Launch Party Kick Off!

Bourbon Punch

Today we are launching our first book from Mystery and Horror, LLC. Since our authors are scattered through several countries we couldn't get together for a launch, so we're doing the party in the virtual world. For the next ten days we are going to PARTY. 

Now, in the virtual world, all party food is calorie free. So for those of you who want a little more bang, I'm going to post a few recipes that I only bring out on special occasions. 

Being from Kentucky, bourbon is a part of our heritage. This particular recipe has been handed down from my great-grandmother and is a perfect refreshment for a hot summer day. Of course, it is a ladies' recipe and for the gents you might want to leave a bottle of your favorite bourbon around so they can add a little extra kick.

Bourbon Punch

1 Quart Cherries, pitted

3 T. Rose’s Lime

1 Quart iced tea

3 T. brown sugar

1 Pint bourbon

1 1/2 Quarts ginger ale

Thin slices of lime (optional)

Ice

Soak the cherries overnight in bourbon. (If you don't have cherries, you can substitute 1/2 cup of sour cherry juice for the fruit.) Steep your favorite tea in hot water. Sweeten the tea with the brown sugar, chill for an hour, and then drain the bourbon from the cherries into a punch bowl. Add the Rose's lime juice and mix.  Add ginger ale and stir. Add ice and garnish with lime slices just before serving.

Now if you used cherries instead of taking a shortcut with cherry juice, you have a quart of bourbon drenched cherries. You could always eat them, but my great-grandmother's solution was to turn those cherries into a warm rich cherry-chocolate brownie pie. If you'd care to try a slice, here is the recipe:

Cherry-Chocolate Brownie Pie

1 cup melted butter

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup baking cocoa

1 quart pitted bourbon soaked cherries

1 package chocolate chips

Mix butter, sugar, and eggs until smooth. Add vanilla, salt, flour, and cocoa and stir until well blended. Stir in the chocolate chips and cherries and mix until the cherries are coated in brownie batter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Divide the brownie batter into two buttered 9 inch pie tins and bake 25-30 minutes or until almost set. Do not overbake. Serve warm from the oven with a drizzle of chocolate syrup.

Now, don't you wish you were here to have a slice of this pie and toast the book with us?

Strangely Funny is available in print, Kindle, and other ebook formats.

Strangely Funny Stories and Authors

Yesterday I promised that I would reveal the names and story titles of all the stories selected for our first anthology. This is a lineup that is sure to leave you laughing. So here goes:

The Best of Taste 

by Edward Ahern

Once Upon a Gnome 

by Gloria Alden

The taste of Copper 

by Alex Azar

Indricotherium 

by Rosalind Barden

County Water 

by David Bernard

Something Plucked this Way Comes 

by Leslie Carmichael

Tom & the Roadside Cafe 

by Kimberly Colley

Criticus Ex Machina 

by Sarah E. Glenn

Happy Anniversary 

by Laura Huntley

Window Watching 

by Joseph Jude

Ruby 

by Jon Michael Kelley

Deadbeat 

by John Lance

Jake Blossom, Pixie Detective 

by Ken MacGregor

A Proper Job for a Lady 

by Gwen Mayo

Tommy and the Trolls 

by James McCormick

One Scareful Owner 

by Catriona McPherson

What were You Drinking  

by David Perlmutter

No More Blue Pills 

by Suzanne Robb

The Homunculus Caper  

by Joette Rozanski

Aunt Bessie and the 'It' 

by Norman A. Rubin

If You Can't Trust a Rhyming Demon, Can You Trust a Demon not to Rhyme?
 by David Seigler

Turtle 

by A.P. Sessler

We Bring Them Back. For You! 

by George S. Walker

I Must Be Your First 

by Paul Wartenberg

Down for the Count 

by Ted Wenskus

As you can see it is quite a cast of characters. The stories are pretty good too.  

Counting Down to Release of Our First Anthology

On August 1st Mystery and Horror, LLC will release Strangely Funny, the first of three anthologies planned for 2013. Now we are in a wild race to release date, and have tons of work to do every day for the next month. Along with the countdown to publication there is a sense of excitement as the date approaches. We will be talking more about plans for the online release party.

Starting in August, the Mystery and Horror blog will have a new author profile each day. In conjunction with the online launch party we will be hosting on our Facebook page, Sarah and I are going to be doing a blog tour and giving away books. We may even show up on Blog Talk Radio, but more on that later. I can't tell you everything today. You wouldn't have a reason to click that like button on our Facebook page. Of course, if you just can't wait to buy a copy, visit our pre-order page and reserve one now.

Don't think that Sarah and I will be the only ones excited about our first release. Several writers in the anthology are planning their own events. Those too will be listed on Facebook, so check it out. If you want to know who those writers are, come back tomorrow and I will post a list of story titles and authors to this blog.

Vacation

I am on vacation this week, visiting my family in Kentucky. After a year in Florida, the deep green hills of home are a welcome change. The beaches in Tarpon Springs are not exactly hard on the eyes, but change is nice.

You can see from the picture of Grayson Lake above that it is lovely here. Hanging with the grandchildren at the lake and watching movies in the evening may not sound like the most exciting vacation, but it is just what I needed. This is a quiet relaxing time with people I love.Most of all this is home. From my perspective, the only thing that would make this vacation better is to have Sarah here with me.

That may not be the case for the whole family. Shawn, my oldest grandson, is a year away from college and the two of us have been looking at what he needs to accomplish this year to get ready. He isn't always happy with what he's finding out about the costs of slacking off early in his high school career. He had to rule out a couple of his top choices for colleges because he didn't work hard enough. Also, my son-in-law might want his recliner back. Jim always insists that I stay put when he comes in and finds me in his chair, but has made a comment or two about how comfortable it is. I should feel guilty about stealing the recliner from him, but he's right. I may have to get one like his.

Next week, I have to get back to polishing my pitch for Concealed in Ash. The Historical Novel Society meeting is just around the corner. Now that Strangely Funny is closed to submissions, my job as publisher kicks into high gear. I've got a presentation to polish, a short story to finish, and a stack of corrections to finish. My desk is piled high. My bare feet don't care. I'm home. I'm lazy. I've laid claim to a great recliner. Best of all, I have a wonderful Kentucky family all around me. Who could ask for more?

Gearing Up

After more than a year of not being able to do much of anything creative, Sarah and I are gearing up for an exciting year in 2013. We are hard at work on our first novel together. Murder on the Mullet Express is set in the Roaring 20's in Homosassa Springs, Florida, and will feature the intrepid trio of geezers Theodora Lawless, Cornelia Pettijohn, and Professor Percival Pettijohn. The three of them will make their debut in a short story, "The Odds are Always Uneven"  this October, in the Speed City Sisters in Crime anthology Hoosier Hijinks.

Sarah is going to be pitching our joint novel at the Historical Novel Society meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, this June on the same morning I am scheduled to pitch the new Nessa Donnelly novel, Concealed in Ash. It should be an exciting and busy weekend for both of us. We're looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones while we are at the event. We will also be distributing business cards for our new press, Mystery and Horror, LLC.

Along with our personal writing projects, our little cross-eyed bat logo is going to make several appearances on new books before the end of the year. We have decided on three anthologies this year and will be opening for mystery novels later this summer. Covers for Strangely Funny, All Hallows' Evil, and Undead of Winter are on the Mystery and Horror, LLC website. Strangely Funny, our paranormal humor anthology, and All Hallows' Evil, our Halloween Mystery anthology, are open for submissions. Undead of Winter isn't open yet. There are only so many hours in the day.

Our first non-anthology will be a series of collections of monster art and humor by Monstermatt Patterson - Ha Ha Horror! Volumes 1 and 2. Volume 1 is due out later this year. In the meantime, catch his podcast at 6 Foot Plus. He is truly a man of many talents.

Our plan for the press is to do a limited number of anthologies each year. We want to devote the rest of our time to working with our authors to develop and promote their books. In the world of small press publishing it isn't enough to create a great book, authors and publishers have to work together to get that book in front of an audience. Everything we do is geared toward the goal of getting our books noticed. It is an exciting, scary, and daunting course we've set for 2013. Together we've gone from planning to building, but every day I wake up asking myself what I can accomplish and what I can do better.

Terrorism

In the wake of yesterday's bombing in Boston, news stories are popping up all over the net lambasting domestic terrorism. Before readers go ballistic, let me say that I do not approve of terrorism of any sort, domestic or otherwise. However, homegrown terrorists are not a new phenomenon. In fact, if it were not for domestic terrorists it is unlikely that the United States as we know it would exist. Boston Tea Party anyone?

Terrorism, by definition, is the use of violence or threat of violence to intimidate a population into making religious, political, or ideological change. That's right, folks. The events leading up to the American Revolution were acts of terrorism against the British government.  Once we rabble-rousers in the American Colonies got what we wanted, we patched up our differences with the British and got on with building a country.

Never mind that building the United States involved taking most of the land away from the people already living on it. I say this because the acts of terrorism against the Native American population are too numerous and go back too far for me to even list them in a blog post.  A hard look at ourselves through Native American history is enough to sicken the strongest stomach.

Slavery also brought out the terrorist in the American heart. Officially, the first act of terrorism visited on the white population was November 7, 1837.  A pro-slavery mob attacked a warehouse used to print an abolitionist newspaper owned by Presbyterian minister  Elijah Parish Lovejoy. Lovejoy died in the attack. I wish I could say that the Civil War ended the racial terrorism, but the Civil Rights Movement is ongoing and black people still die for being black.

Issues of race are far from the only issues bringing out the terrorist in us. Labor unions resorted to violence to fight their corporate oppressors. Women were not above using violent action to gain equal rights. Anti-war movements used violence to gain PEACE! How many of us can still remember the terrorism connected to student unrest in the 1960's? Gays took to the streets in the Stonewall riot of the 1970's. A lot of these movements brought significant change, change that made us better as a nation. The question is "at what price?"

Two things need to change to stop the violence. First, show some respect for public protests. We need to listen to the grievances of others before those suffering feel that violence is their only recourse against injustice. Our media tends to accept police and official undercounts of protest participation without question. We play down the importance of social movements. We ignore issues that cause distress to others. We as a people need to change. Protest, peaceful demonstration, should be respected and encouraged as ways to address issues. The media should cover this kind of event and work toward making the issue part of public discourse. Instead of covering the sensational footage of a bomb going off, we need to give causes attention before they become horrific scenes of violence.

The acts of terrorists are large scale temper tantrums. Tantrums should never be rewarded with attention. What would happen to these violent terrorists if we didn't give them or their actions the attention they want? How would things change if terrorists were met with a wall of silence from the media? I think it is time to find out.

One final note: we Americans are quick to point fingers at the Middle East or worse, at Muslim-Americans when a bomb explodes. We like to pretend that we are better than our Islamic neighbors. The World Trade Center is quickly pointed out every time a bomb explodes on American soil. Islam is not our enemy, terrorists are. If the Saudi suspect is behind the bomb yesterday, then he is following a long tradition of drawing attention to a cause through violence. Perhaps, it is time that we address the violence as the problem, not the particular group of people involved.

Speaking at FHNS Meeting April 6

The photograph above is one I took of the Coastal Region Library, in Crystal River, Florida.  Our Florida Chapter of the Historical Novel Society will be held there on Saturday, April 6. The group has invited me to speak about, "Bringing the Past into Your Fiction."

Friends who have ever got me started talking about the history of Kentucky are probably groaning about now. I can spend hours talking about the history behind my Nessa Donnelly stories. Just so you know, I will only use one example from my own work. This talk is about the wide range of historical fiction and how different authors approach bringing the history they love into the their work. I'm going to get to talk about books by some of my favorite historical authors: Beverle Graves Myers, Catriona McPherson, Suzanne Adair, and many others.

If you like historical fiction, which I am sure this audience does, this should be a great opportunity to discover new favorite authors and revisit with some old friends. Members of the group who write their own historical novels should also enjoy seeing how a number of other writers make the past come alive on the printed page.

I'm looking forward to Saturday. If you are in the area, drop in and say hi. Meetings are free and open to the public.

FCHNSblog: Writing a "Good" Story

FCHNSblog: Writing a "Good" Story: I often tell beginning writers that the most important lesson in writing is to tell a good story. That may sound simple, but it isn't. ...

Switching Hats

Hats are one of the wardrobe essentials of strange characters like me. Whether it is the top hat that I don to hang out with my gangster gal or that Greek fisherman's cap I use to keep the Florida sun from baking my tiny brain, hats bring little personality changes that give me a lift.

About now you are probably wondering if I am going to post tons of photos of me in various hats. Well...No. I'm just using these hat photos to show that at different times and for different reasons, I decide on a change of hats. In the figurative sense, switching between author and publisher is the same kind of hat trick.

When I write short fiction, the story is usually written with a specific publication in mind. In the best cases the story was requested by a publisher who knows me and wants me to write a story for their publication. More often, the story goes to someone who hasn't heard of me and I am judged by how well I fit their needs and the quality of my story. One of three things happens with cold submissions. The editor loves the story and sends me an acceptance email. Sometimes, the story is short listed, and I have to wait to find out if I make the final cut. The final possibility is rejection. My author's ego gets bruised by editors who reject my work.

Like most authors, I find rejection difficult. It is hard to remember that the editor isn't singling me out. Intellectually, I know it isn't personal. Emotionally, it hurts. Rejection will always hurt because my stories are personal. They are part of me.

Now that Sarah and I have started a publishing house, rejections are part of the job.We are the ones putting out calls for submissions. That publisher's hat is an uncomfortable fit. I have to look at the work writers send, work they have tailored to my request, and poured their talent into creating. I must say "no" to many writers and send acceptance emails to the precious few who make the cut.

Maybe, in time, this new hat will have a more comfortable fit. I hope not. I don't ever want to feel entirely comfortable with rejecting work that I know is created through the sweat and dreams of an author. Even if the work submitted isn't ready for print, the words on the page are much more than words. Stories are part of who we are and what we know. Stories are the human experience. The best ones take us beyond the story and into the world created by the author's imagination.

How do I find a good hat for that?

Lexington's Phoenix Hotel

In 1806 Colonel Aaron Burr visited Lexington, Kentucky and stayed at a little place named Wilson's Tavern. This is one of the earliest famous national figures to rent accommodations at the address that would become the Phoenix Hotel.  In the late eighteenth century, Lexington was building a reputation among travelers as the "Athens of the West." Postlethwaite's Tavern opened in 1800 to provide comfortable lodging for visitors to the city. Over the next twenty years the tavern changed names many times. The Wilson's Tavern Aaron Burr visited was just one of the names for Lexington's finest lodgings before it burned in 1820. One of the Lexington newspapers printed a story about the mythical Phoenix being reborn from the ashes. The popularity of the story inspired the property owners to build a grander hotel on the site.

Out of the ashes, the Phoenix Hotel rose. Perhaps the owners should have considered the relationship between the myth and the hotel. The Phoenix lived up to the name. In 1833 the three story hotel burned to the ground. There are no known likenesses of the original Phoenix Hotel, but the hotel that replaced it was photographed in 1860.

One of the interesting things about this picture is that both the rooftop of General Leslie Combs' house and the steeple of the old Main Street Christian Church are visible beyond the hotel.  The church hosted the  1843 Campbell-Rice debate presided over by Henry Clay. General Combs home was considered one of the architectural jewels of the city. It was lost on May 14, 1879, when the Phoenix was again consumed by fire.

The history of the Phoenix doesn't end here, but this is the incarnation of the Phoenix Hotel that is part of my fictional world. Several scenes in Circle of Dishonor were set in or around the hotel. Concealed in Ash opens on the evening of May 14, 1879, and takes us into the grand ballroom on the fateful night the flames took her.

Opening to the Future

My in-laws were an active retired couple for more than twenty years. Nine of those years were spent in the Philippines working as missionaries at Silliman University. When they returned to the United States, the two of them purchased the house next door to us. But the ice storms in the winter of 2003 were too much for them. They moved to Tarpon Springs, Florida. We went back to seeing them only on vacations.

Pulmonary hypertension changed our relationship very little. Sarah's father managed the disease very well for many years, but he did ask one thing of us. He wanted to be sure his wife was taken care of when the time came. Being a manly man from the era when American men were expected to be stoic about life and death, there was no mention of his needing care. He would let us know when he was no longer able to "take care of her" himself.

Last February, he passed out at his computer and spent the next month in the hospital.  Things in Florida were falling apart while we were going on with our lives in Kentucky.

We were in Indiana doing research on a story when the call came. Sarah's mother panicked, almost incoherent, our cell phone breaking up because we were miles from the nearest tower, we lost the connection twice before we found a place where we could pull over and get reception. They needed us, NOW!

We dropped everything, took vacation time, and came to Florida to deal with the crisis. For fifty years he had managed all the bills, bank accounts, retirement planning. Now he couldn't remember how to use his computer. It didn't take us long to realize that the crisis was going to be life changing. In his case, it was fatal, for the rest of us it put life on hold. 

Sarah struggled through the immediate crisis of paying monthly bills, talking to the doctors about his prognosis, and arranging for her brother to come down until we could wrap up our lives in Kentucky. Joel took over things in Florida. We gave notice to our bosses, sold the house, packed up and moved.

From April to September of last year, life as I knew it ground to a halt. Each day centered around keeping my father-in-law alive and as comfortable as we could make him for one more day. Toward the end the focus was one more hour, one more minute... Hospice was great, his friends and my family were wonderful, but Sarah, her mother, and I were on watch twenty-four hours a day. There were close calls, and moments that broke our hearts. There was laughter at things other people couldn't understand and times when we were downright silly.

When it was over, there was nothing. The three of us got through the days, but we had all given so much that it was hard to even think. Little by little, the numbness is fading. Only now are we starting to think  about the future, opening our minds to life after Frank.

I've finished my novel, just in time to learn my publisher is closing.  One more door to the past is closed. I guess we will just have to keep opening doors to the future.

Writing/Publishing

Writing is hard work. There are days when I feel like the entire day was spent stomping on my brain. So why would I want to compound the agony by dealing with a group of writers who have all suffered the same way? First and foremost the reason is to make money. Anyone who tells you they have taken on the headaches of running a small business for any other reason is either lying or crazy. Don't trust them.

Don't get me wrong. I love short fiction, drabbles, flash fiction, short shorts, and short stories are the popcorn of reading. Give me a tub full of little stories and I am set for the day.
 
As a writer, there is nothing more satisfying than crafting one of these little gems.  I have experimented with everything from 25 word stories for the Guppies contribution for the Sisters in Crime 25th anniversary to the novella. Tight, clean, writing in a limited number of words is harder than you might think. Some of my novelist friends quake at the thought of trying to tell a story in under 5000 words.

I believe the short story needs as much respect and support as a novel. Last year I took on the challenge of coordinating the Derringer Award entries because a great short story deserves to be recognized. I have also volunteered to help young writers and critique the work of others. All these things are part of belonging to a writing community.

It is that community of writers that kept me going when life was roughest. They have encouraged and advised me, commiserated with me when I struggled, and helped me celebrate my successes. As I step into the publishing side of this business, my writing friends have given me advice and support. Now it is time to take my first steps into publishing. Today drawing up a marketing plan for our first anthology Strangely Funny is on the agenda.

To Publish or Not

Since the announcement that Pill Hill Press was closing, Sarah and I have been giving serious thought to starting a small press. The discussions have been centered around the kind of books Pill Hill loved most, anthology publishing. Yes, the two of us write novels, but our first love was short fiction. Our first publishing credits were in anthologies. Since then, we have both been in a number of anthologies. We love the form and are keenly aware of the declining number of short story markets.

The loss of short story markets is a personal loss for us. Our next publishing credit will be for a short story we wrote together. I'll write more about that closer to the time that book is released. In the meantime, we are thinking of what to do about another press that mentored and published short fiction writers closing its doors.

Do we stand by and watch the short fiction market continue to contract, or do we step in and try our hand at filling the gap? Is there enough of a market for short fiction to make a living publishing? Do we have the combined skills to run a small press? These are some of the questions we are exploring.

We are also looking at the issue of how much of our time will be eaten up on other people's writing. Will the demands of running a press stop us from working on our own writing? I have just finished my second novel. Sarah and I are a third of the way through a novel we are writing together. She also has a work in progress of her own to consider.

We've spoken to friends who self-publish their own novels and/or run a small press, read articles on the subject, looked at the costs of publishing a book, and judged enough writing competitions to trust our judgment of writing skills.

Half of the process is completed. Last year, Sarah and I asked our attorney to help us set up a Limited Liability Company to protect our interest in each other's work. The structure of our company allows us the ability to extend into publishing. Should we publish or not?

Concealed in Ash

Finally! The first draft of Concealed in Ash that I am willing to let anyone read is finished and in the hands of my spouse. I've done my happy dance.(Be grateful that you didn't have to witness that. I dance nearly as bad as I sing.)

Now comes part two of my writing process. I emailed the draft to Sarah. She will look it over for spelling and grammar errors, then together we will take this draft to a print shop to be printed and bound.

This is our read-aloud copy. Together we will be spending several days reading and listening to my words. We'll question word choices, and occasionally I'll exclaim "What was I thinking?" or "That was awkward." Mostly we will read and talk about improvements that need to be made before anyone else looks at my book.

Sarah is a great reader. If she stumbles or has to go back and look at another page, I know that I have work to do. That work isn't done while we're reading. All the way through, red marks are made on pages, notes are scribbled in the margin. By the end, our bloody fingerprints are all over my newborn baby.

When the reading is finished, it will be time for me to go back to the text and make those marked changes. It is perhaps the hardest part of my writing process. I can always disagree with the changes an editor tells me to make, but facing what I see wrong with my baby takes guts. It is particularly hard when a passage of good writing has to be cut because it just doesn't belong.

If I am brave enough to do this next part well, Concealed in Ash will be ready to face its next test...Beta Readers.

A Christmas Story for 2012

I promised a more cheerful Christmas story for 2012, so here it is:

A Christmas Story for 2012
By: Gwen Mayo

"I won't do it," Santa fumed.

"Now Dear, you can't disappoint the children," his wife said, in her most soothing tones. "You have to be willing to make sacrifices."

"But this..."

He looked in the three way mirror at the sequined suit that glowed brighter than Rudolph's nose. Just thinking about the casino ads on the sides and bottom of his sleigh made him cringe.

"We can't afford all those toys without a corporate sponsor. It could have been much worse." She said, pointing to the team waiting to be hitched toe his sleigh. "You have to set an example for your reindeer. How do you think Prancer and Dancer feel?"

Santa looked at his team and sighed. He picked up the shiny red top hat and kissed her on the cheek.

"You're right Martha. If they can wear stiletto heels and boas, I've no business complaining about sequins."

THE END

A Christmas Story before the End of the World

Most of my friends know I have an addiction to writing tiny little stories. I thought that on the eve of the end of the world I would share one of my favorite seasonal ones with readers.

The following little Christmas story appeared in Flashshot on December 23, 2010. I thought it was the perfect tale to repeat today. I hope you agree.

Clockwork Christmas
By Gwen Mayo

Edith loved Christmas. She delighted in decorating.

His inventions weren’t able to stop the progression of her illness. Harvey smiled and adjusted the gears of his clockwork wife.

This year would be different.

He threw open the drapes so the neighborhood could watch Edith decorate the tree.

The snowball fight on his front lawn abruptly ended. Frightened children ran home to their mothers.

He saw pointing fingers followed by closed shades.

Gears turned and clockwork Edith followed his wife’s commands.

Harvey smiled.

 “Just wait Edith,” he said. “Christmas Eve I’ll let you fly the clockwork sleigh with my zombie Santa.”

THE END

For the record, I don't believe that the world is going to end tomorrow. If I did, I am sure I would be rambling off more profound thoughts.

Okay, even if I knew the world was ending I would still be eating cookies and writing silly stories. Chocolate chip anyone? They're yummy.

Guest Blog: Donna Fletcher Crow

A Story to Tell

Thank you inviting me to be a guest today on your blog, Gwen and Sarah. This visit is part of the tour many of us are doing for the brand new e-book 25 Years in the Rearview Mirror, 52 Authors Look Back. If you enjoy magazine columns and Chicken Soup for the Soul books, then you're sure to enjoy our collection of essays, designed to warm your heart, raise your spirits and compel you to examine your own life. Read about school days, quirky jobs, romance, raising a family, hard times, the writing journey, and find out what makes your favorite characters tick. Get a full listing of authors, essay titles and retailers here: http://ning.it/OknwVR

Follow the 25 Years in the Rearview Mirror Blog and Radio Tour schedule here: http://ning.it/NZpHrP

Since Gwen and I share a love for historical fiction I want to share some of the historical background in A Darkly Hidden Truth, book 2 in my Monastery Murders series.

A particularly perceptive reader once asked me, “What drives you?”

Ah, good question! Writing is hard work. One must be self-motivated and determined to get up every morning and go to the computer (or typewriter was it was in those days). The answer obviously wasn't money. I did make a modest income, but less than I could have been making teaching school as I did before becoming a full-time writer.

“The story,” I replied. “I want to tell my characters’ stories.” This is especially true when working with historical characters, as I almost always do in my books. Whether the historical characters are my hero and heroine or background characters, I’m driven— I’ll use the word— to tell their story.

We can learn so much from people from the past. They have fought, suffered, endured to pass their knowledge and wisdom on to us. We need to know and appreciate what they have done.

That was many years ago when I was first asked the question, but my answer holds just as true in my 41st novel which I am now working on, as it did in that very first series my reader asked about.

A Darkly Hidden Truth has two remarkable women in the background whose stories I have long wanted to tell. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe were both mystical medieval women writers and their life spans crossed— they actually met in an event Margery records— but they lived far different lives, had far different personalities and wrote in vastly different styles.

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) became the first woman to write a book in English when she wrote an account of the 16 mystical “showings” she experienced of the love of God. After her amazing showings Julian lived a life of quiet contemplation as an anchoress in a single room attached to a church in Norwich, going nowhere and seeing only her servant and those who came to her worldside window for counseling— Margery being one of those seekers. Margery travelled the world, going on pilgrimages as far afield as the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostelo.

Julian wrote her Revelations of Divine Love, speaking only of her visions and of the love of God for his creatures. She divulges no details of her personal life— we don’t even know her name. We call her Julian because that was the dedication of her church. We know how she would have lived because she lived by The Ancrene Rule which set out rules for anchoresses. That left me free as a novelist to imagine a life for her prior to her visions which she experienced at the age of 30. Had she been married? Had she taken vows as a nun? No one knows, but I had great fun entering into “what might have been.”

Margery Kempe (1373-1440) “wrote” the first autobiography in English, although she was illiterate, by dictating it. Unlike Julian, Margery tells all. Even of the joyous sex life she shared with her husband. (They had 14 children.) She tells of her period of madness after the birth of her first child. She tells of her spiritual struggles with earthly vanity. She tells of her shrieking and bouts of uncontrollable weeping that made one group of pilgrims abandon her so that she had to cross the Alps in a blizzard with only an aged priest as companion.

And yet both women tell of the love of God, of the goodness of life. They speak of joy and beauty in the midst of unbelievable suffering. They tell stories I could never invent in my wildest fantasy. And it’s all true. And it’s all ours because two women centuries ago put their unique experiences on paper. And now I have the privilege of telling their stories alongside the adventures of my fictional Felicity and Antony in A Darkly Hidden Truth:

Antony needs Felicity’s help to find a valuable stolen icon. But Felicity is determined to become a nun. Then her impossible mother turns up unannounced. And a dear friend turns up murdered. Felicity and Antony are off on another adventure that takes them from remote Yorkshire to London to the soggy marshes of the Norfolk Broads. Felicity learns the wisdom of holy women from today and ages past and Antony explores the arcane rites of the Knights Hospitaller. But what good will any of that do them if Felicity can’t save Antony’s life?

Donna Fletcher Crow is the author of 40 books, mostly novels dealing with British history.  The award-winning Glastonbury, A Novel of the Holy Grail, an Arthurian grail search epic covering 15 centuries of English history, is her best-known work.  She is also the author of The Monastery Murders: A Very Private Grave  and A Darkly Hidden Truth, as well as the Lord Danvers series of Victorian true-crime novels and the romantic suspense series The Elizabeth & Richard Mysteries. Donna and her husband live in Boise, Idaho.  They have 4 adult children and 11 grandchildren. She is an enthusiastic gardener.

To read more about Donna’s books and see pictures from her garden and research trips, go to: http://www.donnafletchercrow.com/

You can follow her on Facebook at: http://ning.it/OHi0MY

Beginning a New Project

The image above is the beginning of a grand Spanish style hotel built in Homosassa Springs, Florida in the 1920's. This hotel and the arcade across the street were the start of a new planned tourist town the likes of which had never been built in Florida. City plans called for a rail station, expansive streets, sidewalks nine feet wide, and a resort centered around a beautiful clear spring where manatees wintered.

Sarah and I are stepping back into this time as a setting for a new mystery story. For a while now, the two of us have been writing short stories involving two retired army nurses who served in France during World War One. We are thinking of bringing them to Florida during the land boom of the 1920's to look at a property in Homosassa Springs that they could use as a winter retreat.

Our big decision now is what length story. We both have a passion for short fiction, but are considering a traditional closed room mystery novel for this plot. Lots of wealthy investors were being lured to Florida by developers. Before the land bust of 1926, property on Florida's Gulf Coast attracted sportsmen, industrialists, the idle rich, and gangsters.

The idea of writing "Murder on the Mullet Express" has a certain appeal. There is one problem: from October of 1925 to May of 1926, Florida railroads placed an embargo on passenger trains. The demand for Florida produce in the North, and building materials in the South had increased rail traffic to capacity. Developers in Homosassa Springs resorted to bringing potential customers into Jacksonville by train, then transporting them to the hotel by limousine. A seven passenger Packard wouldn't have room for enough suspects for a novel. We would have to set this story earlier than our previous stories or make it a short story plot. Writing it after the embargo was over is not an option. By the time the embargo was lifted, the real estate market was in decline.

Writing far from Home

Photograph Above: Weeping cherry trees in bloom in the Lexington Cemetery Photograph Below: Howard Park Beach in Tarpon Springs, Florida

I am in essence a Kentucky writer who has been relocated to a foreign world. I miss the hills and trees, the blush of spring across the Bluegrass State, and most of all the people that will always make Kentucky my home.

There are also practical reasons to miss writing in my home state. If I wanted to describe a certain crypt in the Lexington cemetery or the direction a street ran, I could drive over and look at it while making my notes. If I had historical questions, the Kentucky Room at the Lexington Public Library, UK,

and Transylvania's special collections were a short distance away. Researching the nineteenth century in Kentucky is much harder a thousand miles from home.

There is nothing disparaging I want to say about Florida. It is beautiful here on the Gulf Coast. I love walking along the causeway at Fred Howard Park, breathing in the salty scent of the breeze off Saint Joseph Sound and looking out over white sand and tranquil turquoise water.

The Tarpon Springs Public Library is friendly and an excellent resource. I participated in their local writer's day this month and met many of the other writers who live nearby. I have even taken up writing a weekly column about Tarpon Springs on Examiner.com.

What I don't like is the difficulty I am having thinking of Florida as home. I have a Florida driver's license, put Florida plates on the car, my voter registration card arrived today... I'm doing everything I am supposed to do to settle here, but I am as unsettled now as I was the day I arrived.

Back in the Saddle Again

Okay, I'm not literally back in the saddle. Injuries from my ill-spent youth prevent me from being able to ride. The saddle in question is the recliner in our great room where I sit typing this post. It has been too long since my last blog post. Real life got in the way.

My father-in-law developed pneumonia in February, which caused major complications with his sarcoidosis and pulmonary hypertension. The result was a choice between his going into a nursing home, or our moving to Florida to help look after him. Sarah and I chose to move.

Ours was a rather rapid exit from Kentucky. Within a month, and with a lot of help from our friends and family, we packed our belongings, left our jobs, canceled our scheduled appearances, and moved eleven hundred miles from nearly everyone we knew. As a result, writing in general and my blog in particular were put out to pasture.

We are slowly getting settled into our new lives here. Sarah's dad is much better than when we arrived. His memory isn't what it was before the collapse, and he is pretty much confined to a wheelchair. We've gotten ramps built, a handicapped shower installed, and other needed changes around the house finished. The two of us have sort of settled into the back half of the duplex, which gives us and her parents some privacy.

I think the move was the best decision for all of us. Her folks won't be able to live on their own again. At seventy-one, Sarah's mother can't manage his oxygen, wheelchair, walker, and the other necessities of getting him moved from one place to another. She also finds talking to all of his therapists and doctors a chore better delegated to us. The same is true of paying bills, shopping, dealing with ordering oxygen and medicines, and handling most problems that come up.

So what happens when a writer becomes the primary caretaker for a family member? Writing suffers. That doesn't mean writers stop writing. I started out small, doing a weekly column for Examiner.com, then went back to work on my book. Now, I am back to my blog. Stay tuned, and you might see a new book review soon.