Desolation Row by Kay Kendall

Friday, January 31, 2014

Desolation Row by Kay Kendall

 

My favorite stories involve romantic suspense set against a backdrop of great turmoil and danger. Stories about World War II and the Cold War fit the bill for me. I wanted to write my own version of that kind of romantic suspense. Also I love to read historical mysteries set in England, France, Germany, Russia, and so on. I decided my first book would be set in a foreign country during wartime.

The result is Desolation Row—An Austin Starr Mystery. This is my debut book published in 2013 by Seattle-based Stairway Press.

Austin is only 22 years old when she marries her college boyfriend and they leave Texas and move to a foreign country. She’s coping with these changes when her husband is jailed for a murder he didn’t commit. Alone and far from home, she sets a dangerous course to find the real killer. When she also becomes a captive, things go from bad to worse. Two young lives and a new marriage are in jeopardy!

 

The time is 1968. The foreign country is Canada. The war is in Vietnam.

Lots of Americans don’t consider Canada to be foreign. So calm and easy to take for granted, Canada . Why, it might just as well be the fifty-first state. But the US and Canada are not identical at all. While the countries of the English-speaking world may all bunch up on a sliding scale that would represent a continuum of political and social attitudes, one should never discount the real differences that exist among them. 

I used to ponder these differences daily. You see, I lived in Canada for two decades, occupying a front row seat to watch Canadian-ness play out in front of me. Also, my husband is Canadian…and all my in-laws. Yes, I consider myself a Nona fide expert. In Desolation Row I treat Canada like the unique country it is. 

Secondly, the only large war of last century not “taken,” not overrun with mysteries, occurred in Vietnam. It is a comparatively empty niche that I concluded needed to be filled with more mysteries—and I decided I was the one to do the filling.

 

My heroine Austin Starr is young and naïve, and her mother taught her that the role of wife and mother is the only one that will bring fulfillment to a female. Austin is not sure this is true, but she goes along with it and, with that grounding, feels she must go to Canada with her husband, even though she does not want to leave Texas. Her husband is a political activist, but she’s not. In fact, she has a secret he doesn’t know. She was undergoing CIA training before she moved to Canada.

When her husband David is jailed for murdering the son of a US Senator, also a draft resister in Canada, only one thing counts for Austin—proving David’s innocence. After that, she hopes somehow, someway, to return home to Texas. That is an over-arching question to the books in my series—will Austin ever return to the United States, which is her heart’s desire?

Now I’m writing the second book, Rainy Day Women. All titles in my mystery series are from Bob Dylan songs. I make sure that any title I use is from a song that had been released by the time my story takes place. Dylan is a prolific song writer so it’s not hard to find an appropriate, evocative title. In the case of Desolation Row, the title captures David Starr’s sense of desolation as he waits in a row of cells in prison. In Rainy Day Women murder occurs in women’s liberation groups in Vancouver and Seattle.
 

Basically, Desolation Row is a love story, and the politics end up being pro-soldier and anti-war. Many veterans of the Vietnam conflict have told me they enjoyed my book. I find that very gratifying. Anyone who fights for our country deserves our un-ending support.

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KAY KENDALL is an award-winning international PR exec who now writes mysteries. She and her Canadian husband live in Texas with their spaniel Wills and several house rabbits…to which she’s allergic…but she loves them anyway!You can learn more about Kay by visiting her sites:
Media links are http://www.amazon.com/Desolation-Row-Austin-Starr-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00BFHHRB2www.kaykendallauthor.com/

www.facebook.com/KayKendallAuthor

@kaylee_kendall

Congratulations to my audio book winners: c8ae48fO9e4e-11e3f6-000bccb2996, Marymin, Donnel, Sheila Deeth and Gail Kaufman. Please contact me at JeanHenryMead.com

The Innocents Abroad by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

While reading The Innocents Abroad it's obvious Mark Twain was not impressed by the religious relics he saw in his journeys. He mentions a fragment of, and nails from, the True Cross, part of the crown of thorns, a marble chest containing St John's ashes and a length of chain used to confine him in prison, portraits of the Virgin Mary painted by St Luke, various saints' fingers (not to mention one of Judas Iscariot's bones), and a stone from the holy sepulchre.

As he put it:

But isn't this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the  true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the
nails that held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have  seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have part of  one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis,  I feel certain we have seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary.

Obviously not everyone would agree, for such relics have been revered from the earliest days of the church. Forged relics, of course, were not unknown.

Constantinople during the period in which we write held numerous relics of saints and martyrs and we specifically mentioned one in an earlier entry in our historical mystery series when in Five For Silver a holy fool attempts to steal the piece of the column of flagellation to which Christ was bound for his scourging. It was in the care of the Church of the Holy Apostles, which also possessed relics of Andrew, Luke, and a number of other saints and martyrs.

Naturally, relics of the Holy Family were particularly important. When we set out to write Ten For Dying we decided the item stolen from the Church of the Holy Apostles would be a piece of the shroud of the Mother of God, a relic currently said to be held by Aachen Cathedral. We based this on a fifth century history that relates Mary's shroud travelled from the Holy Land to the Church of the Virgin in Blachernae in Constantinople in the mid-400s.

Although one source terms it the Virgin's robe, as we state in the novel's afterword we took advantage of our literary license to subscribe to the view of Cyril of Scythopolis, who described the relic as Mary's shroud.

Thus as Ten For Dying opens, two demons run off with the piece of this shroud while a dark ceremony is in progress at the tomb of the recently deceased Empress Theodora...
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Mary Reed and Eric Mayer co-write the John, Lord Chamberlain series, set in and around the sixth century Constantinople court of Justinian. The tenth entry, Ten For Dying, will appear from Poisoned Pen Press in March 2014. Information on this and their other fiction can be viewed on their website at  http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/

I'm Giving Away Five Audiobooks. Leave a Comment to Win

Win an audio book by leaving a comment and your email address. I have six new audio books and am pleased with the narrators who have not only read the books, but acted out the characters' voices. They are as follows: 

A Village Shattered is the first novel in my Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series featuring two baby boomer women amateur sleuths living in a San Joaquin Valley retirement village where their club members are dying alphabetically. A newly elected sheriff bungles the investigation so Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty decide to solve the murders before they become the serial killer's victims. Mystery, romance and humor. And tule fog!

Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel is based on actual history and Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. A young woman disguised as a 12-year-old boy is kidnapped and taken to the Hole in the Wall hideout, where Andrea (Andy) attempts to hide her genre while listening to the gang plan the ill-fated Belle Fourche bank robbery. She also attempts to convince the youngest member of the gang to reform and help her escape.


No Escape, the Sweetwater Tragedy is based on the actual hangings of a young couple, Ella Watson-Averell and her husband James, by greedy Wyoming cattlemen who want their land. It's also the story of Susan Cameron, a composite of some 200,000 single women who attempted to prove up on their own homesteads during the late 1880s. With the help of her new friend, veterinarian Michael O'Brien, Susan tries to solve the murders but they have to flee for their lives when the cattlemen's henchmen try to murder them as well.



Mystery of Spider Mountain is a middle grade mystery novel set in the Hollywood Hills where I grew up at the bottom of a huge hill that my brothers and I called Spider Mountain. There trap door spiders and other crawling creatures lived. A mysterious house sat at the hill's summit and we climbed our mountain to investigate. What my characters find changes their lives forever.

Westerners: Candid and Historic Interviews is a nonfiction book, which includes some of hundreds of interviews I conducted as a

news reporter and freelance photojournalist. The interviews include Louis L'Amour, country singer Chris LeDoux, A. B. Guthrie, Jr.; Bill Cody, Buffalo Bill's infamous grandson; presidential grandson William Henry Harrison, Amelia Earhart's aviatrix friend Lucile Wright, Alice Bubeck, the country's oldest talk show host; and many others.

Wyoming's Cowboy Poets and Their Poetry is a collection of brief profiles and samples of some of the state's best poetry. The poets include Georgie Sicking, Poet Laurette Robert Roripaugh, Rhonda Sedgwick, John Nesbitt, Sue Wallis, Dr. Kent Stockton and a host of cowboy poets who write both lyrically and with cowboy lingo. Most have worked as cowhands on ranches, two as college instructors, and all have a innate sense of the West and the Western way of life.

The audio books are found at Amazon.com, Audible.com and iTunes. No Escape and Mystery of Spider Mountain are on Whispersync and can be read and listened to at the same time.

The Perfect Villain

While I was conducting research, I came across the narcissistic personality disorder, which I thought would conger up a good villain for a future novel. I had no idea that the disorder was so complex or that it bordered on psychosis.

A person suffering from the disorder is characterized by an excessive need to be admired as well as feelings of grandiosity—probably what used to be called “The Napoleon complex.” I couldn’t quite picture my villain running around with his hand stuffed in his shirt, so I looked for further symptoms.

This is what I found:

~People with the disorder have achieved great things because they consider themselves so special that they can’t possibly fail.
~They confine their relationships to only those people they feel are worthy of them.
~They have no qualms about taking advantage of others.
~They’re so self absorbed that they have no empathy for anyone.
~They feel that everyone envies them.
~They’re preoccupied with fantasies of power and success.
~They think they deserve adoration from everyone.
~They have a sense of entitlement to everything they desire.
~They’re arrogant in the extreme.

Know anyone with some or all of the above characteristics? Before I began writing mystery novels,  I thought that narcissistic people spent a lot of time in front of mirrors, totally in love with themselves. I didn't think of them as having the characteristics for fictional villains until the "aha" light bulb snapped on.recently.

Psychologist Phyllis Beren revealed red flags that alert her to someone with the disorder: a desire to control other people, excessive lying, running other people down, an attitude of “my way or the highway,” sadistic behavior and over development of one area of the personality at the expense of others.

So, if someone values himself over others, has little empathy, grandiose ideas and little self-awareness, he might not hesitate to commit a crime to achieve his goals. He’s like Raskolnikov’s extraordinary man in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and above the law.

I think I’ve found my perfect villain.

No Sunbonnet Sue

Anne Schroeder writes memoirs and women's fiction set in the West. She's currently president-elect of Women Writing the West and has won awards for her writing, including the 2012 LAURA Award for short fiction. Her historical western novel, Cholamo Moon, a young girl's struggle to womanhood in California country, will be released in April. Anne makes her home in Southern Oregon with her husband and two dogs. Fortunately, she said, they all share a passion for out of the-way places.

      Anne wrote the following about women in literature: 

Sam Peckinpah was fond of saying, “I hate women in westerns. Women stop the action.” Sounds harsh, but in “real westerns,” the whore/stoic wife/spinster stereotypes allow women a minor role while the cowboy rides off into sunset to fight another day. Now the ladies are demanding their due. So why the stereotypes in the first place?

In the sparsely developed West, social roles were narrowly defined. Fear of being ostracized was very powerful. Gossip kept men and women socially separated from each other, single women, especially. Teachers could be fired for perceived lapses of rather rigid rules.  

Old daguerreotypes reveal a lot about attitude. One famous photo shows two miners’ wives standing in the Leadville, Colorado muck, staunchly determined to rise above the mud and the flies, the scarcities and solitude. They’re wearing starched lace dickeys and serviceable hats they’ve brushed and mended, and bedecked with a fresh quail feather from last night’s supper bird.  

Defining women by their dress may be an effective cinematic tool, but writers need to question the obvious. Was abandoning the corset the slovenly act of a down-and-out whore? Whalebone stays, so easily available in the East, became expensive at the trading posts. Did women simply get tired of trying to farm in one?

The first time a prairie wind blew a woman’s dress over her unmentionables, western-bound women began to modify apparel to fit their needs. They taught each other to stitch buckshot into their hemlines and to remove hoop skirts that dragged them under wagon wheels and caught fire in the coals. They shortened their hems so they didn’t drag in the manure or mud. They donned bloomers not out of fashion sense, but because it made it easier to ride a horse astraddle. The western hills were simply too dangerous for a side-saddle. A woman’s hair was her glory. Even when she had to comb it for vermin, rinse it with rain water and coil it in the dust of the trail? Doubtlessly, some women chopped theirs off and wore a hat.

Women were physically small. (A woman boasted in an 1887 letter that she was 87 pounds, and no slouch.)  Some had grit and physical strength, but others didn’t. Some were tall, or fat, or masculine in appearance. Some woman had to “pass” to survive. Those who wore britches and handled shot guns like a man could become a folk hero (Annie Oakley.) Muleskinners and soldiers were found on their deathbeds to be women. Charley Parkhurst, the noted stage driver, was not only a woman, but she secretly bore a baby. Ironically, the rebels made it into folklore, not the Sunbonnet Sues.   

Many women didn’t have a vote in the decision to “go west.” Church-goers biblically followed husbands who had land or gold fever. Did she become bitter when her children died of disease or accident? Did she pine for family and household goods left behind?  Think of how we would feel if our sister-in-law helped herself to whatever wouldn’t fit into a 4x10 foot wagon after our husband had packed everything he needed for farming, along with food enough for the family and the animals. Women went insane on the Oregon Trail. Sometimes they sat down and wept, and wouldn’t get up again.

Back in the day, children were expected to support their parents. Many families sold homely daughters as twelve-year-olds to brothels for a few dollars to spare the cost of feeding them. Beauty wasn’t perceived in the same way we see it. Cowhands fell in love with women who made them feel good. (Remember “Little Heifer” in Lonesome Dove?) Whores were pock-marked from their mercury face powder, small pox and beatings from customers and pimps alike. According to Wild West Tech, prostitutes began their career at age 13, and only about 18-19 when they succumbed to tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia, drug overdose or suicide.  Life was grim. On their paydays, a young girl might service from twenty-four to forty men. She worried more about a cowboy’s spur ripping her sheets (which she had to pay for) than she did about her body.)  

Thankfully, today’s western writers can go beyond the Martha Starchbottom stereotype  and create intriguing and unforgettable characters.

The Mistakes Writers Make by editor Chris Roerden

Chris Roerden is an outspoken freelance editor with eleven books to her publishing credit, including Agatha winner Don't Murder Your Mystery and Don't Sabotage Your Submission.

Chris, which editors did you understudy and was ethics part of your publishing curriculum?

I learned publishing the way some writers write: by the seat of my pants. I learned editing by reading voraciously from early childhood on and having a photographic memory. I learned ethics by determining, also in childhood, to be as different as possible from my father--a hypocritical, racist, abusive s.o.b.

Tell us about your background in publishing.

I had the good fortune to grow up in Manhattan and be accepted as an art major at the High School of Music & Art (now LaGuardia). I also had the good fortune to graduate at 16 at a time when jobs were plentiful. So I picked Rockefeller Center as a nice area to work in and got jobs in the public relations and advertising departments of major corporations. I wanted to see how commercial artists worked.

This was long before email, of course, so one of my clerical tasks was to redistribute interoffice mail, by hand, among the 35 staffers in one PR department. While making my rounds I compulsively corrected the text of about-to-be-printed materials. To my surprise, my bosses valued the skills that I’d taken for granted. Didn’t everyone know how to write an effective sentence? Apparently not, because I kept getting promoted to more and more interesting positions.

I learned a little-known side of publishing that paid well and was a great training ground for learning marketing. Besides, I’d seen enough to know I couldn’t produce commercial design as fast as the artists had to--I’m a tinkerer.

Which types of books do you most enjoy editing and which ones do you prefer to stay away from, and why?

I most enjoy mysteries and thrillers because editing them lets me analyze how intricately they are plotted. Nonfiction editing paid the bills, but there wasn’t much intricacy to discover. What I stay away from are books on spirituality, because after the first half-dozen or so they seem too similar to each other.

What made you decide to become a freelance editor?

Family transfers took a toll on my career choices. I did some teaching of writing at universities when my boys were young, but often I worked for niche publishers, where I learned the business from inside out. By the time 50 approached, I held a well-paying position as managing and production editor for a growing niche publisher in Wisconsin, but I missed the hands-on editing of manuscripts. Yet changing jobs was no longer easy at my level--my experience was perceived as fast-tracking me to take over a higher-up’s job.

So I decided to freelance for a while. Unlike many who set out to freelance, I was never without a steady stream of clients, and I liked being my own boss. A major turning point for me was editing the first books of two up-and-coming mystery writers: Alex Matthews, for whom I’ve edited nine Cassidy McCabe mysteries, and Jeanne Dams, who won the 1995 Agatha for Best First Mystery.

If a novel starts out well but loses its focus halfway through the book, as an editor what do you usually do?

I’m always frank with writers and offer a great deal of feedback--probably more than they expect. I find it an advantage to work directly with each author. (One nonfiction writer complained that I made her miss her deadline because it took her so long to make all the changes I’d recommended--yet she chose to make them!)

I’d like to emphasize that I consider all edits suggestions and observations, which authors are free to accept, reject, or analyze to see why something made me stop and how they might prefer to come up with their own improvement.

What prompted you to write your first book?

If you mean Don’t Murder Your Mystery or Don’t Sabotage Your Submission, they are actually my 10th and 11th books. My first I’d merely volunteered to edit for the bicentennial celebration of the town of Cape Elizabeth, Maine--where we’d just be transferred to. Word got out that this newcomer had been a “New York editor.” Turns out that the town historian refused to make his manuscript available, as I’d been led to believe, which was actually a good thing, because expressions such as “she was big with child” characterized his writing style.

So I began collecting bits and pieces of Cape history, accompanied by my one- and three-year-olds. I loved the work of compiling all the material and writing about it, but the gaps in my knowledge of American history motivated me to do something that had not interested me until then: go to college. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. I was 30 at the time and assumed I’d do poorly. Instead I received highest honors, a big surprise to me.

How well have your ghostwritten books sold and were they written for fledglings or well –known authors? (I'm not asking who.)

All of the 11 books and a game I’ve written, either as a ghost or under my own byline, are nonfiction. I edit fiction but don’t write it, though my two latest titles are about writing and revising fiction. Eight titles I wrote for mid-sized businesses and national organizations. Several started as editing projects, but each client’s text was poor so I ended up doing the writing.

Sales reflect the extent of promotion by each client. One is a real go-getter who’s been on many national TV talk shows. For writers who have a taste for writing nonfiction, I’ve always said that becoming a ghost is a good living. As for the fiction I’ve edited, many successful authors aren’t eager to have it be known they work with a manuscript editor, so in a way editing is ghosting, too. But editors are used to keeping low profiles anyway.

What are the usual mistakes writers make that cause editors to cringe?

The first 10 mistakes are arrogance, as in:

 My book is so good it doesn’t need editing.
 The only thing it could use is maybe a light proofreading.
 Everyone will want to buy it.
 Every publisher will want to publish it.
 They’re getting a bargain at 150,000 words.
 To make sure no one steals my ideas, I’ve already registered the copyright.
 I don’t have to read guidelines, write a synopsis, or play by any of those other Mickey Mouse rules because those are for amateurs.
 I never read books about writing.
 What genre is it, you ask? Let the publisher figure that out. They’re in the business. It’s got romance, mystery, history, and biography, and autobiography.
 There isn’t another book like it.

Any advice to novice writers, including self-publishers?

There’s so much more to being the author of a book than writing it. I think it’s a good idea to know your goal. For instance, is publication of a particular book your goal or is it publication of your best work that will make you proud for years to come? Is it the desire to hold your finished book in your hand ASAP, or is it a career as a writer? If you anticipate a writing career, I advise aiming for traditional royalty publication instead of self-publishing, even though that will take much longer and require greater perseverance.

Self-publication can affect a writer’s eligibility for certain organizational positions, awards, speaking roles, and conference panels--all of which could play a part in book marketing and even in developing a mentor.

Anything you’d like to add?

It’s never to early to start networking through organizations and writers conferences, as long as you maintain your regular time commitment to writing. And I always recommend reading more widely in the field you’re entering, and learning more about publishing and marketing--such as by reading either of my two DON’T books for writers.

Thanks for taking part in the series, Chris.

Chris's main web site http://www.MarketSavvyBookEditing.com has links to her publisher’s site, to a long excerpt from Don't Sabotage Your Submission, and to lots of information about editing and about Chris. The shortcut to her Amazon blog is http://www.snurl.com/9esdq (then scroll).