No Ordinary Women - a guest post by Barbara Deese

Hi all, Lorne here.  I've been neglecting my blog for a while, so it's time to get it going.  I've been talking to some writer friends of mine and there are some great guest posts and interviews coming.

Today the author of the No Ordinary Women Mysteries, Barbara Deese, drops by...


FUN AHEAD
When it comes to mysteries, readers love series, and once they’ve gotten hooked on a good series, they don’t want to wait too long for sequels. Writing a series, I’m discovering, is a lot tougher than it looks. Call it on the job training.

Readers tell me they can hardly wait to spend a more time with my characters. The characters have become very real to them. That’s wonderful. Fantastic! Now that the first two books in the No Ordinary Women mystery series—Murder at Spirit Falls and Spirited Away—are out in print, I thought I’d be sailing along on the third book, Forgotten Spirits. After all, the characters have been jabbering inside my head for at least 13 years, and I’m very familiar with the settings. But I find I’m stumbling over minutiae from earlier books in an attempt to keep the details consistent—things like Robin’s college major, how old Cate’s dog is, or whether Foxy’s bedroom faces the street or the alley. If I get it wrong, the picky reader of my imagination will post a review declaring my writing amateurish.

More difficult is keeping the tone consistent, while shifting points of view and allowing the characters to develop and change over the course of several books. Five book club women form the backbone of each story, but their roles shift a bit from one book to the next. It’s hard to give them equal time—in fact, it would sound contrived if I did, and so they’ll have to be content with having quality time.

The hardest part, and one I should have anticipated, is not only managing my time so I can promote and market two books while writing the third, but having fun in the process. I believe that last part might be the most essential, because if I’m not having fun writing the story, why would I expect anyone to have fun reading it?

 

Barbara Deese's No Ordinary Women Myseries

Look below for links to her books and websie

A No Ordinary Women Mystery. Robin Bentley's cabin, perched above Spirit Falls in the lush Wisconsin woodland, is remote enough for her and her book club friends to shed the restraints of city living, hike in the woods, take moonlight walks and go skinny dipping under the waterfall. But when they discover a battered body below the falls, the No Ordinary Women find themselves up to their bifocals in a real mystery, and one of them could be the next victim.










Robin Bentley and Cate Running Wolf have been through a lot together. Not that long ago, they risked their lives to solve a murder. You’d think they’d learn. But when ninety-six-year-old Era Dudley, a spry, compact woman with mauve hair, charges toward Robin, points a bony finger in her chest and demands she help locate her missing son, Robin can’t resist drawing Cate and the No Ordinary Women book club into yet another mystery. They’re not without help, however. Era and the other lovable and quirky residents of Meadowpoint Manor are not about to be sidelined, despite their advanced years.


Murder at Spirit Falls on Amazon
Spirited Away on Amazon
http://www.noordinarywomenmysteries.com/

Some Good Things are Free

On January 9^th and 10^th my second crime thriller novel in the Sgt. Reid Series, RED SERGE, is going to be free to download from Amazon.  I would love a review on Amazon, Goodreads, some other site, your own site, a community bulletin board, the side of a bus, anywhere and everywhere.  If you don’t have the time, I completely understand and would still love for you to pick up your copy of Red Serge.

Below is a quick synopsis of the novel with a link to the amazon pages below that.  I hope 2014 is going to be a great year for you.

Please note:  this is a stand-alone within a series so you don’t have to have read Red Island to enjoy Red Serge.

RED SERGE

The body of a young girl is found.  She was raped and tortured before being strangled.  Sgt. Reid of the RCMP has had too much violent death in his career.  He knows he shouldn’t get involved in this one.  His marriage is falling apart, his daughter is getting involved in the wrong things, but something draws him in.  The discovery of other young girl’s bodies his daughter’s age, some long dead, begs the question, how long has the Devil been coming to Prince Edward Island?

It was almost his end game.  He had one last target in mind, one last conquest.  His whole life had been under the thumb of someone else.  This was his.  It wasn’t going to be a secret any more.  The daughter of a cop known for catching serial killers…how did she taste?

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were known for their Red Serge uniform.  It was what they wore in ceremony, to honour others, and in death.

Amazon links:  (remember to wait until January 9^th and 10^th)

United States

Canada

United Kingdom

Sometimes you have to get Frisky - a review

There's this great writer who lives in Toronto.  She writes murder mysteries about a sassy, sexy, drum playing private investigator who lives with her gambling father and chef brother.  Jill Edmondson found me by seeing my picture and asking if I was a chef, she works at a culinary school, and I'm glad she did because I was able to find the world of Sasha Jackson.

Frisky Business is the second novel I've read in this series (it's the 4th in the whole thing) and I really want to read more.  Here's my review.....

Jill Edmondson pulls you into her latest Sasha Jackson Mystery and doesn’t let you go.  Frisky Business, the 4^th novel in the series, takes the best of old school PI detective novels and blends it with the life of a woman trying to figure out her own life.  Right from the jump you walk in with the client as she, Raven, hires Sasha to investigate the murder of her friend, and fellow porn star Kitty Vixen.  The questions and possible suspects quickly pile up.

What I really like about the Sasha Jackson Mysteries is that the hero is a flawed, normal person.  You get to see her life change from book to book.  Her man troubles, best friend troubles, living arrangement troubles, learning how to drive troubles, and everything else in her life troubles never get in the way of the mystery, but add to it.  By the time you get to the end you are as excited to know what is happening in her life as you are to finding out who the killer is.

A Canadian hero is sometimes hard to find.  A Female Canadian hero is even harder.  I can’t wait to hear more about what happens in Sasha Jackson’s life.

5 big stars

Frisky Business on Amazon.ca

Frisky Business on Amazon.com

Jill Edmondson's web site

 

Cover Reveal

I'm not going to wait.  Here's the cover for Red Serge

The ebook is out there now!!!!!! available for kindle and all kindle apps.  Here are the basic links.

United States

 

Canada

 

UK

 

The paperback version will be out in the new year.  I know I said by Christmas, but what a way to start out 2014.

 

I want to thank everyone who entered my contest to pick the cover.

The winners of both Red Island and Red Serge signed and mailed to your front door are

 

Stephanie Andrassy

and

Diane Prairie

 

Your books will be on the way as soon as Red Serge is in my hands.

An artists rendering

I have this artist friend, Jackie VanderZwaag, who I worked with in Prince Edward Island.  She is an amazing artist and a budding graphic artist.  I asked her to see if she could sketch my main characters for the novel I am working on, The Cistern.  What do you think????

 

Jackie Vanderswaag can be reached at jackievanderzwaag@gmail.com or click on her name to link onto her FB page and see some of the other great work she has done.

 

Please comment below and let me know what you think.

Vote and Win...Part 2

A little while ago I had 2 covers up that people were to vote for.  Things have changed a little.  The Grade 12 graphic arts class at Carlton High School in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan has used Red Serge as a class project.  Below are the first 2 choices plus all of the high school classes submissions.

First, here's the back of the book script so you have an idea of what it's about...

The body of a young girl found at a national park beach leads the major crimes unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to a mass grave.  How long had the Devil been coming to Prince Edward Island?

 

Though fighting with personal turmoil Reid is drawn to the case.  He has to make this one right, but is the cost too much?

 

The RCMP wear their red serge on duty - in ceremony, to honour others, and in death.

 

 

Taken during a Musical Ride

Red Serge is what the red uniform worn by the Canadian Mounties.  This uniform plays an important part in the novel and I wanted to honour those that are my hero's.  Unfortunately I can't use an actual picture of the uniform without the official word so we had to figure something else out.

Let the choices begin...

#1 the red sand beach cover ............ #2 the red uniform digging cover

   #3 The Spooky Woods .............. #4 Bloody Crime Scene ................. #5 Moonlight ................... #6 Beachy

    #7 Cartoon girl .............................. #8 Blind ...............................#9 Shadow Man ........................#10 Rocky

   #11 Spy vs Spy ..........................#12 The Hand .........................#13 Ghostly .............................#14 Skull

Contest...it's pretty simple.  Down there in the comment section tell me which one you prefer or leave a comment.  Everyone who votes or comments will be entered into a draw to win a signed copy of my first novel RED ISLAND.  Which ever cover gets the most votes will be RED SERGE's cover and all those that voted for it will go into a second contest for signed copies of both RED ISLAND and RED SERGE.  (this does not mean you should vote for both just to get both books)  Please vote for whatever you like the most. ((Anyone who voted before is still in the running, but please feel free to vote again and have your name in twice))

This contest lasts until the end of November.  Ready, set, vote!

Review: Blood & Groom by Jill Edmondson

Blood & Groom:  the first in the Sasha Jackson Mysteries

I now have a strong desire to meet Sasha Jackson and all it took was reading Blood and Groom by Jill Edmondson.  It’s the kind of novel that if the main character was a dude you’d hear Humphrey Bogart narrating it, “the door opened and in walked the lady in red, and with her came trouble with a capital T.”  Okay, Jill and Sasha are not that corny, but Sasha is a private detective for hire in Toronto and the novel does open with a woman with attitude coming through her door.  She wants to hire Sasha to find out who murdered her ex-fiancée.  There are a few good twists and turns putting mystery on top of mystery on top of mystery.  There’s a bit of Sasha’s personal life – like her part-time gig as a sex phone operator, her chef brother, her best friend who is dating her brother and her gambling father – so that you want to get out there and get the next novel in the series.

I will admit that the copy I downloaded had some big time formatting issues, but I was drawn right into the story and the further in I got, the more I needed to continue.  I really can’t wait to read more of the Sasha Jackson Mysteries.

The author tells me everything has been fixed up, checked, rechecked.  If I were you I would check it out.

Check out the author's web site:  www.jilledmondson.com