It's time to start my engines

I've written the book. It's been edited. Formatted for Kindle and paperback. What now?

1. Choose a release date.
2. Start making people want what I've written.

I made a couple of videos to kick off the process. One is to give you the release news.

The other is to make you want to know more.



Want to know more? Stay tuned.

The first cut's always the deepest

And the first chapter is always the hardest. Did I start at the right place? Is my opening strong enough? Will the reader keep reading?

I'm almost, this-close to finishing the new mystery, aka Murder on the Hoof. Everything about it has been difficult, but especially the opening. My Peri series usually opens with the crime, followed by Peri and her cohorts discovering whodunit. I didn't want this one to start like that.

So here's the first chapter. It hasn't been edited yet, so it's probably rough. If you have comments, that's great. If not, that's okay, too. I think I just wanted to get this out in public so I could stand back and go, "Hmm, yes, now that I see it..."

* * * *

MURDER ON THE HOOF: CHAPTER ONE

It was his blue eyes that made Willie want to turn and run. The color of arctic glaciers, their iciness popped from the long dark eyelashes surrounding them. He used them quite effectively, staring through her with no expression.

It wasn’t the first time a pretty boy looked through her, and at her age, it wouldn’t be the last. Her gaze flinched, but she planted her feet.

“Tyler?” she asked, extending her hand. “I’m Willie Adams. My trainer, Emily Jungers, is meeting me here to look at one of your horses.”

He remained in his seat and stretched out his hand to meet hers. It was a slow, deliberate move, as if he considered whether to shake her hand or not. His palm felt firm and stiff, one pump of a shake, then withdrawn.

“Nice to meet you.”

Willie glanced at the makeshift tack room, a stall used to contain saddles and blankets during the horse show. She could still see a corner of the large red sign hung on the front of the barn aisle, proclaiming “Tyler Ransome Performance Horses” in large black letters. Two canvas-backed folding chairs sat, unopened, against the faded beige wood. Within the shadows beyond the door, she spied saddles on racks.

She looked down at the travel mug of coffee in her hands, and found herself taking small, nervous sips to fill the silence. The warm aroma of hazelnut caffeine was crowded by the smell of hay and horses and leather. A rattle of spurs made her look away, thankful for the break from discomfort. Emily Jungers, a tall, lithe redhead, strode toward them and held out her hand. “Tyler, good to see you.”

The cowboy unfolded his long limbs from the chair and stood, offering his hand in return. “You wanted to see the little mare?” He pointed down the barn aisle and strolled away with Emily.

Willie took a step to follow, then looked down at the cup in her hands. Once a comforting distraction, it now felt awkward. She glanced around. There was no table outside to leave it, so she went to the tack room and stuck the cup inside the door, then scampered after the two trainers.

She watched Emily’s long legs keeping an easy stride with Tyler, but Willie either had to trot to catch them or continue to walk smoothly with her short legs and get there when she got there.

Damned long-legged people, she thought. Would it kill them to slow down for us shorties?

Horses stuck their heads over stall doors on either side. She looked at her watch. It was just past ten, so they were probably waiting on a mid-morning snack. The air was warming toward its goal in the high eighties, a typical July day in southern California. She looked at each face as she walked by, savoring their beauty, then regarded the people walking in front of her.

The girls at her stable were right. When she had mentioned him, Elliot’s owner Barbara had said, “Ooh, Tyler Ransome, rhymes with handsome.” He was easily a head taller than Emily, broad-shouldered and lean under his grey tee-shirt. Strong features in a chiseled face, with bright blue eyes and full lips, he was model perfect. She usually could not be charmed, much less starry-eyed, by such a beautiful man, but she found herself keeping her distance from him and trying not to look his direction.

It was not the reaction she expected. What would I want with a pretty boy, she thought. A horse trainer at that. I’ve been riding horses for two years. He’s been with them for, basically, ever. We have nothing in common. He’s not like my Hank at all.

Hank had been gone for three years now, leaving her a young widow. The good news was that she wasn’t left to raise any children without him. The bad news was that she would have welcomed the chance to raise his children. Photographs and videos couldn’t be hugged in the middle of a bad night, and her memories of their carefree marriage did not feel like much of a legacy.

She caught up with the pair at a stall, where a tall, bright bay stood, craning its neck over the door, as if asking for a treat.

“This is Cat’s Liberty Belle,” Tyler said as he opened the door, then slipped a halter on the horse’s head. He led the mare out and walked her to Emily.

Willie knew better than to say anything, even if she thought the horse was gorgeous, which she did. Emily had told her before they started shopping for a horse, that it was much like buying a car.

“If the seller thinks you’re excited about this horse, it doesn’t leave you a lot of wiggle room with the price,” Emily had said. “And no matter how much you like a horse, everything can change with the vet check.”

Keeping her trainer’s advice in mind, Willie tried to keep the sparkle from her eyes as she looked at the six-year-old mare, who stood quietly with her head down and her back foot cocked in relaxation. In the meantime, she watched Emily run her hand across the horse’s withers, down her back to her rump, then stand back.

“She’s a little bigger than my client needs, but I’d like to try her out,” Emily said.

Willie nodded, if only to look agreeable. This mare was beautiful, but big. At 5’4”, Willie didn’t consider herself tiny, but this horse’s withers looked at least that tall. That meant 16 hands; she had been hoping for something a little shorter, maybe 15 hands, when the horse wore new shoes and stood very straight.

“I’ll throw a saddle on her and meet you in the warm-up arena in fifteen minutes,” Tyler told them and led Belle up to his tack area.

Emily looked at her and turned toward the arenas, so Willie followed. They passed by the row of shopping stands at the edge of the warm-up arena. Most of the displays were empty, and a few were still in the assembly stage. The horse show didn’t officially start until tomorrow, but most of the competitors arrived a day early to set up their stalls and acclimate their horses. Vendors did likewise, just in case someone needed fly spray or new reins.

“She’s awfully big,” Willie told Emily on their way to the arena.

“I know you want something smaller, but she’s a good mover, a good age, and pretty quiet. She’s been shown in pleasure and trail, so she wouldn’t need any new training for you. And I know Tyler.”

Willie cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Not like that.” Emily shook her head, her long auburn ponytail swaying behind her AQHA baseball cap. “I mean, I’ve bought horses from him before. He’s straight-up, always interested in finding a good fit for his buyers. You’d be surprised how many people try to pawn off a horse with a navicular condition or even dope them up so they look super quiet. Tyler’s not like that.”

Willie ran the word ‘navicular’ through the list of horse terms she kept stored in her brain. She knew it had something to do with having bad feet.

They arrived at the arena and sat on the stone wall to wait for the horse. Soon, they saw the tall cowboy leading Belle, who followed along, her head level with her withers, typical of a relaxed Quarter horse.

Emily turned to Willie. “Just remember, this is a two-week show with a lot of horses here. This isn’t the only one we’ll look at. Even if we don’t find your horse here, one of these trainers may have a horse at home for us.”

There had never been an AQHA horse show this large in southern California, but the Los Angeles Equestrian Center had recently expanded, adding four covered arenas and expanding their warm-up areas, thanks to a recent endowment by two legendary actors. Each had taken up horse riding over the years and now competed with each other in reining events as well as at the box office.

In response to their generosity, the center had named an arena for each actor, and in response to the expansion, the American Quarter Horse Association had scheduled a two-week show. Everything from pleasure riding, to jumping, to speed events and cow and ranch horse classes were offered, to showcase the versatility of the breed.

Now Willie sat at the edge of the Kirk T. Williams arena, preparing to buy her first horse and wondering both why she was doing this, and what took her so long.

* * * *

Listening to the voices in my head

When I began writing Freezer Burn, I knew my main character. My buddy Robin and I had joked around about "Peri Menopause, Private Eye" for such a long time, it was easy to give her a better name and make her a real woman.

For this new mystery, I had the idea for a murder, but not characters, so I had to invent a new population. Would my main character be male or female? Amateur sleuth or seasoned professional? After much thinking, I decided on a female sleuth. I made her younger than Peri and mostly different. Peri is a tall, icy blonde. Willie (short for Wilhelmina) Adams is a short, curvy brunette. She is a little like me in that she has to watch her weight more than she'd like, and she'd like to pay more attention to her looks than she does. She is unlike me in that she is a widow.

I considered giving her children, but in the end thought she might be more interesting to be a woman who thought her life was going down the married-with-children route until her husband died of pancreatic cancer. Now she's in her 30s and wondering if that ship has sailed, and how she feels about it.

How do I know how her husband died? Because once I started to write her life story, in her voice, she told me. If you write, you know this feeling. If you don't, all I can say is that you give your characters a few physical, emotional, and behavioral boundaries, and they do the rest.

Here is Willie's story (please forgive her for the occasional grammar lapse - she thinks she's just writing for me):

I thought I'd have the normal life. Married with children. A job, maybe a career. They say we plan and God laughs.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. We were very middle class average people. Dad was Irish, Mom was German. I could have been a tall, fetching redhead. Instead I got the wrong side of both tracks. Dad's shortness, mom's curves, dad's freckles, mom's dark hair. We did normal family stuff. Went to church on Sundays after bbq'ing with friends on Saturday nights.

Maybe it started to go awry when I went to college. I was the baby although not by much. I have a sister one year older and a brother 3 years older. We didn't give Mom much time to do anything but raise us.

When I moved into the dorms at U of Illinois and began taking classes for a teaching career, I started to see how my mom sacrificed for us and how I didn't want to spend my life taking care of kids.

I changed my major after a trip to the counseling office, to engineering. Mom thought I was pissing away money on a degree I'd toss once I got married. Dad didn't say anything, but kept paying the tuition. I got my BS in CS and was recruited to work at a big aerospace company on the west coast. I had just moved into my new apartment when Trina, my sis, called.

Dad had a heart attack and died. Trina and my brother Stefan still lived in Chicago, but somehow Mom thought I should be the one to move home with her. I wasn’t married, didn’t have a family, etc. I gave up the new job and apartment and moved back. It’s what dutiful children do, right?

The first year was rough. We were both grieving our loss, and acting out as people do, by being alternately angry and clingy with each other. It slowly started to get better. We each found our own niche in the household and worked together instead of battling over territories. One year after Dad was gone, the light switched back on in Mom’s spirit.

Actually, it was less of a light and more of a disco ball. It seems Mom woke up one morning and realized all she had sacrificed as a wife and mother, and set out to reclaim her freedom. Suddenly she was never home. She found a group of single women her age and they were always out to have as much frivolous fun as possible. There was a lot of shopping, a lot of drinking and dancing, and a lot of money running out of the house.

I had gotten a job at a bookstore back home, the only thing I could find that at least kept my mind active. There were no engineering jobs in the Chicago vicinity for me. But I had money coming in. Dad had left Mom comfortable, had she continued with the lifestyle they once shared. I could see this new way of living was going to drain every bit of money he had left her. She was in her fifties and in fine health. She’d also never worked outside the home.

I tried not to butt in, but finally I had to speak up. I had seen her latest bank statement and it was a train wreck. I sat her down and showed her the statement and pointed out the increase in her expenses. I even extrapolated a few numbers, to show her how soon her money would run out if she kept spending this way. The house was paid for, but she still had taxes and insurance and utilities. She could sell the house and get some money from that, but it would not solve the problem of her out of control spending.

She said the most amazing thing to me: “We’ll pay the household expenses out of your pay. You may have to get another job to support us both.”

I met Trina and Stefan for lunch that day, and explained the entire situation to them. Then I packed my bags and bought a one-way fare to southern California. There was only so much duty a dutiful daughter would perform. Enabling my mom’s second childhood was not on the menu.

Mom stopped speaking to me. I heard via my sibs that she refused to cut back or slow down, despite their protests. Stefan even explored legal action, but when a person is sane there’s not much you can do. You can’t fix stupid.

I quickly found a job at a video game company. It’d be fun to say I write all these great games, but they wanted my services in the administrative end, so I work on their employee database, payroll software, game catalogs, processes, etc.

That’s where I met Tom Adams. He was exactly the kind of guy I was attracted to — not too tall, the kind of strikingly awkward looks that made him adorable, and a sense of humor. We hit it off like peas in a pod. Although we both knew from the start that we were completely compatible, we took our time with courtship. Neither of us was in a hurry to run off and marry. I enjoyed being in the relationship, and so did he. After a year, we moved in together.

Two years later, we married. It wasn’t a huge affair, but my sibs came out to celebrate with us. Mom returned the invitation. “Recipient Unknown.”

Life was so much fun. We went to concerts and plays, saw the latest movies, had friends over for dinner, did the big fat social scene. Tom wanted kids, and so did I, but we weren’t in a hurry. We had plenty of time.

Then one day Tom woke with a stomach pain that kept hurting the next day and the next. After a week, he went to the doctor. There were tests and tests and more tests, and painkillers because the pain was increasing. I drove him everywhere. He used up a lot of his sick days. It took two weeks to diagnose him. Pancreatic cancer.

Two months later he was dead.

Trina and Stefan were out in sunny SoCal again, except it wasn’t so sunny anymore. They helped me with everything, along with my friends. Quite frankly, it was all a blur. I thought I knew what grief felt like, after Dad died. I had no idea what it was like to lose someone who was beyond family, more than close, intimate in ways that you don’t discuss in polite society. When my eyes weren’t weeping, my soul was.

Mom was still a no-show, which was doubly painful. I thought that, being a sudden widow herself, she might have reached out to me. Stefan reported that she had finally opened her bank statement one day and realized she had a thousand dollars left. Dad had left her $250,000 and she had one thousand left. She called my brother in a panic. Taxes were due, what was she to do?

He got out the newspaper and turned to the Help Wanted section. Then he got out his checkbook. “This is the only money I’m going to give you. Your children tried to warn you and you wouldn’t listen. We are not going to pay for your mistakes. You will have to get a job now and re-learn how to live on a budget.”

She’s not speaking to him now, either. Oh, she cashed the check, but she’s not speaking.

Eventually, he and Trina had to go back to Chicago, and I had to re-learn how to live as a single gal. My friends helped me a little, for awhile. I tried not to burden them with my recovery, and they tried to include me in everything they were doing. The problem was that they were couples and I was not. After a few months, I started to feel the awkwardness instead of the comfort. It was not their fault. They were always inviting, warm, friendly. Maybe they just made me miss Tom too much.

I took the advice of every columnist on the planet. I got a dog for company, a schnauzer I named Hansel. He kept me from spending my days in bed. I signed up for classes, did volunteer work, tried new things to keep busy. Most of it didn’t fit, until I tried horse riding lessons.

I had wanted to ride as a child, but Mom always said no. “Too expensive. We can’t afford things like that.” Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I called the local stables looking for lessons. Ha ha, Mom.

I’ve tried skiing, scuba diving, and all kinds of sports. None of them seemed a good fit for me. Being short and curvy does not translate to athletic grace. But from the first time I gave the lesson horse a deep massage with the curry and saw him stretch his neck out in pleasure, to the satisfaction of controlling his movements through my own riding, I knew this was it. There was no other activity I had experienced where I loved the prep work as much as the action.

Soon I was riding my trainer’s horse and competing in horse shows in the area. It’s becoming a consuming passion with me. Now I’m looking to buy a horse It’s been two years since Tom’s death, and I finally feel like the fog is lifting.

So, that's Willie. What do you think of her?

What's that? A NEW mystery?

Yes, I'm leaving Peri and her pals momentarily to wander off and write a new mystery with new characters. Why? For two reasons.

One: I'm tired of being asked why I don't include horses in my books, since I do wrap so much of my real life around them. I have the flimsiest of excuses - it's hard work. Most people do not possess a lot of knowledge about working with horses, so I have to write in a way that lets the non-horsey reader in on the world without boring the horsey reader. It's not an easy task.

Two: I had an idea for a mystery when I was at the last horse show. Horses' stalls are usually bedded with wood shavings and we must clean them at least once a day. At shows, we put the used shavings at the end of the barn aisle and a tractor comes and scoops them up. One morning, as I walked toward our barn, I thought, what if there was a pair of cowboy boots under the shavings... with a body in them?

I've got the basic plot written down, and journals written for my two main characters. Journaling not only gave me their voices, their description of their lives created my subplots. I love it when my characters make my life easier.

So meet my female sleuth, Wilhelmina (Willie) Adams. She is somewhere in her mid-30s, a short, curvy brunette, and a widow. Her husband has been gone for two years and after taking a few horse riding lessons, she discovered that horses are good for the soul. She is now competing on her trainer's horse, but they go to a show to try to find a horse for her to buy.

Enter Tyler Ransome, a 40-something horse trainer who is divorced and bitter. He is friendly enough to keep clients and sell horses, but nothing more. To Willie's eye, he is too tall, too handsome, and too gruff to be bothered with.

Of course, a game of romance will be played along with the whodunit.

Check out my Pinterest board for some of my inspiration. In the meantime, I'll share a little of my journaling over the next few posts. Stay tuned.