MEMO TO SELF: SAVE THE STORIES

Please welcome my Wednesday guest. Joyce Ann Brown is a landlady, storyteller, retired school Library Media Specialist, former classroom teacher, former realtor, and a freelance writer and award-winning author. CATastrophic Connections is the first book in the author's Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery series. A klutzy Kansas City landlady, with the help of a psycho cat, locates her missing niece who is framed for embezzlement and murder, and the two join forces to bring the true evildoer to justice.

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Writing gurus advise, "Keep paper and pen handy at all times to record words, phrases, scenes, characters, and impressions which you might someday need for a story." Such good advice! It's hard to remember all those juicy tidbits unless one writes them down and keeps them handy.

Too bad my right brain is in control of my writing (my life?) and causes me to poo-poo organizational skills. The notes I take when I am out and about end up on old envelopes, backs of business cards, and napkins. (Yes, my friends, some of my best stories started on a fast food napkin.) After I take those notes, of course, I rewrite each in meticulous detail into a fat journal which I keep under lock and key in a desk drawer beside my computer—I wish. No, I stuff the notes into my purse and later into a pile on my desk at home.

It's a good thing my imagination runs wild. If the tidbit is good and is something I know I can use, I bounce it around in my mind for a few days or a few months until I work it into a scene or short story. My mystery, CATastrophic Connections, grew from two bizarre stories which piqued my shiver sensors. My Halloween ghost story, "A Hit and a Miss," placed in a contest and was published by Kings River Life magazine. That story resulted from a story a former neighbor told me, a story so dark and unfortunate that I had to make it even darker and let a ghost help solve it.

Okay, okay, so I have used some of those stories I collected so carelessly. However, there are many more I lost or vaguely remembered. It's hard to reproduce the original delightful inspiration. An enigmatic story I heard some years ago wants to be told in my next book, but I can't remember exactly how it went.

I have an idea, a left brain plan, to combat my right brain randomness. The Smart phone which I've started to use for my calendar, a timepiece, a restaurant finder, my pedometer, a calculator, a compass, and even a telephone, believe it or not, might be the answer. It has a function called Memo with a little picture of a notepad above it. If I can just speed up my one-finger typing or become adept at voice-into-type, and if I can remember I put the notes onto my phone, the little phone notepad could become my portable journal. What a brilliant thought!

Now, let's see, where did I see that Memo app?

 Find CATastrophic Connections at Amazon.com.

Visit the author's website at http://joyceannbrown.com

Facebook author page: JoyceAnnBrownAuthor

Twitter: @JoyceAnnBrown1

Visit Joyce Ann Brown's Goodreads author page

Catch a glimpse of her writing about all cozy subjects on her blog at: http://retirementchoicescozymystery.wordpress.com/

 

 

The Dancing for Joy Continues

Last night I had reason to celebrate--a smashing cover for my forthcoming mystery, Deception in Strange Places. Tonight the dancing continues--got word that my Kelly O'Connell Mysteries have been named the Best Selling Mystery Series for 2013 by Turquoise Morning Press. Granted, it's not quite the same as being named best-selling of, say, Berkeley Prime Crime mysteries, but it is a small accomplishment for this writer who spent years thinking she could never write mysteries. And it makes a nice talking point.
I am flattered by the people who tell me how much they like Kelly and her family, how comfortable they are with them. Local folks, of course, like reading about familiar streets and neighborhoods and restaurants in the books.
There are now four in the series--Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women,  and Trouble in a Big Box. The fifth, Deception in Strange Places, launches July 31 as an ebook, with print to follow. But that's repeating last night's news.
There is a sixth Kelly novel, out to Beta readers right now, tentatively titled "Jigsaw Puzzle Revenge" or something like that. Any reactions to that title would be appreciated.
There are other reasons to dance today--do you have certain chores that you just hate to do? I do, and I did one of them today--got my car inspected after my son-in-law Christian pointed out that my sticker was two months out of date. It's not really a difficult or time-consuming thing to do (30 minutes tops) but I always dread it. So now it's done--like going to the dentist. Behind me.
Had a lovely lunch on the patio of a new tapas restaurant, 24 Plates. They told us the patio was not ready because of last night's rain, but we took a chance  and they dried off a table and chairs for us. Texas was at its best today, unusual for mid-July--not humid, warm but not near 100, nice breeze, and the patio is lovely. Really enjoyed it, and it was good to visit with Jeannie Chaffee who I don't see often enough these days.
Tonight was neighbors' night at The Old Neighborhood Grill (one of Kelly O'Connell's favorite hangouts--so it all comes full circle). We had a full table and a live group tonight, good food, lots of laughter. Life is sweet.

Cover reveal--drum roll, please

How do you like it? I think it's smashing. Many thanks to Kim Jacobs, publisher of Turquoise Morning Press, who designed it. She tells me she's noticed mysteries are going big and bold in their covers. Here's the blurb that will be on the back of the book--and, yes, in spite of the dragon image, this is another Kelly O'Connell Mystery set in Fairmount, where there are no dragons except on Ms. Lorna's silk dressing gowns. At one point or another, almost everyone in the book is pretending to be something they aren't--hence the title. But I'll let you figure out the deceptions for yourself. Could be that a dragon in the historic Fairmount Historical District is part of the deception itself.

A woman desperately seeking her biological mother, a televangelist determined to thwart that search, a hired hit man, and in the midst of it all, a reclusive diva who wears Chinese silk gowns and collects antique Chinese porcelain. Kelly has gotten herself involved in a dangerous emotional tangle this time, and Mike doesn’t tell her to back off, even when events take them from Fort Worth to San Antonio.

I hope you feel, as I do, that it's fun to be back in Kelly's world with her loyal and sometimes wacky extended family, her husband Mike who is devoted but loses patience with her, and her two growing daughters. As a reviewer said of another Kelly book, "You could meet these people in the grocery store."

And more praise for the last Kelly book, Danger Comes Home: "Author Judy Alter brings a colorful cast of characters alive scene after scene. Alter's love of cooking and infatuation with old Craftsman homes permeates the story like a dash of just the right spice in your favorite dish.
Deception in Strange Places will be available as an e-book July 31, with print to follow. Don't worry--I'll be reminding you.

 

Still Plays with Trains

The tee shirt that my breakfast companion wore said, “Still Plays with Trains.” It reminded me of my father, gone now a year and a half, who was a lifelong lover of trains. Shortly before his death he turned in to his editor his last book, this one about the Rochester Division of the Erie Railroad. It was from him that I learned to enjoy rail transport.

Growing up, I shared my basement bedroom with Dad’s HO-gauge model railroad setup. Dad shot hours of 16mm film of trains, especially those pulled by steam locomotives. Turns out his early diesel movies were sufficiently popular they were made into videos. I may be the only Boy Scout to have earned most of his hiking merit badge by walking abandoned track in and around Rochester. Dad knew the mileages from any point to another and would drop me off at various points along the lines and I’d walk home.

My first memory of traveling by rail was from the mid-1950s. Actually, my memory is of being told the story as I don’t directly recall it. My parents, my (then) baby sister and I were traveling on a train and ate in the dining car. Back then people dressed up to take the train, and the dining car service was starched white tablecloth, cloth napkins and good silver. For whatever reason my father was at a different table than the rest of us. We finished dinner first and my mother informed me how to use the fingerbowls. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_bowl) In a LOUD VOICE I called across the aisle, “Daddy, they’re for washing your fingers. You’re not supposed to drink the water.”

In 1967 on a return trip with my father from Boston to Rochester on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we had to sit on our suitcases in the aisle from Albany to Syracuse where seats finally became available.

When it came to railroads, my father could make friends with anyone. He managed to become acquainted with a Canadian National freight crew because they were still running one of the early diesels on a “milk train” route. He arranged for them to take me along for a day. He dropped me off in Madoc, ON (if I recall correctly) and picked me up in Bancroft, ON that night. I rode in the caboose (they still had them) where I helped check manifests and ate lunch with the crew. They didn’t let me anywhere near the couplings, but I did throw some switches and I rode much of the trip away from towns up in the engine. Everything the crew and I did that day broke the rules, but the crew and my father thought it would be a great experience and to heck with management’s rules.

Whenever I can conjure a reasonable excuse I take train rather than fly. The most recent opportunity came when I decided to participate in Left Coast Crime in Monterey, CA as part of the promotion for the April 2014 release of the second Seamus McCree mystery,
Cabin Fever.

We took sleepers from Savannah to Washington, DC to Chicago to Emeryville, CA (outside San Francisco). After attending the conference we trained from LA to New Orleans and detrained at Birmingham where we rented a car and drove home rather than spend two more days going up to Washington, DC and back down to Savannah.

On this trip the most interesting railroad-related conversation was with a guy from the Cincinnati area. He’s the engineer (civil, not train) responsible for a G-gauge (~1/24^th actual size), 25,000 sq. foot train set with over two miles of tracks. It has three sections relating respectively to the late 19^th century, mid-20^th century and modern railroads. There are streetcars as well, realistic buildings constructed by volunteers and an elevation change of eleven feet. I’d never heard of this place and I lived in Cincinnati until four years ago. http://www.entertrainmentjunction.com/cincinnati_entertainment_and_attractions/model_trains_journey It’s on my list of things to do the next time I’m in the area.

The finger bowls are gone, as are the silver and fresh flowers on the tables. The scenery is just as spectacular, the people we eat meals with are just as interesting; and there is something that reaches deep into my core as I hear the whistle blow, we approach a crossing and a father holds his child on his shoulders to watch the train pass. The kid waves and I wave back.

I’m thinking of asking for that tee shirt for my birthday, because really, I am just a kid who still plays with trains.

 

~ Jim