Category: writing fiction

Spring in Progress: April 2023 Newsletter

Before I get into giving a report on my current Work-in-Progress, I want to say that I love spring. It’s my favorite season. A neighbor’s blooming magnolia butterflies tree is just one reason why. (A Facebook friend called this image “sunshine on a stick.”)

WiP Report: “I feel like you have been working on Death in Shining Armor almost since I’ve known you,” my good friend Gail F said recently. This sounds about right. I first met her in a creative writing class I taught in the fall of 1991 and I had a draft of this book in an earlier version to take to Bouchercon in October 1993. (I’ve even blogged about this project before in a newsletter called “My Once and Future Novel.”)

I love spring for its surprises. One recent morning I looked out my kitchen window and saw that the crab apple tree behind the house had burst into bloom overnight.

WiP Report: I’m really happy with my take on the book this time. You see, this time I took some of the advice I give in Novel Basics: An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel and asked the question, “What if?”

Not all of spring’s surprises are pleasant though, like the pea-sized hail we had recently. (The flecks of color that look like pink snowflakes mixed with the hail came from the crab apple tree.)

WiP Report: Specifically, I asked myself the question what if my protagonist Vanessa Mathison, aka Van the Potter at a Renaissance Festival sort of thing, speaks directly to the reader in first person (“Startled, I dropped my basket filled with new cups”) instead of third (Startled, Van dropped her basket . . .”)? When I did that, Van came alive in ways she hadn’t before and she started talking to me.

I love spring because my favorites return. For instance, the other day when I saw the flailing and flaring of chestnut wings and tail feathers on the feeder in the back year, I realized the Brown Thrasher had come back. And oh, I see two of them now browsing around the bird food fallen from the feeders over the patio. You know what that means . . .

WiP Report: I also changed Van’s age from mid-twenties to thirty-nine and gave her a kid, an ex-husband, and the  goal that drove a big part of my life: to have a career as a college professor. I was thirty-nine the year I began teaching at the college where I taught for twenty-five years. This helped me identify with the protagonist of this novel.

Another delight of spring is the Pink Moon. I’m considering using part of this image on the cover of Death in Shining Armor. It’s really pretty blurry though. What do you think?

WiP Report: Along with those changes came some realizations. 1) I should now call the book an academic murder mystery since Van works in a registrar’s office as did I before I went back to school to become a college professor. 2) And since that might take Van quite a while due to life’s little interruptions as it did me, Death in Shining Armor might be Book 1 of a series instead of a standalone. But we’ll see.

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I am very happy to announce that most of my novels, collections, and short stories in both the Calendar Mystery series and Cinderella, P. I. series plus the expanded version of Novel Basics: An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel currently are available from several different retailers and services including the following:

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2z9z3b2y

Apple Books: https://tinyurl.com/57k5d6dj

Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/43x5fa7n

Kobo: https://tinyurl.com/hpn5dp8b

Smashwords: https://tinyurl.com/yc3hkfye

My books including the expanded edition of Novel Basics are available in paperback from Amazon.com.

A New Beginning: Fall 2022 Newsletter

A New Beginning: Fall 2022 Newsletter

  A New Beginning to Die by the Sword aka To Die by the Sword aka Death in Shining Armor

Night . . .

Saturday, September 10, 1988

The Medieval Fair Site . . .

I didn’t want much that night, just to go out to the shop on the Med Fair site to drop off some pots and cups and mugs that had finally cooled off enough to pick up from the Ceramics Department of  the City College of Art and Design back in town.

Now let me tell you why I decided to open Ye Old Oddities Shoppe and sell my pottery at Med Fair that fall. It was because there I was, pushing forty, and still working in the Registrar’s Office at C-CAD where I graduated with highest honors way too many years before. (Not going into the life-happens events that kept me working there for so long right now.) And I didn’t want to still be at C-CAD when I turned forty the next year.

Instead, I wanted to make and save enough money from Med Fair and other ways that I could go to the university the next fall, get a job as a teaching assistant and get experience in the classroom, get my master’s, and become a professor of ceramics at some college or university for the rest of my life. It would be ideal, I thought, to teach the same thing that I loved to do.

But . . .

BUT, thanks to some crazy person wearing armor from head to shiny toes, I about got myself killed that night, the first of several attempts to murder me.

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Something interesting happened recently after I revised my Novel Basics, An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel. I noticed that I didn’t follow my own advice in writing Death in Shining Armor, a novel that I’ve worked on for decades in several different forms. That is, I didn’t establish early what the protagonist wants to accomplish in her journey. I mean the very first card in the brainstorming system I describe in Novel Basics is called the heart card for a novel and asks the question “Who wants what?” for goodness’ sake. And I blew the beginning of my own novel. Oops! So I figured out what my protagonist wanted and put it on the first page.

 I also took some of my own advice presented in my concise yet complete guide to writing a novel: If you’re having trouble with a novel, play around with the point of view, that is, the perspective in time and space of the narrator. Most of the earlier versions of the book were in what’s called third person point of view (she/he/they, her/his/their, etc.) limited to three characters. But when I restricted the perspective of Death in Shining Armor to only one character, the novel’s protagonist Vanessa Laura Mathison aka Van the Potter speaking directly to the reader in first person (I/me/mine), she started talking to me, too. And the novel started coming to life in ways it hadn’t done before. Propelled by that new beginning, I’m now about eighty pages into the novel.

FYI: the new eBook version of Novel Basics, An Illustrated Guide to Writing a Novel, that now includes a section on self-publishing, is available at www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LXFRP for $3.99 Plus, it’s always free through Kindle Unlimited. Also, I’m offering the eBook on Amazon for only $0.99 from Friday September 30 through Thursday October 6, 2022. It’s your perfect resource to prepare for National Novel Writing Month 2022.

Best, Juliet

P. S. Currently, I’m rebooting eBook versions of some of the short stories and books in both my Calendar Mystery series and Cinderella, P. I. Fairy Tale Mystery series through several different retailers in addition to Amazon. To keep up with my publications on Amazon, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Kincaid/e/B00DB4HWRG. And to keep up with my publications through other retailers now including Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, click on https://books2read.com/author/x/subscribe/1/305166/?preferred_retailer=0&book=927193 and complete the form.

February 2022 Newsletter: a troubled dream

What Troubled Dream Is This?

Usually I don’t recall my dreams, but I did remember the one I was into just before I woke up Friday morning.

I dreamed that Jess and were at the premiere of a Stephen Amell movie, and Amell himself of Arrow fame was there. He wore a pair of chinos and a tight short-sleeved shirt with a collar. His casual ensemble showed off his wonderful physique that this octogenarian has no business drooling over, but does anyway. The gorgeous guy, surrounded by a bunch of groupie dudes similarly attired, even smiled at us and beckoned to us to come along.

But we got hung up at the concession stand where some middle-aged man who needed a shave waited on us. He gave us a fight about what he should cook for us on a grill as time slipped past. This is taking too long, I thought. Finally in disgust, I dug in my purse for my wallet and then in my wallet for some money to pay him for his trouble. “This is taking too long,” I said. I only came up with a twenty — way too much —and a one — way too little — tightly folded together. The guy at the concession stand was just offering us some sort of fried bun when I woke up.

Now, at our house, we follow my daddy’s old Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that one doesn’t tell what she dreamed before breakfast, so by the time I finished my juice, bacon, toast with cream cheese and delicious raspberry and pomegranate fruit spread and described my dream to Jess, I’d figured out what it was trying to tell me.

Dreams often are absurd. For example, Jess and I don’t go to the concession stands anymore or movies during the pandemic for that matter. I don’t keep my paper money folded. Still, dreams often are our subconscious minds’ parables. And I figured out that mine was telling me I’m taking too long to rewrite the climactic chapter of my WiP, Die by the Sword.

But in the light of day, I can also see it was my fear that spoke to me in that dream. “Keep it up, give in to all the distractions in this troubled world, and you’ll never finish this book,” it said.

And then I was able to say, “Sometimes you have to put in stuff that doesn’t belong in the piece to get to what does belong. Once you get the story and the characters where they need to be, you can cut, cut, snip, snip. The book will be fine, just give it a bit more time.”

So, this is a long way around telling you that I’m not quite finished writing Die by the Sword this month, but I’m close.

Meanwhile, Mischief in March, Book 3 of my Calendar Mystery series that now includes the follow-up short story “Detectives’ Honeymoon,” will be on sale from March 11, 2022 through March 18, 2022 for $2.99 at www.amazon.com/dp/B06XR1STRN and for £1.99 www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XR1STRN. If you’ve already bought the book, please review it on Amazon and/or Goodreads. If you’ve already bought, read, and reviewed this book, please share this notice with your friends.

Please stay safe and well, Juliet

P. S. Please note that I’ve changed my mind about republishing all my books and selling them through Draft2Digital. There seemed to be problems buying them from assorted merchants like Barnes and Noble, and it was taking me far more time to format them than I had. So if you want to keep up with my writing and publishing, just check my Amazon author age at https://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Kincaid/e/B00DB4HWRG

 

November 2021 Newletter

Cat Chores and More

Like my daughter and I, our black Bombay cat named Safa has his chores around the house. (We first named him Satyavan and his sister Savitri from the Hindu story about a couple similar to the Greek Orpheus and Eurydice, only in the Hindu version the wife rescues her hubby from the Underworld. According to a young friend of my daughter’s, Safa means clown in Hindi.)

1) Safa’s first chore of the day is to act as a four-legged, furry alarm clock ramming about the house and yowling around seven in the morning. (He adjusted fairly fast to the recent time change.) Later on, he helps us make our beds. (Sometimes he hinders us, though.)

2) Sitting on the microwave, he monitors meal preparation, starting with breakfast. He also sits on the cable box in the family room and observes us while my daughter and I exercise with our online service.

3) He helps us get even more exercise by playing hide and seek with us. Sites he hides in include under the covers of my bed, under chairs, and inside the big cardboard box his multi level cat condo came in. (He mostly ignores the latter.)

4) He spends considerable time during the day warming the seat of his favorite chair in the living room. In the evening, during t. v. time in the family room, he warms my daughter’s lap or mine when she’s not available.

5) Recently, he even volunteered to help me promote my books by posing next to them for a photo.

All the while Safa keeps busy with his chores, he maintains his status as the world’s most adorable cat. This isn’t just idle bragging. A few years ago an employee of the Emergency Vet Clinic said that thirty people had to say goodbye to Safa when he left. And recently our regular vet took pictures of him to share with her daughter. The vet says she would adopt Safa in a heartbeat if for some reason we no longer wanted him. As if . . .

Ya Gottas (continued)

In my October newsletter, I lamented about the lengthiness of my to-do lists and how much I suffered from a case of Ya Gottas, at least partly cured by letting myself write in order to give me joy and feeds my soul.

Well, I am happy to report that since then I have come upon another cure–creative scheduling–that is, spacing way out the tasks gotta do. I’m telling myself I don’t have to do thems all at once or even all of them this year. It really, really helps to remove stress from my life by planning far ahead.

So my tentative publication date for my next novel is Memorial Day weekend in 2022, partly because during the first part of next year, I want to reboot my Calendar Mystery series month by month, for example, January Jinx in January 2022, and make them available on other platforms like Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

A Mini WiP Report

I hoped to tell you all that I’d completed the current draft of Die by the Sword by now. But due to distractions, I have 66,610 words and 266 pages of what probably will end up as about 90,000 words and 325 pages or so. It’s a bit hard to estimate how many words and pages I have to go because my characters are popping up with new ideas from time to time. For instance, the police detective in it has decided—all on his own and without finding out what this author wants—to go undercover at a Renaissance Festival sort of thing dressed like a wench. Sigh . . .

Meanwhile, I’m making my boxed set of the Calendar Mysteries, Books 1 – 3 along with the short story “Detectives’ Honeymoon” available at www.amazon.com/dp/B07QDKF413 for only $2.99 from December 5 through December 9 and www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QDKF413 for only £2.99. Treat yourself or gift a friend with this big book that follows my business girl Minty Wilcox and dashing detective Daniel Price from newly met to newly wed and beyond in Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago.

Best, Juliet

Busier than a button on the . . .

Hi, Everyone!

As my dear old darling dad used to say, it’s been busier than a button on a back house door at the Kincaid house this past month. Whew!

For instance, the ceiling in the front bathroom of our house had been leaking since the summer of 2019. No need to deal with it during the drought and no way to deal with it during the lock down. But this month, the time came for me to deal with roofers and assorted personnel of my insurance company before the ceiling fell on our heads. The process got a little messy especially when the salesman from the company I hired found a raccoon’s nest on the roof beneath the trumpet vine that birds and critters enjoyed all summer. It was so beautiful. But it should come back next year.

Here’s a picture of the finished roof. That’s 40-year shingle up there now, I’ll have you know.

I’ve been enjoying my multi-media art class very much though watercolor remains challenging. I got in a hurry with this painting, tentatively called “Ghost Tree: Tulip Poplar,” the first in a series about trees that no longer live in my neighborhood. And so I botched the roof on a house in the neighborhood (unlike our new roof) . Maybe I can fix it the painting. Maybe not. We’ll see.

In spite of all of these distractions, I am making progress on the WiP, Die by the Sword, so now the novel is almost 23,000 words long and close to Plot Point 1 when the protagonist Vanessa Price Mathison makes an important decision that moves the story into the second story arc. I’m especially enjoying the way Van’s sort-of-boyfriend Guy Truelove is developing in this version of the book that I’ve tried to write several times before.

Some of you who have read my calendar mysteries will recognize Van’s middle and last names. At this point I haven’t quite figured out the connection to business girl Minty Wilcox and dashing detective Daniel Price, let alone developed a family tree, but in time I will.

Speaking of that series, in case you missed it, Apart in April, Book 5 and the fourth novel in the series, is now available as an eBook for $4.99 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B095J4BB94 and also as a paperback for $14.99 from Amazon (ISBN 9780996160490).

 

 

Also currently available is Novel Basics, my complete yet concise guide to writing a novel, at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LXFRP. It’s perfect for those of you planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year. The book will be only $0.99 from October 24 through October 30, but if you need it sooner, the eBook is now $3.99. The paperback in “easy on the eye” 14-point font is $8.99.

I’ll be back next month. Meanwhile, stay safe and well, Juliet

August 2021 Newsletter

My Once and Future Novel (Part 2, I think)

Hi, All!

A few nights ago, I thought about retiring on my birthday coming up really soon on 9/11/2021. I’ll be eighty, and maybe it’s time to stop. I told myself that maybe I’d be happy and fulfilled reading and reviewing other people’s books and taking weekly art classes.

But who am I kidding? Nothing gives me more joy than being lost in the fiction I’m writing. Besides, it’s back. . . In this case instead of a monster, I’m talking about my once and future novel, the one that I’ve worked on for about three decades, the one set in part at a Renaissance Festival sort of event and in part at activities of a group similar to the Society for Creative Anachronism. This is a book concept that just won’t let me go.

Over the past thirty years, this book has gone from a fairly conventional detective mystery with one protagonist to suspense with quite a different protagonist. Overall, I think I’ve produced three different detective mysteries and two versions of the basic story as a novel of suspense. In fact, one of the challenges for me, now that I’m having at it again, is to locate scenes I vividly recall writing though when and in which notebook and which digital file, I’m unsure. I know that some of you have read an earlier version. In fact, I still have your comment sheets along with print-outs. But right now I can’t remember where I put them.

The characters have undergone several variations as well. For instance, I have two characters whose role is providing the protagonist (whoever the heck that turns out to be) with information about the Ancient Ways Society. The twosome started out as a lesbian couple, one white and the other Black. Eventually, they became an elderly man and not so elderly woman with a very large Great Dane. As I embark on the final version, I’m not sure I really need the dog. But I really can’t predict at this point.

The book also has a couple of working titles: Death in Shining Armor and Die by the Sword. I took a poll on Facebook recently and most of the people responding favored the first one, as did I. But once I really got into the first chapter, I decided that Die by the Sword was the better choice. But you know what? The book is alive and well and I’m looking forward to completing it.

Meanwhile, I’ve had lots of distractions. For one thing we’ve been dealing with a leaky roof and predatory roofers, but we’ve found a decent one now. But once the dust settles on that and other issues, I hope to plunge back to the book . . . I’ll keep you posted on the project next month.

Best, Juliet

 

April 2021 WiP Report

I hoped to report that I’ve finished my current Work-in-Progress, Apart in April, Book 5 of my Calendar Mystery series.

But it’s not happening, partly because my characters keep talking to me as I write. One of them will say, “How about I do this?” Another might say, “I wouldn’t do that! Take it out!” Or worst of all, some person in the book will say, “I’m bored.”

It’s practically axiomatic that every time a writer changes something, s/he introduces at least one error like a missing so there’s nothing for it but to edit each and every line of each and every page with a ruler on paper and/or by sliding the cursor down the margin, and/or reading each and every page word by word out loud at least once if not TWICE. (Did you see the glitch in the previous sentence in the previous sentence? [Repetition is another kind of glitch that often happens when the writer is switching stuff around.])

I’ve rushed the process before and ended up publishing a book or story that wasn’t ready yet. I’m not doing that this time. I have only forty pages to go in this draft, so it will be done by April 30 for sure. But then I will make myself take as long as the book and its characters demand for one last edit. After I’m done and I’ve tweaked the cover, too, I’ll begin the production phase, leaving time to set up the pre-order and all that other stuff. I’ll let you know when Apart in April is ready for you to pre-order at a reduced price.

In closing, an observation, especially for my fellow old fogey friends . . . At this stage of writing, I have to hold the entire three hundred pages of the book in fairly specific detail in my head. (Since I’ve made so many changes over the four drafts of this book, sometimes I have to go back and check the most recent draft to see what actually is in there.) A person with dementia can’t do that, and so I’ll end this WiP Report by highly recommending writing a novel as a preventive measure against senility.

Best, Juliet

P. S. It’s spring and doing stuff like potting these plants shown above is another distraction I’m dealing with.

 

Spring Things

 

You know what? Life isn’t too bad at our house right now. After all it’s spring. Plus I’ve had both my shots and Jess has had the first. Having them has lowered our stress and helps us sleep better.

 

 

On the slightly down side, my WiP is going slower than I’d hoped. This time it was supposed to be a quick final draft except for one last copy edit. But, I keep thinking up really cool plot developments, pieces of dialogue, and details. For instance, as I was working on Chapter 15 of Apart in April, the fourth novel and Book 5 of my calendar mystery series, I decided that the dashing detective Daniel Price should wear Navajo jewelry when he’s undercover as an itinerant salesman, so two young chambermaids get the impression that he’s been to Santa Fe. He hasn’t He bought the lot at Jesse James, Jr.’s pawnshop over on Main in Kansas City earlier in April 1901. Things like these make a story come alive, but they also might introduce errors like missing words or repeated phrases that must be found and fixed. Still, I hope to have the eBook of Apart in April out by the end of April.

Meanwhile, the boxed set of the first three novels and a really cool short story called “Detectives’ Honeymoon” is now available for only $2.99 at www.amazon.com/dp/B07QDKF413 and £ 1.99 at www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QDKF413 through Tuesday March 30.

And look for Old Time Stories, a collection of nonfiction and fiction that includes the original short story “The Shackleton Ghost,” for the discounted prices of $0.99 at www.amazon.com/dp/B07F4JL8D5 and £0.99 at www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07F4JL8D5 from April 1 through April 7, 2021.

Till next time, stay safe and well. Best, Juliet

 

Been a rough month but . . .

Hi, Everybody!

Here’s the cover for the fourth novel, fifth book in my calendar mystery series featuring the former business girl, Minty Wilcox, now Price, and her dashing detective husband Daniel, in Kansas City, MO, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago.

I had lots of trouble making this cover fit into the birthstone theme of the series. I mean what can you do with white for goodness’ sake? But finally this version is coming along though it needs tweaking here and there. FYI: I stole the lilacs from a lady’s hat that appeared in The Delineator of August 1901. And a while ago, my cousin Sarah Faye Morse Meurer very kindly sent me the photos of our grandfather Miles Smith and our grandmother Juliet Perkins Smith.

Here’s the blurb for the book: After a personal tragedy on Easter Sunday, April 7, 1901, Minty Wilcox Price runs away from home, strewing letters behind her like Hansel’s bread crumbs for her husband Daniel to find. Can he overcome his own grief and anger to figure out where she’s gone and with her solve the case of “The Ravished, Murdered Chambermaid”?

I’d appreciate any feedback on the cover and blurb you’d care to give.

As for the book itself, I hoped to be farther along with the final draft by now.  But life has thrown some interference our way this past month that has taken up my time. For example, though we didn’t lose our power or heat during the recent Arctic blast, our water pipes froze when the temperature reached 15 below here near Kansas City. But my daughter Jess and our next-door neighbor’s son made a sort of bucket brigade to bring water to our house. And our pipes thawed on their own when the temperature moderated a bit.

The cold also complicated our grocery shopping. Lately we’ve shopped on line, and then Jess drove to the store to pick it up. But there was no way either of us wanted to go out on snowy streets when it was 7 below zero outside. So we tried to reschedule at first and then to cancel. But apparently their shopping app doesn’t handle changes well, so the shopper shopped our order not once but twice. And even after several phone calls and twelve days, the charge remains on my credit card. Sigh . . .

But I’m making progress on my project overall, and probably I’ll meet my deadline, the end of April. Also I’m struck by the way I still learn lessons about the process, or in this case, relearn them. For example, yesterday I struggled all morning to get information about a new setting, a ranch in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Originally, I’d planned on asking a friend of mine if I could tour her family’s ranch. In a pandemic? Well, no, I literally can’t go there. So then I spun my wheels all morning looking for virtual tours and taking two dozen screen shots of prairie hills. But then finally, I remembered the sage advice I received back in the 80’s from a writer friend. “Think film,” she said. So then I CUT TO the front door of the farmhouse I needed Daniel to visit and blew that writer’s block up.

Stay safe and well, my friends. Get the shot soon if you haven’t already. (I have an appointment for next Wednesday.) Best, Juliet

 

P. S. Mischief in March, the third in my calendar mystery series, is only 99 cents from March 3 through March 9 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XR1STRN
It’s also a penny less than a pound at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XR1STRN

 

 

For an even better bargain, you can buy the boxed set that includes the January Jinx, Fatal February, and Mischief in March, the first three novels of the series, and the bonus short story “Detectives’ Honeymoon” from March 24 through March 30 for only $2.99 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QDKF413  (British friends, for a similar bargain price, check http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07QDKF413)

WiP Report January 2021

Last Friday, I finished what I hope will be the next-to-the-last draft of Book 5 of my Calendar Mystery series, set in Kansas City, a place that could get downright deadly a hundred years or so ago for a business girl named Minty Wilcox and a dashing detective named Daniel Price. (Just practicing my blurb here . . .) The next day we ordered BBQ carry-out for a celebratory dinner. Baby back ribs! Yum!

In its binder, the book weighs 6.4 pounds which makes for quite a weighty tome though I hope of course that it won’t feel like that for readers when it’s done. The text now is 306 pages and 86,489 words long. I started it on November 1 for NaNoWriMo, so it took me 83 days for an average of 1,042 words a day. That’s really not bad considering everything that’s been going on including a very weird holiday season, the pandemic, and the political turmoil.

An FYI for my fellow indie authors: whenever I start a novel, I format it for its eventual publication, that is, with 6” by 9” pages, 0.75” margins, 1.15 line spacing throughout including between paragraphs, 12-point font, usually Book Antiqua, all paragraphs except the first in a section or chapter indented 0.3”. I also mark all section breaks with <> <> <> because I never know where they’ll end up after revisions. Plus, I paginate the pages, create different first pages for the starts of chapters, and different odd and even pages for the rest. And yes, I type my first drafts and all the rest. All of this lets me get a feel for the overall proportions of the book and about where to place the plot points in later drafts.

For more guidance, check out my Novel Basics, a concise yet complete guide to brainstorming, drafting, and revising a novel available in print from Amazon. com and as an eBook at www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2LXFRP . . .

Now back to the report . . . If I can cut the 10% that Stephen King says in his author’s memoir On Writing he cuts from the first drafts of his books, Book 5 of my Calendar Mystery series will be around 78,000 words or 275 pages long. Hopefully, I will get it out by the end of April. (The tabs on the book shown in the photo on the left mark pages where I need to do some editing. Yikes!)

I’ll let you know how it’s going in next month’s WiP Report. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the fun short story “The 9th Street Gang” free from 02/03/21 through 02/07/21 at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B079YYVTTX and Book 2 of the Calendar Mystery series Fatal February, on sale for only $0.99 at  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017081JHM and £0.99 at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017081JHM from 02/10/21 through 02/16/21.