Mystery We Write Holiday Virtual Tour

You won't want to miss the holiday "Mystery We Write" Virtual Tour. Visitors to the various blog sites who leave comments will be eligible to win mystery novels on December 11, at the conclusion of the tour. A list of the authors and their sites are listed below:

Collin Kelley
Earl Staggs
Evelyn Cullet
Jean Lauzier
Joyce Lavene  
Larissa Reinhart 
M. M. Gornell 
Madison Johns
Marilyn Meredith
Patricia Gligor
Rionna Morgan
SR Claridge 
Wendy Gager
Anne K Albert
And yours truly.
A list of appearances and the dates are available at: http://jeansblogtour.blogspot.com/

Jacqueline King loves books, words, and writing tall tales. She especially enjoys murdering the people she dislikes on paper. King is a full time writer who sometimes teaches writing at Tulsa Community College. Her latest novel, The Inconvenient Corpse is a traditional mystery. King has also written five novellas as co-author of the Foxy Hens Series. Warm Love on Cold Streets is her latest novella and is included in the anthology The Foxy Hens Meet an Adventurer. Her only nonfiction book is Devoted to Cooking. She's a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Oklahoma Writers Federation, and Tulsa Night Writers.

Jackie, how did you conceive your novel, The Inconvenient Corpse?

Oddly enough, The Inconvenient Corpse was birthed in its setting, a charming Bed and Breakfast Inn. I plotted the book by playing every writer’s favorite game: ‘What if?’

What if I’d found a dead man in this bed? What if he were naked? What if his clothes were nowhere to be found? What if the police thought I was the killer and told me that I couldn’t leave town? And then, what if I then learned that I had no money, no available credit, and no resources at all? What if I’d been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and had previously spent my days as a Junior League member? Could I survive on just my own moxie? I felt impelled to answer these questions.

What in your background prepared you to write?

My mother was a natural born storyteller. One night (at the end of the great depression) there was nothing for supper. Mother never told us this grim fact. She smiled (bravely) and said, “Let’s have stories for supper!” My brother, sister and I clapped our hands with joy. Stories for supper? What could be more wonderful? I must have been close to three at the time. After that, I think stories (and later books) became a part of my DNA.

What’s your writing work space like?

Shabby, overflowing with papers and magazines and books, and writing supplies. Probably sounds awful, but for me it’s heaven on earth. I’m living my life’s dream and am happy beyond belief.

Do you have a regular writing schedule and do you outline your work?

I write every day that it’s humanly possible, but not on any particular schedule. I’d love to write first thing in the morning, but this goal seldom happens. I do outline my work, sort of. I start a spiral notebook for each novel and jot down anything I can think of that comes to mind about my new project. I play a lot of “what if?” as I described earlier. I’m envious of outliners who stick to their exact outline, but I seem to be totally incapable of such a plan. I’m a “panster.” (As in flying by the seat of your pants.) It requires a huge amount of rewriting, but luckily I love what I fondly call, word-smithing.

Who taught you the language of fiction?

Although I’ve had many excellent teachers of fiction (mainly Peggy Fielding) I think I absorbed the language of fiction by reading and reading and reading. Mentally inhaling other writers wonderful novels, also helps improve my own writing.

Have any of your children followed in your keystrokes?

My youngest daughter, Jennifer Sohl, coauthored my only nonfiction book, Devoted to Cooking. This is a collection of family stories and their very own special recipe. My two granddaughters Lauren Keithley and Morgan Sohl are also writers. (prepublished.)

How do you feel about the ebook revolution?

Guess I’m a book rebel, (I’m American, after all) because I love e-readers and e-books. I also love paper books. If you wrote good prose on the sidewalk in front of my house, I’d read that, too.

What’s the best way you’ve found to promote and market your work?

I love promoting my books in the CyberWorld! What a joy it is to become acquainted with readers who live all over the world. Readers are extremely smart, witty, and interesting folk and I can ‘talk’ to any of them who own a computer. Lucky me, I can promote worldwide, day and night (if I choose) in my jammies.

Advice for aspiring writers?

Don’t let anyone discourage you. I hate to go to a writer’s conference where a well-known writer tells how hard it is to get published at this time, thus intimating that those poor souls who have not yet found a publisher will probably be left out in the cold. THIS IS A LIE! You can do it if you follow the tried and true recipe of success: (1)Write every day. (2) Submit what you write. (3) Never give up.

Your social media links and bio.

I’d be thrilled to hear from readers about this post, or about what you’re thinking about today, or even your supper menu. Let’s all get acquainted so we can talk about books and writing. This has been fun, Jean. Thanks a million.

It's been great having you here, Jackie.

You can visit Jackie at her website: Website: www.jacqking.com
and her blog site: http://bnbmysteries.blogspot.com

She would like to have readers ‘friend’ on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1290204781#!/Jacqking
and her book is available at: http://amzn.to/gMv7CH and http://bit.ly/fovbLR

Senior Sleuths Facebook Group

I've started a new Senior Sleuths Facebook Group page as an extension of the Senior Sleuths Forum. Since Monday evening, we  have forty charter members who are sharing their their lives, writing successes, blog articles and thoughts about growing older.

You don't have to be a senior (over 55) to join or even write senior sleuth mysteries. If you love reading mysteries, romantaic suspense or thriller novels, or would like to communicate with some of your favorite authors, sign up at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/186718304795878/ and join in the fun. :)

Finding Time to Write

Because I began my writing career as a news reporter, I could probably write in the middle of a traffic jam, but there are distractions that bring me to an exasperating halt. Phones ringing when you have a help wanted ad in the paper is a major distraction here. Good help is hard to find, and you can’t trust your luck to answering machines because so many messages are garbled, or callers forget to leave a phone number.

According to Carl Honore, who wrote In Praise of Slowness, it takes our brains eight minutes to return to our creativity mode whenever we’re distracted. Telephone interruptions require a fifteen minute recovery time. With email, one message delays your creative train of thought for more than a minute, according to Lois J. Peterson in her article, “May I Put You on Hold?”

Peterson says, “High tech interruptions come with built-in controls, if only we would use them.” We have answering machines, caller I.D. and email programs that alert us to messages if we leave the program open. Shutting down the Internet while we write is one solution as well as unplugging the phones, especially if you're fortunate to have broadband service.

What if? would always be on my mind if I shut off all forms of communication. What if there’s an accident at the job site, what if one of our adult children needs our help? What if my husband has an accident or breaks down on a long drive home?

We have a large home office which I share with my husband and our business. Although background music helps, I’m often interrupted by not only the phones but my husband wanting to share something with me. Many husbands don't understand that writing isn’t just a hobby or an excuse to avoid housework. Bestseller status would undoubtedly cure the problem.

My husband reads more than I do, including my own books. I’ve talked to other writers whose spouses don’t read their work, and resent the time they spend writing instead of with the family. Countless women writers have said their husbands’ resent their creativity. Writers, artists and entertainers comprise only 5% of the population, so that places us in a special category, of which I cannot think of anything comparable, with the possible exception of rocket science and brain surgery. I’m not advocating that writers be placed on a pedestal, but regardless of how much money we earn, or how little, our talents should be respected by family members.

Few of us have our own private office or cubby hole where our writing time is sacred. I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to write something that was rattling around in my brain, without phones ringing or people barging in. I was tired next morning and probably more than a little cranky, but as every writer knows, if it's not written down or typed into the computer, we're going to lose that "brilliant" passage.

Writing isn’t just an avocation, for me it’s a source of joy and feeling of accomplishment, like nothing else. I’d rather write than attend a party, sell books at a signing, or stay in bed all day to read.

Although most women writers have said, “I need a wife to do the chores so I can write,” the obvious solution is to marry another writer who cooks, cleans and edits. And while we’re at it, make sure he looks like George Clooney. :)

Congratulations to Arletta Dawdy!

Artetta, you've won a copy of Gray Wolf Mountain. I hope you enjoy the book. Please send your mailing address to JeanHenryMead@aol.com.

Thanks to everyone who left comments.. They're greatly appreciated. I hope you'll get a chance to read the book in print, on Kindle or Nook. I also hope you'll become a regular visitor to this site.

My best wishes to everyone.

Grand Encampment Cowboy Gathering

I rarely do book signings any more but because I've written some western-based books, including one titled Wyoming's Cowboy Poets and Their Poetry, I decided to attend a three-day festival in Encampment, Wyoming, near the Colorado border. Yep, that's me behind the oversized sunglasses and hat. Although my husband and I only stayed one day, it was an enjoyable experience meeting the nice people of the small community as well as cowboy poets, musicians and artists from the area as well as out of state. I wish we could have stayed longer.

I sold some books and talked to people who love not only cowboy poetry but ranching and anything western. I've been a member of Western Writers of America since 1979, so I sat under the WWA tent, which came in handy because rain and a thunder storm burst upon the scene in early afternoon. Fortunately, the audience was also seated under a tent, so few people left during the afternoon performances of cowboy poets, singers, guitar pickers, banjo players and fiddlers, which included Jon Chandler, John Nesbitt, Rhonda Sedgewick Steanrs, Chuck Larsen and Andy Nelson to name a few.

Other activities were a chuck wagon breakfast, stick horse rodeo for the kids, historic building tours, campfire jam session and cowboy song workshop.

Yee haw! A good time was had by all.

A Visit with Bette Golden Lamb

Bette Golden Lamb and her husband, J.J. Lamb, are the co-authors of four crime novels: Sin and Bone, a medical thriller that brings back RN Gina Mazzio, who gets caught up in the illicit trade in human body parts and murder; Sisters in Silence, a medical thriller about a fertility counselor who goes on a mercy-killing spree of barren women; Heir Today, a fast-paced suspence-adventure featuring a husband-wife team that combines fraud, mayhem, high-seas piracy, murder, and a touchof romance; and Bone Dry, a high-tension medical thriller about theft and ransom of critical bone marrow featuring RN Gina Mazzio; described as “not for the squeamish.”

Bette, how did a nurse from the Bronx meet and marry a journalist from the Hoosier state?

On a summer break from my nursing program, I drove from New York to Albuquerque to see my brother. He and J.J. (I didn’t know him then) were journalists in the Associated Press office there. People talk about time standing still, and it sounds romantic, even poetic to talk about love-at-first-sight. But that’s how it happened. It was a beautiful summer night at an impossibly crowded, raucous party when the two of us found each other in a single glance. That was the moment a girl from the Bronx and a boy from Fort Wayne became one.

P.S. Our first date lasted a full 24 hours, and J.J. asked me to marry him on our second date.

Your name suggests a Native American background. How did it come about?

Actually, my parents emigrated from Russia when they were in their teens. I’m first generation American. But it’s funny you bring that up because an uncle of mine looked exactly like a picture of Chief Joseph; I mean a dead-on image.

When did you and J.J. decide to collaborate on crime novels?

I had this greatidea for a novel, so I passed in on to J.J., the writer. He seemed to like the idea, but he sure as heck wasn’t going to do anything about it. I brought it up now and then, like every week for two years. One day he dropped a ream of paper on my drafting table. “You like it, youwriter it.” You don’t need to hear the rest of that conversation. But his challenge did start me on the road to writing. Several years later I had the idea for Bone Dry, and the RN Gina Mazzio series was born, along with our collaboration.

How do you resolve differences while co-authoring a book?

Well, we duke it out, of course :-) Truthfully, it was very hard in the beginning. There were many, many, many conversations about everything. And I mean everything! When I think back to our early collaboration, I have to admit that J.J. was a saint. Some of things I came up with were really off the wall. In fact, they were so weird, I refuse to remember any of them. J.J. must have laughed himself to sleep every night. Now, when we have a disagreement about an in-progress book, the answer always lies within the characters and the story. That resolves most issues. Any ego trip, by either of us, always defeats the work and the collaboration.

Your job as an RN is obviously great background for your medical thrillers. Have you based any of your plots on true life experiences?

In Sin & Bone, our second Gina Mazzio book, the story is about a killer calling a hospital advice center. I’ve been an advice nurse for many years. But realistically, everything in our medical thrillers has its roots in my career as an RN. The mood, the rhythm, the lingo in medical situations is almost impossible to replicate without having that specific experience. Being there reveals so much about the heart and determination of the people in that special environment. It’s what gives the stories reality, and above all, immediacy. When we wrote Bone Dry, I’d worked with cancer patients but never on an oncology unit. Still, when I spoke to the nurses in that specialized field, I found them generous with their time. They even invited me onto the unit where I was able to see and absorb everything we needed for a tense, scary story.

How do you find time to write when you’re also a ceramist and sculptor as well as a nurse? You must be very organized.

I used to take my laptop to work with me and during my lunch break, I would rush out to my car and write -- every single day. On weekends, I would dive right into my art work. It did take tremendous organization, dedication, and plain old compulsive nuttiness. I don’t know why I’m so driven to create. I just am.

If you had to choose just one of your pursuits, which would it be and why?

I did make that choice a while back -- I left nursing. However, I stay as up to date as I can with what’s happening in the nursing and overall medical fields. I loved nursing -- it was a privilege to help people, to be a vital part of their lives. So even though I was reluctant to give it up, I finally did. But writing and art are passions that I could never give up. They give me the precious freedom of expression, and provide a vision of life that can’t be replicated by anything else. Being able to create something beautiful to behold, or write something exciting, not only nourishes my soul, it makes me feel like one of the luckiest people in the world.

Advice for novice writers.

If writing is your thing, you’ll need a day (or night) job doing something that makes you feel worthwhile, something that gives you satisfaction at the end of a long day. It’s just too difficult, or almost impossible, to survive on what you can earn form creative writing. Sure, sure, some writers immediately make it to the top. And sure, talent is always an issue. But all too often luck is what drives success in the creative arts. In case you’re not one of the ones who strike it rich, or have some of that rare publishers’ fairy dust fall on your brow, be prepared to support yourself and live to write another day. As I said, if writing is your thing, you’re already one of the luckiest people in the world.

Thanks, Bette.

You can learn more about Bette Lamb at: www.bettelamb.com, www.facebook.com/bette.g.lamb
www.linkedin.com/pub/bette-golden-lamb/16/867/505 and

www.goodreads.com/user/show/4094/597-bette-golden-lamb