Summertime
- motownmysteries
- Jun 19
- 13 min read
For many people in the United States, the Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start to summer. That holiday arrived early this year, due to a fluke on the calendar. But Mother Nature wasn't ready. It was cold and dreary for me. But now that we're rocking into June, it definitely feels like summertime.
Here's the latest on my writing, a sneak peek from one of the books, updates on the current project, some new events on the horizon, an interview with author Michael Timmins and of course, music.
Ready?
Let's go!
Writing
It's not uncommon for someone to ask me where I get the ideas for my stories. I can't always give them a straight answer, because inspiration can strike any where at any time. There have been conversations I've overheard or situations I've witnessed that have triggered a crazy idea in my head. From that moment, the imagination takes off.
Sometimes I'll get questions about my characters, especially Jamie. I tell people that she is a combination of a number of women from my past. There are certain traits or behaviors are all part of what makes my favorite redhead memorable. Some were from people I worked with. Others from my imagination. But I never really gave the true inspiration for her much thought. Until recently.
That's when I realized there was in fact a model for Jamie. The backstory I created for her was that of an investigative journalist. Jamie was a reporter for one of the big newspapers in metro Detroit, where she followed the leads on difficult stories to complete the assignment. Jamie was a bit adventurous. When she meets Malone, his attentions bring out her romantic side. And boy, did the sparks fly.
Just like Brenda Starr.
The Brenda Starr comic strip ran for over sixty years in many newspapers. As a kid, the comics and the sports section were my favorite parts of the paper. Apparently my subconscious had this image of Brenda filed away. You can see a bit of the resemblance here.
So you never can tell when an image, a conversation or a situation may get the creative juics flowing. Sometimes things just click. It's possible there was something in my past that led to the creation of other characters. But nothing immediately jumps to mind on any of them.
In many cases, I don't go into great detail describing my characters. I leave that up to the reader to use their own imagination. Let them decide how they walk and talk, what their favorite colors and foods are and information about their past that shaped them. Let the readers fill in those blanks.
I'll stick to writing the stories.
The Sneak Peek
Stealing Haven is perfect for this month. After all, it's a summer vacation story, where Jamie and her best friend, Linda, go to South Haven, on the shore of Lake Michigan for some sunshine and relaxtion. But can Jamie ever really relax? Here's a sneak peek.
Wednesday morning, we dressed for the beach. It was another picture perfect day. I was beginning to think clouds were not allowed in South Haven during the summer. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce controlled the weather. As we walked along, I stopped in front of the house with the blue trim. Linda reluctantly followed as went up the driveway.
“Jamie, what are we doing?”
“I’m curious. That’s two nights in a row where we’ve seen someone running in the dark. Maybe there is something going on.”
“Why are you looking for trouble? We’re on vacation. Is this a way of diverting my attention from your misbehavior?” A wicked grin flashed across her face.
Ignoring her, I stood at the back of the house. The footprints were still visible in the yard. Randy had been right. There were no signs of activity near the building. But if they were running away from here, where did they come from? I turned around and faced the street, following the diagonal path. I could imagine someone racing between the two houses on the opposite side of the road. Curiosity got the better of me. We walked in that direction. Both houses were dark with no signs of life. I went between them to the backyards.
“Jamie, let’s go. The beach is waiting. Sun, sand, muscular lifeguards with tiny swimsuits could be looking for us even as we’re standing here.”
“There are no lifeguards on our part of the beach.”
“Maybe they’re on vacation, too.” I was about to give up when something caught my eye. The back door to the house on the left, a quaint little cottage, was pried open. There were several gouges in the wood. Peeking through the window, I could see into the kitchen. The cupboard doors were ajar. Linda stood silently beside me for a moment. Then she moved around the corner. She returned, shaking her head in dismay.
“There’s a gap in the curtains on the side window. The place looks ransacked.” From her straw bag, she dug out her cell phone and a small piece of paper. I realized it was Randy’s business card from the other day. We walked down the driveway so we could find an address number. The look she gave me was less than friendly. “Only you, Jamie. Only you.”
Five minutes later, a police car pulled up in front. The uniformed officer had just begun taking down our information when another vehicle parked behind him. Jared stepped out of the car, drumming his fingers on the roof. But there were traces of a grin on his face.
“We gotta stop meeting like this. My wife is gonna get suspicious.”
“It’s not me,” Linda said innocently. “It’s her.”
He walked up the driveway. “Let’s hear how you two just happened to stumble onto this. Because it seems like the last thing you’d be doing on a vacation.”
Linda hesitated. “You’d better tell it from last night, Jamie. But maybe leave out all the hot and sweaty parts.”
“I’ll only give you the details that are pertinent.”
Jared was chuckling. “Yeah, I bumped into Randy this morning. I think he’ll be worthless most of the day. Did he search you?”
“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it’s none of your business. Do you want to hear about finding this house or not?”
“Yes, let’s have it.”
So I spelled it out for him. Together, we walked across to the house with the blue trim. Jared checked the backyard, where the footprints were mostly gone. We went back across the street. The other cop was waiting by the patrol car.
“Dispatch ran the address. The owners live in Jackson. They try to come out every other weekend. County Sherriff is sending their forensic people, but it will be a while before they get here. How do you want to handle it?”
Jared considered it for a moment. An idea jumped to the front of my brain and I blurted it without thinking.
“If you have video on your phone, you could go inside and film how the house looks. Then send it to the owners and see if they can identify anything missing.”
“That’s a good idea. We’ll wait for forensic to do their thing,” Jared said. He glanced at Linda. “No need for you two to stick around. Go enjoy the beach.”
“We’ll leave it to you.” She grabbed my arm and steered me away. “This is turning out to be a strange vacation.”
“Are you kidding? It’s gotta be the best vacation ever!”
“You really do need to get laid more often.”
Work in Progress
I continue writing new scenes for the fourth Jefferson Chene mystery. It's always gratifying to see the word count climb as one scene leads to another.
One of my challenges is to adjust the timeline. I'll write a scene that works well in the story, but then have to sit back and think about where it belongs in the overall story. Thanks to the wonders of technology, it's easy to move scenes around until they fit in properly.
Why the football picture?
I refer to this process as blocking. It allows me to block out a section of the book for upcoming passages or identify what scenes are needed to keep the story flowing.
There may be another term for that, but hey, I like football.
Events
Here's a few upcoming festivals where you can find me.
Author Interview
Last summer I connected with Michael Timmins. In addition to his work as an author, Michael was coordinating the Muddy Maumee Book and Art Festival in Toledo, OH. It was such a great festival that he's doing it again this year.
(Yes, I'll be crossing the border once again to participate in this show.)
Everyone takes a different path to becoming a published author. What was your journey like?
When I started writing it was close to 20 years ago. I had wanted to be a writer for some time and had researched how to get published. I had one of those big publisher books, you know, the ones that listed all of the publishing houses and who to contact to get published. The whole thing was daunting. Too daunting really. And so, I just fiddled with writing.
Plugging away on what would end up being my first novel. Not really investing the time in it because the whole idea of taking the next step; publishing, was such an overwhelming process that I just couldn’t see myself doing it. Then self-publishing kind of blew up and when I saw how easy it was (comparatively) to self-publish, I really started taking my writing seriously.
What had taken me about 10 years to write, really amounted to 9 years of short bursts of writing followed by 1 year of really drilling down on it and finishing the book.
Any requirements you need when you’re working on a story?
I don’t really have any requirements, per se. I write when the mood takes me and those times are difficult to find. I work a lot and I have to get up early for my work so I find that by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is sit down and write. But sometimes I power through that and get some words down on the page.
Do you prepare an outline before you start writing a story?
No. I have never outlined before writing a story. Outlining to me would sap my will to write. It’s not that I don’t mentally, sort of, create a loose outline in my head, but I never write one down. I’m a pantster, through and through. So far, I have been fortunate to have kept everything straight. Never written myself into a corner and have managed to lay breadcrumbs for later plot twists almost instinctively. We will see if that keeps playing out like that as I go.
There is one of my next books that I feel I might need to do an outline for as there needs to be a lot of setup before the reveal and I worry if I don’t figure all of it out first it will fall apart when I get to the end, but we will see.
Tell us about your latest book.
I am currently writing the third and final book of the Lycan War Saga; The Final War. It is a culmination of my first series that I wrote and am pretty proud of it. It has been difficult to finish it though and it has taken me a lot longer to write than I though it would.
In the book, the two sides of the conflict are coming to ahead and one of my favorite scenes I wrote was that one of the characters has so far avoided being in a real battle. She hadn’t yet killed anyone and was preparing to go into a fight that she was afraid she might actually have to kill someone for the first time.
A lot of times in these fictional works, characters kill someone for the first time and the author doesn’t address what that does to a person. Taking a life would be devastating to some, to others it might feel weird that it wasn’t as impactful as they thought it should be and they might even wonder if there is something wrong with them for not feeling a certain way.
I like to take the time to sit with a character when this happens, because as a reader, sometimes I’m just like… what the hell? They just killed someone and then it was like nothing impactful actually happened. Anyway, in this scene, the woman calls her father and tells him how she is worried about having to possibly kill someone and he tells her of his time in Vietnam.
Here’s a scene from that book.
“It isn’t really about them. But it is about fighting against them. It’s just… some of us are about to go somewhere and I think we are going to have to fight our way inside.”
And there was the truth of the problem. Tomorrow, someone, or someones, would die by her hand. The silence hung between them for a long moment before her father finally responded. “Are you afraid that you might have to kill someone?”
Stephanie squeezed her eyes shut tight. Trying not to think about what that might mean for her.
“Yes.” She whispered back.
“Oh, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” He told her.
“How did you handle it, dad?” Her father had fought in Vietnam. That was about all she had known about his time there. They had never spoken of it. Why would they have? She had been young when her mother had died, and her father had all but abandoned her after that. They had hardly talked about anything, let alone something as troubling as his time in Vietnam.
She didn’t even know if he had killed anyone. But somehow, she sensed that he had. Again, with the silence. She was used to it with her father. He had never been verbose, even before her mother’s death. As the silence stretched however, she realized that even now, after all these decades, he might still not be ready to talk about what had happened in Vietnam. That frightened her even more with what she might have to do tomorrow.
“The first time I killed a man.” Her father began, his tone soft and frail, like how it had sounded when she had come home after learning she was a Were. “The first time I killed a man. I wept.”
This hit her hard. There had been only one time she could remember her father crying and that had been when he had begged for her forgiveness in their front yard after how he had treated her after her mom had died. He hadn’t cried at her mom’s funeral. He hadn’t cried when she left for college. Nothing. So, for her to hear that something struck him powerfully enough to bring tears to his eyes, that said a lot.
“A lot of us did.” He continued. “Those first few months of combat for a lot of the new recruits had a great many of us crying, throwing up, waking from nightmares or not being able to close our eyes at all for fear we would see the faces of the men we were being forced to kill.”
Her father went silent again. She waited for him to say more, but he stayed silent. When she was about to ask him again how he had been able to handle killing people, he started up again.
“They don’t talk about that much. Or at least, they didn’t when I was growing up. It was all about how soldiers were heroes. Heroes who saved the day or gave their lives to protect freedom and democracy. Nowadays, they are starting to show some truth about what it was really like. We were children. Children being asked to do things that no one should be asked to do. They didn’t prepare us. There were no doctors on hand to help us get through what we were doing. It’s not like they didn’t know. Plenty of people have returned from war; changed from who they had been when they had left. Plenty of soldiers who chose to end their lives because not going on living after what they had seen and done was preferable.”
Stephanie felt she could hardly breathe hearing this from her father. He was sharing more with her now than he had maybe shared with her their entire relationship.
“They sent us out there, knowing it would break us and didn’t bother to give us a way to put ourselves back together again. We were expendable. Meat for the grinder.”
Her father huffed, his breath gusting through the receiver expressing all his frustration and anger at what had happened to them.
“No. That isn’t right. They did not expend our lives easily. They didn’t want us to die, they just didn’t care how we would go on living.”
Again, her father went silent. Stephanie didn’t breathe a word. She was frightened that if she spoke, her father would realize he wasn’t talking to himself and stop sharing such an intimate part of his life with her.
“I’m sorry.” He said at last. “I’m not really answering your question. How did I deal with it? I didn’t. At first, it eats at you. It tears apart what you thought was the human part of you. The civilized part of you. You’ve taken another man’s life. It doesn’t really matter that at the moment it was you or him. A man is dead, and you are the one who did it.
"If that first life had been the only one I had taken, I’m not sure I would have been able to get past it. But it wasn’t. Then there was a second, a third. There were times when we were just firing in the bush because we knew the enemy was there, firing back at us. How many of those men’s lives were cut short from a bullet from my gun? I have no idea.”
Stephanie had never heard so much heartbreak in a person’s voice as she heard now in her father’s. He seemed a different person from the one she had grown up with. From the one she had just barely rediscovered.
“In time, the face of the first man I killed was blurred away from the others. One or hundreds. They became all the same to me. They became faceless. Barely people. When I started looking at them that way, it became easier. Less damaging to my soul. But make no mistake. My soul is damaged. It is not an easy thing to take a life. In Vietnam, we thought we were there to help. To thwart communism. Many of us believed in the cause, if not the need for it to be us.”
What’s next?
After I finish this book I need to get back to my other series, The Shards of the Coven. I have two more books in that series, I believe, and then after that? We will see where my muse takes me.
Will you be at any upcoming author events?
I will be holding another event in September, so I will be there, of course. I also do the Apple Butter Festival in Grand Rapids, Ohio.
You can get more details from Michael's website.
Music
I'm in my car a lot this time of year, going to and from work and festivals around the state. Depending on the situation (and the weather) you'll probably catch a glimpse of me rocking along the highway with the windows rolled down and the stereo blasting.
Here's a few of my favorite tunes for traveling.
Hall & Oates: Hot Fun in the Summertime: https://youtu.be/xBh1FjOq_9w?si=iI3hqJVgAuJoYimt
Eagles: Heartache Tonight: https://youtu.be/_GAnOHzHksA?si=m_izDUbxkhm2DxSa
Bob Seger: Old Time Rock and Roll: https://youtu.be/PXwF7g5wksQ?si=ab1VKvBU92n_hu2J
Chuck Berry: Reelin' and Rockin': https://youtu.be/ca2jxk6o3Rw?si=SaV5YBG6_rzsbxCf
Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love: https://youtu.be/0ORIoUohBUc?si=Jp53Fj0Bt0zBOOGy