Marilyn's Musings

The heroine, Barbara Reed, is working as a substitute teacher to pay the rent and put food on the table. Being a substitute ranks as one of the most unpopular jobs there is, but for Barbara it is the beginning of a spiraling tail of woe. When she discovers the history teacher murdered in his classroom, she’s assigned to take over his class. She can’t help but do a bit of snooping on her own and when she discovers another body, she becomes the prime suspect. The mystery is full of fascinating and quirky characters from the not quite normal teaching staff, to her ex-husband and his girlfriend, her obnoxious sister, colorful neighbors, a couple of homeless men, and the most important one in her life, her tiny dog, Cheese Puff. I’m a fan of Carolyn J. Rose and I always know when I read her books there will be some unexpected twists—and No Substitute for Murder is no exception. If you love mysteries that are a shade different, you’ll love No Substitute for Murder . Carolyn sent m...

No Substitute for Murder by Carolyn J. Rose Carolyn with Bubba and Max By Carolyn J. Rose Almost every day my husband and I walk our dogs—the intrepid Bubba and the not-so-daring Max—in a loop around our neighborhood. Along the way we pass the home of a man in his late 80s. His wife died several years ago and he lives alone in a house filled with things much as she left them. He no longer drives, but he has family just down the road, close neighbors who look in on him, and lunch deliveries every weekday. But he’s lonely. On warm days he plants a chair in his driveway and waves over anyone who passes for a brief conversation—always about the past. Some days we stop. On others, we acknowledge his wave and call out an excuse—have to get to the store, the library, home to do the wash. Once I brought him a brochure for the local senior center and asked if he’d like me to drive him on the days I go to the nearby rec center to swim. “I wouldn’t know anyone there,” he said. “Y...

Carolyn J. Rose said: A few days ago I took a look around my office and was amazed by the amount of stuff packed into that 10x12 space. I’d be at it for days if I had to pack up and move to a less high-maintenance home—something we consider when we’re overwhelmed by encroaching foliage, stampeding dust bunnies, and windows with enough smears to make a CSI technician rethink his career. “Don’t worry,” the optimist side of my brain said, “A move is years away. Housing prices are still in the toilet and you’re a long way from downsizing.” Downsizing!?! That means not only moving, but also minimizing And that’s a word that can strike terror into the heart of even someone with the habit of going through closets each spring and finding new homes for clothing, books, cooking utensils, and Christmas gifts from Aunt Belinda that can only be described as “unique.” But, terrifying as the thought of winnowing, packing, lifting, lugging, and unpac...

--Guest Post by Carolyn Rose How do you do your best work? While tapping your toes to the Motown beat? Howling along with Howlin’ Wolf? Listening to the slosh of the washer and the whisk of the dryer? Monitoring the kids’ conversations? Talking back to Talk Radio or keeping an ear cocked for that recipe for cheese and cantaloupe soufflé “coming up next” on a TV interview show? Or do you require silence to concentrate? I used to think I did. In fact, I insisted on my own office space, a floor above my husband’s and at the opposite end of the house. Mike, who is the co-author of our cozy mystery series set in the fictional Oregon coast town of Devil’s Harbor, likes music, lots of it. His office shelves hold at least 300 CDs and he’s got a TV, a piano, and a pool table in his space. After a long career on the air at radio stations in three states, he’s lost a lot of his high-end hearing, so he tends to crank the dials up. The Spinal Tap musicians who had amps that went up to 11 have nothi...

A Sense of Place and the Impact on Writer and Protagonist Guest blog by Carolyn J. Rose From the moment I opened a book by Zane Grey at the age of ten, I wanted to escape from the Catskill Mountains, to go west, to live beneath a huge expanse of sky. I dreamed of being away, of setting myself loose from the hold of family and place, of floating like a milkweed seed to some new place with a future only I would determine. I gave that same desire to Dan Stone, the protagonist of Hemlock Lake, knowing it would lead to conflict. Like me, he headed west when high school was finished. Like me, after a few years his visits home were infrequent. Like me, he found that he could leave the place, but that the place never left him. A break with the past is seldom clean, wounds inflicted then can fester for a lifetime, love given or withheld can change the course of a life. My memories of the hollows and ridges, the creeks and rills, are like stones in those centuries-old walls piled up when fields...