fatalities and drowning. At lunch we watched a teen driving and alcohol video. After lunch was alcohol-related deaths, suicide, blunt-trauma fatalities and more.
I met impressive professionals, from police chiefs to pathologists to real death investigators.

I didn't want to write a dark series with the same old protagonists: the retired cop learning to live with his heart-wrenching divorce or the private eye who drinks to kill "the big hurt." Other writers have done those novels, and done them well.
Instead, I turned my fascination with death investigators into a series featuring DI Angela Richman. This is a unique series. Janet Rudolph, head of Mystery Readers International, believes no other series features a death investigator.
Angela lives in mythical Chouteau County, just west of St. Louis. The rich live in the town of Chouteau Forest, a bastion of old money. The workers live in an area nicknamed Toonerville. But death doesn't discriminate between the rich and the poor. Angela works cases for the super-wealthy as well as the down-and-out. She believes the dead can talk, and they tell her when and how they died. The Angela Richman series is dark, but it's not as gruesome as Patricia Cornwell's novels. It's closer to Kathy Reichs's Tempe Brennan mysteries.
Brain Storm is a deeply personal mystery, which reflects my own fight to survive six strokes, a coma, and brain surgery. It's also the first dark mystery novel I've written in years.
I started writing dark mysteries. My first mystery series featured Francesca Vierling, a six-foot-tall St. Louis newspaper columnist. Tough, glamorous Francesca drove an '86 Jaguar. I wrote four hardboiled Francesca mysteries. The Francesca series ended when the publisher's division was wiped out.

After the hardboiled Francesca series, I worked dead-end jobs until my agent sold Shop Till You Drop, my first Dead-End Job mystery. This series features Helen Hawthorne, a St. Louis woman on the run in South Florida. Now I was writing funny, traditional mysteries, cheerfully slaughtering bad bosses and annoying customers. Shop Till You Drop made the list of 16 Florida Must Read Books, along with John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard. Helen works a different low-paying job each novel, and I've worked most of them. The Art of Murder is my fifteenth Dead-End Job mystery. Once the Dead-End Job series was launched, Penguin asked me to write a cozy series featuring a mystery shopper, Josie Marcus. My mother was a mystery shopper, so I was born to write this series. Besides, it would only be for three books. The series got off to a good start with Dying in Style when it tied for first place with Stephen King on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association bestseller list

I enjoyed writing all those mysteries, but I missed the dark side. Even cozies aren't all kittens and cupcakes. Miss Marple, the fluffy knitter who declared "I am Nemesis," relentlessly brought killers to justice.
I like writing about Helen Hawthorne's lighthearted adventures in South Florida, but I was getting too comfortable. It was time to change my routine. I'm taking a big risk with this new series. I hope you'll go with me on Angela Richman's visit to the dark side.

Pre-order Brain Storm as an e-book, trade paperback or audio book here: https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Storm-Investigator-Angela-Richman/dp/1503936317/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466101774&sr=1-1&keywords=brain+storm+by+viets

 

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something DEAD!

by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry

Last weekend, I was in Florida to attend my niece Kristi's wedding, so naturally, nuptial celebrations have been on my mind a lot. Not just real life ones, either. There are some great wedding-related mysteries! Of course, given that weddings include family both beloved and endured, new and old friends, plus expenses galore, I suppose it's no surprise that murder and matrimony go together, at least on the page.

One of my favorites is the wedding of Lord Peter Wimsey to Harriet Vane. The festivities are described in an epistolary flurry in Dorthy Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon. There are letters and diary entries from a friend of the family, a frenemy of the family, the mother-in-law, the sister-in-law, a friend of the bride, and the groom's valet, and just as in real life, each correspondent sees the happy event just a little different. My personal take is that it's one of the most realistic and delightful romances in fiction.

I'm also fond of the impromptu wedding of Irene Adler in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia." Spoiler alert--but I just love seeing Sherlock Holmes being defeated by The Woman, as he sets out to catch a blackmailer and ends up serving as a witness to her marriage ceremony.

I used to think the shenanigans surrounding the multiple weddings in Femme Donna's Murder With Peacocks were a bit exaggerated, but that was before TV shows about bridezillas became common. These days, I think Meg Lanslow got off easy, even with the murder--and peacocks--involved.

I've dabbled in wedding hijinks myself in Wed and Buried, one of my Laura Fleming mysteries. Laura's Great-Aunt Maggie gets engaged to the town's wealthiest widower, Big Bill Walters, but there seems to be something more than true love at stake. Maybe I was working out some frustrations from my own long-ago ceremony.

What about you? What mysterious weddings do you enjoy the most?

PS - Nothing fatal happened at Kristi's wedding. Just in case you were worried.

Last weekend, I was in Florida to attend my niece Kristi's wedding, so naturally, nuptial celebrations have been on my mind a lot. Not just real life ones, either. There are some great wedding-related mysteries! Of course, given that weddings include family both beloved and endured, new and old friends, plus expenses galore, I suppose it's no surprise that murder and matrimony go together, at least on the page.

One of my favorites is the wedding of Lord Peter Wimsey to Harriet Vane. The festivities are described in an epistolary flurry in Dorthy Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon. There are letters and diary entries from a friend of the family, a frenemy of the family, the mother-in-law, the sister-in-law, a friend of the bride, and the groom's valet, and just as in real life, each correspondent sees the happy event just a little different. My personal take is that it's one of the most realistic and delightful romances in fiction.

I'm also fond of the impromptu wedding of Irene Adler in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia." Spoiler alert--but I just love seeing Sherlock Holmes being defeated by The Woman, as he sets out to catch a blackmailer and ends up serving as a witness to her marriage ceremony.

I used to think the shenanigans surrounding the multiple weddings in Femme Donna's Murder With Peacocks were a bit exaggerated, but that was before TV shows about bridezillas became common. These days, I think Meg Lanslow got off easy, even with the murder--and peacocks--involved.

I've dabbled in wedding hijinks myself in Wed and Buried, one of my Laura Fleming mysteries. Laura's Great-Aunt Maggie gets engaged to the town's wealthiest widower, Big Bill Walters, but there seems to be something more than true love at stake. Maybe I was working out some frustrations from my own long-ago ceremony.

What about you? What mysterious weddings do you enjoy the most?

PS - Nothing fatal happened at Kristi's wedding. Just in case you were worried.