Carolyn Hart Revisted

A bestselling author with more than three million books in print, Carolyn Hart is best known for her Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins (Henrie O) series. Her most recent series features red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma, who returns to earth to help solve murders.


Carolyn, your latest book, Escape From Paris, which will be released this coming week. Was it actually thirty years ago that you originally wrote it?

This month, to my great delight, Oconee Spirit Press is publishing the original manuscript, which has a newly amended copyright. It has been 30 years in coming but now Escape From Paris is available as it was written.

A war story?

I was a child during WWII and the war dominated our lives.Two American sisters risk their lives in Nazi-Occupied Paris to save British fliers from arrest. Family members served in the Army or Navy. We followed the faraway course of the fighting in  huge black newspaper headlines. Food and gasoline were rationed. The war remained vivid in my memory and, as an adult, I wrote several WWII suspense novels. To sell Escape from Paris, I cut the book from 93,000 to 55,000 words. That  version was published in 1982  and 1983.

I hope readers will share the struggles of brave men and women who defied the Gestapo during the bitter winter of 1940. They knew fear, found love, grieved loss. Their lives and deaths remind us that freedom survives only when the free are brave.

 I hope you may be interested to remember a year of war when England awaited invasion and the Nazis devoured Europe. I believe this is a book that will appeal to book club readers, highly intelligent women, often of a certain age, who will bring their own memories or memories of their parents into play.  

 I look forward to reading it. You also have a recent Bailey Ruth Raeburn novel out, Ghost in Trouble. Please tell us about it? 

Bailey Ruth Raeburn has the best of intentions when she returns to Adelaide to save a life but she never counted on that life belonging to a woman she loathed when she was in the world. Moreover, her charge stubbornly insists on playing hunt-the-killer. Bailey Ruth deals with young love, a mother's heartbreak, a fraudulent psychic and a dog's rawhide bone in her quest for a wily murderer.

 Your ghost series is my favorite among your books. How did your impetuous red-haired ghost Bailey Ruth Raeburn of Adelaide, Oklahoma, come about?

 I loved the Topper books and films when I was growing up. I see ghosts as reflections of the person who lived. I always wanted to write about a fun-loving, energetic, impetuous ghost returning to earth to help someone in trouble and Bailey Ruth answered the call.

When did your Death on Demand mystery series originate?

In 1985, I attended a meeting of the southwest chapter of MWA in Houston and visited Murder by the Book. I had never been to a mystery bookstore and I was enchanted. I had just started a new mystery set in a bookstore. I immediately decided to have a mystery bookstore named Death on Demand.

Tell us about your latest Death on Demand mystery,  Dead by Midnight.

Annie Darling refuses to believe in her new employee's suicide. To save a woman from a false charge of murder, Annie unravels the mystery of a towel hidden at midnight in the gazebo, the lack of fingerprints on a crystal mug, blood on a teenager's blue shirt, and the secret of a lovers' tryst.   

You’ve received an amazing number of awards including the Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award. Has the recognition resulted in increased book sales and reader awareness of your work?

 I hope that the awards, which I very much appreciate, help to attract readers. It’s hard to know whether such awards increase sales but any mention of a book or books is helpful to an author.

What's your writing schedule like and do you aim for a certain amount of words each day, no matter how long it takes?

 I try to write five pages a day (approx. 1,500 words) when working on a book. Some days I meet that goal. Some days I don’t. When I am stuck, I take a long walk and usually something will occur to me.

 Tell us about your writing background.

I worked on school newspapers and majored in journalism at the University of Oklahoma. When we started a family, I didn’t return to reporting but decided to try fiction. I wrote juvenile fiction, then YA, and in the 1970s began writing adult suspense and mystery.

How much research do you conduct before you begin a novel and do you always visit the locale?

The novel dictates the amount of research. I wrote several early novels, preceding the Death on Demand books, which had World War II backgrounds and required extensive research. I’ve visited the locales of all the books written since Death on Demand. Once I set a book partly in the Philippines which I have never visited and a woman who grew up there asked me how many years I’d spent in the islands and I knew my library research had been successful.

Advice for novice writers?

Care passionately about what you write. If you care, somewhere an editor will care.

Thank you, Carolyn.

You can visit Carolyn at her website: www.CarolynHart.com

Sandra Ramos O'Brient's Sandoval Sisters' Secrets of Old Blood

Sandra Ramos O'Brient

On May 30, 2013, The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood received two awards from the ILBA in NYC: Best Historical Fiction and Best First Book.  Fifteen years ago I wrote the following line in an Introduction to Fiction class at UCLA:  “Human dreams had been written in archaic Spanish, and terrible sins described in faded brown ink on whisper-thin paper.” The journey to completed novel was chock-full of twists and new beginnings.       

My maternal ancestors were Sandovals. In my grandparent’s home in Santa Fe hung a giant portrait of a tall aging man with flaming red hair. My blue-eyed great great grandfather stared down at me throughout my childhood. The story goes that the Sandoval sisters, both spinsters and reputedly witches, adopted two Anglo boys who’d been orphaned when their family was crossing into New Mexico on the Santa Fe Trail. The boys were Anglo, but they became Sandovals.  How would la gente, the people, react to an Anglo Sandoval?             

Surnames have played a role in my life: I was bullied in school for being a gringa, even though my mother is Hispanic.  It’s the O’Briant surname (Ramos is a pen name.)  Initially, I tried to find an answer to why cultural and ethnic antagonisms existed in Santa Fe.  In the process I learned more about New Mexico and America than I'd ever been taught in college. But my goal was not to indict anyone, just to understand.  My book originally told the story of those descendants with flashbacks to their ‘aunts’, the Sandoval Sisters.  My agent said I had the makings of a family saga. I refocused all the flashbacks and brought the past into the present to tell the story of the sisters who were already a blended family: the eldest sister, Oratoria, was a peasant from Mexico, captured by Apaches and bought for a sack of flour by the Sandovals.  She’s the only one who has read all the Sandoval diaries and is compiling a history of her adopted family while parenting her younger sisters, Alma and Pilar.

   
Witchcraft and superstition floated in the crisp mountain air we breathed in Santa Fe. My mother didn’t hesitate to tell me scary demon stories at my bedtime as if they were sweet fairy tales. The parish priest asked my aunt to stop conducting séances, and rumor had it that my grandmother became paralyzed because a friend who brought daily tasty treats to her was a witch who desired my grandpa. Where I grew up, religion and superstition walked hand-in-hand.         

 The novel reflects Santa Fe's unique position in history: it was the first foreign capital conquered by the U.S. The war is the backdrop for the sisters' individual love and coming-of-age stories in which they cope with racism, sexism, political intrigue and the power of  superstition in that time and place.  Thousands of Anglo soldiers entered the town, but not a word has been written from a female perspective. Until now.

 Book Summary:

When Alma flees with her young lover to Texas to escape an arranged marriage with a much older man, she sets in motion a drama that will put the sisters and their legacy at risk. Pilar, a 14-year-old tomboy, is offered as a replacement bride, and what follows is a sensuous courtship and marriage clouded by the curses of her husband’s former lover, Consuelo. She will stop at nothing, even the use of black magic, in her effort to destroy the Sandoval family. The Mexican-American war begins and the Americans invade Santa Fe. The sisters are caught in the crosshairs of war from two important fronts--New Mexico and Texas. Their money and ancient knowledge offer some protection, but their lives are changed forever.

 ________

Sandra Ramos O’Briant's short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in both print and online.  A complete list and excerpts from the novel can be found here: www.thesandovalsisters.com

Read Chapter 1 by clicking on the BookPulse tab on my Facebook Author Page.  Please give my page a Like while you’re there: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sandra-Ramos-OBriant-author/435665283128378

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sramosobriant

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An Rver's Dream Vacation Resort

After years of staying in crowded, graveled RV parks, we discovered a resort that is very close to paradise. Rancho California is located in the southern desert 18 miles east of Temecula in wine country, an oasis guaranteed to fill most RVer's vacation dreams.

 

 

The 503-lot resort has a number of waterfalls, ponds, multitude of palm trees, swimming pools, tennis and pickle ball courts, grocery mart, restaurant, chapel, laundromats and bath houses, fenced dog park, coastal mountain views as well as a golf course which meanders through the gated facility. It's a community unto itself.

The view of one of the waterfalls was taken from our 40 x 80 lot, which features an outdoor galley kitchen, 25 palm trees and a rose garden that most flower enthusiasts would die for. The large club house behind the waterfall regularly hosts plays, dances to live music, church services, club meetings and a variety of activities available to both renters and lot owners.

A view of the golf course with the coastal range in the background. Visitors regularly travel from Germany, the UK and other countries to stay here as well as RVers from every state in the union. And, surprisingly, it's relatively inexpensive.

 

 

Sunset viewed from the back of our lot, while seated with a glass of California wine to relax from the day's activities. The only drawback is that I don't take time to work on another Logan and Cafferty mystery because there are so many activities, new friends to visit with, and great views to gaze upon. It's truly an RVers paradise!

Disclaimer: This is not a paid commercial, but an invitation to fellow RVers to discover this amazing place.

The Near Death Experience

The “Lazarus Syndrome,” or NDE, refers to a near death experience. The name originated with the biblical Lazarus who was said to have risen from the dead. NDEs have been reported throughout history by the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks as well as in the Bible.

People have reportedly heard themselves pronounced dead by an attending physician. Many, including my mother, recalled traveling rapidly through a long, dark tunnel in an out of body experience. Seeing a bright light, they felt a previously unknown warmth and peacefulness. They’ve also reported being met by a friend or relative who has already passed on, and has, in the process, experienced feelings of extreme love and bliss.

In my mother’s case, she was giving birth to one of my brothers, who was born breech. She said that after traveling the tunnel toward a brilliant light, she was met by her deceased father and told her that it wasn't her time. He reminded her of her three small children at home. At that point, she struggled back to life. According to Dr. Keith D. Wilson, author of Cause of Death, some physicians theorize that the experience is nothing more than hypoxia or decreased oxygen supply to the brain’s temporal lobe. Many, however, believe that it’s a forward look into the unknown realm of death.

Carl Sagan believed that NDEs are latent memories from birth. In his book, Broca’s Brain, he says, “The only alternative, so far as I can see, is that every human being, without exception, has already shared an experience like that of those travelers who return from the land of death; the sensation of flight; the emergence from darkness into light; an experience in which, at least perceived, bathed in radiance and glory. There is only one common experience that matches this description. It is called birth.”

Well-known psychic Sylvia Browne has described the process of dying in several of her bestselling books. She claims to have spent numerous lives on earth and recalls her own demise. She says that she also traveled down a long tunnel but that the bright light seemed to radiate from her own body.

Melvin Morse, M.D., in his book, Closer to the Light, reports that the near-death experiences of young children he interviewed in the hospital were identical. Over a hundred children, ages three to nine, who had suffered NDE during surgery, all experienced the same tunnel and light as did their adult counterparts.

Morse concludes that because the children were too young to be influenced by religious teachings or preconceived notions about death, the near-death experiences hold some validity.

Flawed Characters

One of the biggest mistakes novice writers make is to produce flawless characters. Handsome or beautiful, they have perfect marriages, lots of money, fine cars and homes, good educations and the best of everything. The problem is that few readers can identify with them.

Characters, aside from villains, should be lovable, or at least likable. Never perfect. Your characters must have flaws for readers to be able to empathize with them. Remember Emma Bovary in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones?

The most important thing to remember is to focus on your character's vulnerabilities, according to writing instructor Bret Anthony Johnston."Your focus can be on physical or emotional vulnerability, but it has to be intimately tied to the character. What makes her sad, embarrasses her? What frightens her, what does she regret? What minor or major trespasses has she committed?"

In the case of Emma Bovary, we can sympathize with her mistakes and how they affect her life.

What does your character need or want? And what does he stand to gain or lose by the conclusion of the plot? Whether or not the character achieves his goal isn't as important as how badly he wants it. Your reader will hang in there with your protagonist once she understands his goals and desires. Make that desire as compelling as possible. A character who wants to achieve world peace is far less desirable, according to Johnston, than someone who craves a gourmet dinner, because the goal is attainable.

Once you decide what it is your protagonist wants, emphasize it throughout the story. From the first paragraph, your reader should understand the character's goal and it should color everything he does. And the more he wants something, the more the reader likes him.

Dialogue is a great way to portray a character's weakness. If he talks about someone else, the reader picks up information about the character himself by his description. The type of food he eats or the genre of music he listens to gives us some insight into his character. Does he stop by a fast food place for a burger instead of a restaurant for a good meal? Does he smoke a pack of cigarettes while on stakeout?

In The Great Gatsby when Nick Caraway tries to describe how Daisy Buchannan speaks, he says, "Her voice is full of money." Fitzgerald's few words tells us a lot about both Caraway and Buchannan.

A writer's job is should be more like a method actor than a news reporter. Striving to see the world through your protagonist's eyes is most important. Focus on the details and events happening in his or her life. But that doesn't mean that your fictional characters should like the same things you do or share the same views. Nor should they become your parrot. Each character should have his own distinct speech pattern and outlook on life.

Keep your protagonist in proverbial hot water as much as possible. Allow the water to cool periodically to avoid melodrama, but keep turning up the heat until events come to a boil. When your character has achieved his goal or solved his dilemma, remove him from the pot and dry him off for a satisfying ending.

The Mystery We Write Virtual Book Tour is over but the articles written by the authors who took part in the tour are still available. If you haven't read them, please scroll down the page at Mysterious Writers blog site. You'll be glad you did.

Books are great Christmas gifts, not only for kids but their parents and grandparents as well, especially during the winter months for those of us who live in the northern states. There's nothing like a good book to escape inclement weather or problems that come knocking at our doors.Whether print or electronic versions, we hope you'll consider the novels featured here and that you will buy books for Christmas for those on your gift list.

Studies have shown that reading to young children increases their desire to learn and to excel in school and graduate. What more can we ask of Christmas gifts that will last from one generation to the next?

Wishing everyone a warm and happy holiday season and productive New Year!

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/