Wrapping Up

Between shopping sprints, baking, and gift-wrap frenzy, I’m also thinking about the end of my Work In Progress.  It’s not a mystery, so without a crime to be solved, a villain to catch, justice to be served and order restored, how do I know it’s the end?  

Well, it is a little tougher to recognize without those handy mystery elements.  This WIP is a fantasy adventure novel, and theoretically the adventures could just keep piling on.  But no matter the genre, all endings have certain things in common:  

1. The story has to have resolution.  (check) 
2. Characters have to grow.  (check) 
3. Goals have to be reached.  (check)
4. Loose ends have to be tied.  (well...almost...)

But my favorite?  

5.  The end of the year makes a great deadline for ending a book, which is mainly how I know this one is almost done.  

Seriously.  Finishing the WIP along with the year just feels...tidy.  It’s a great way to clear my desk before taking a break for holiday partying.  After that, I’ll sharpen my pencils for a brand-new project at the first of next year.  After many months of this old WIP, I can’t wait for the New Shiny!  

But, Trouble always lurks, trying to undermine my careful plans.  For many months I’ve been feeding questions to my subconscious about all those loose ends.  Why are they there?  Why is character x doing this and that?  Why is character y even in this book?  What does it all mean?  Not being a plotter, I just can’t conjure the answers until my subconscious decides to spit back the answers.  

With the days on my calendar dwindling to the end of the year, and still with no answers in sight to tie up everything, I’ve been working myself into a sweat.  Then, thankfully last month, eureka!  The answers came in a blazing flash.  Nothing like waiting to the last moment, right?  It’s going to be tight, with only a couple more weeks to work them in, but at least I’m finally on my way to the end.  

Reading!

Terror at 5280' 

Book launch on Sunday, December 1 at 6pm at Bookbar in Denver (4280 Tennyson St).

I will be reading at this event tomorrow--hope to see you there! 

  

Story Sale!

My short story, "Electric Stalker," will appear in the anthology Terror at 5280', coming this month from Denver Horror Collective.  

Their guidelines asked for local stories, so I chose to write about one of this region's scariest features--lightning!  

Science Fiction mysteries

This week it was my turn to blog at Mysteristas as Sue Star:

My mystery book club recently read The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters.  The first of a trilogy, it’s about a newly promoted detective who stays on the job, even though his colleagues are bailing because everyone is going to die in 6 months when an asteroid hits earth.  

Besides being a fabulous book, it raises some interesting questions.  Some of the members of book club asked why we had chosen a science fiction book.  But is it?  Its premise sounds science-fictiony, given the looming apocalypse, and Locus, the trade magazine of the science fiction community, had featured several articles about the book.  I was intrigued, since I love science fiction and also write it under another name.  

But this book is more about the investigation into a suspicious death, with the added layers of characters responding to their difficult situation.  And the book won the Edgar Award in 2013 for best paperback original.  This prestigious award is presented by Mystery Writers of America.  So, if professional mystery writers say it’s a mystery, then it’s a mystery.  Case closed.  

But it’s also science fiction.  

I am reminded of another time when an author I know wrote a science fiction mystery and hoped to see it marketed as a mystery.  The book ended up being shelved with science fiction, probably because the author was already established as a science fiction writer.  Any genre can also contain a mystery (and imo, a mystery makes any book better!), but science fiction seems to trump mystery when it comes to cross-genre.   

So I couldn’t wait to find out what my book club of seasoned mystery readers would think of this book.  Several of them had been skeptical at first and wouldn’t have chosen to read it, if not for book club.  As it turned out, all but one loved it.  They focused on the investigation of the case, and the way it unfolded fit their expectations, leaving them satisfied.  Not bad at all, I’d say! 

Burning Candles

My latest mystery released this fall.  It’s about an American woman in Brazil in 1959.  She hides from her past by running there, only to find that the Brazilian cop she’s married has secrets far darker than hers.  She struggles with her new identity and a culture of cults and illegal abortions, while a series of murders link her new husband’s secrets to hers.  Will she become the next victim?  

Relics from the Grave

Just in time for Halloween!  Here are 3 stories about ghosts and vampires from Minta Monroe:

https://www.amazon.com/Relics-Grave-Minta-Monroe-ebook/dp/B07ZHLWP9X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=relics+from+the+grave%2C+by+minta+monroe&qid=1572540053&s=books&sr=1-1

On to the Beginning, Back to the End

Here is another collection of stories about end times:  

"The Sun Dial Trail" (originally published in Fiction River, vol. 8, Universe Between) -- Mila takes a day trip in Daddy's new little starhopper.  

"The Salt, the Roasted, and the Blue" -- Does life have to die along with its star? 

"Keep on Walking"  -- There is no end.  Neither is there a beginning.  

Available electronically from your favorite bookseller. 

News from Minta Monroe

As Minta Monroe, I write fiction with the aim of curdling blood.

Minta is an associate editor at Electric Spec, where the current issue carries one of Minta's stories:

http://electricspec.com/Volume14/Issue3/monroe.aug2019.html

Murder by Moose

Catching up (again!)...

Last year I joined the Seven Sinister Sisters' Blog Tour as Sue Star to celebrate the release of my book.  Here's what I wrote about it over at Mysteristas:  

Murder by Moose is the fourth book in the Nell Letterly series.  This book takes Nell up into the mountains for a self-defense retreat during leaf season (which is also hunting season).  Of course she finds a body!  Moose trampled?  Or something much worse...?  

When I wrote the first draft of my first Nell book some years ago, I wanted to tell the story of how Nell, a suburban, menopausal single mom of a teenage daughter, comes to teach karate in Boulder, Colorado. I never expected to do a series.  But at the end of that book, I found that there were still a lot of issues I hadn’t addressed--issues that tell the larger story surrounding Nell--and I suddenly found that I was writing a series.  

One of the first questions a series has to figure out is how much time should pass overall?  A mystery bookseller once gave me some advice that made me decide to keep this series short--maybe only 6 or 7 books.  I figured that two or three months between each book would be about right for what I wanted to do.  

The first book takes place in March, the second in May, and the third in August.  When I started to plan the fourth book, I already knew it was going to have to take place sometime in the fall.  In Colorado that means a high country setting with golden aspen leaves, hunters, and...moose!  

I had such a fun time writing this.  But now I have to figure out:  where should I take Nell next?  There will probably be a turkey dinner...and a body...and...?