Marilyn's Musings

Hubby, daughter Lisa and I are embarking on another adventure. A mild one compared to those I read about from my friends--but an adventure nevertheless. We'll be spending a several days with our eldest daughter and her hubby in the southern part of the state. She always keeps us busy with interesting places to visit and see. Best of all though is we'll bet to spend some time with two of our grandchilden and their families. From their we'll head north, up the California coast to stop overnight to visit our youngest daughter and a grandson and granddaughter. The next morning we'll drive by the place where my fictional Rocky Bluff is set and on up to Nipomo to attend the Central Coast chapter of Sisters in Crime. Their speaker will be Sheila Lowe who is a handwriting expert and also a friend. Lunch follows with CC SinC friends. I hope we'll get to do a bit of sight seeing afterwards.  The next day, Sunday, May 29, from 1-3, I'll be joining some of t...

Sheila Lowe, forensic handwriting analyst and mystery author When my Forensic Handwriting Mysteries series was first published I spent a tremendous amount of time and money traveling all over the country, publicizing the books at conferences, book signings, and other activities. The cost amounted to about $10,000/year for the first four books, but I figured it was an investment and counted on a good ROI. The books continue to sell well, but not well enough for my (second) editor at Penguin to offer me a new contract after the fourth book. I probably should have hung on to many of those promotional dollars. Three years went by after the publication of the prophetically named Last Writes (the saga of that name is another story). Last summer I decided to self-publish my next novel , What She Saw , a standalone story of suspense about a young woman with amnesia in which my series characters play an important, but secondary role. The book was well received, garnering 4...

Are you a CSI buff? Do you watch every episode of Cold Case, Forensic Files, Law & Order and all the spinoffs? Then you are one of the people who have turned forensics into a hugely popular field. These days, DNA, fingerprints, and all that technical stuff makes fantastic (or more correctly, realistic ) fodder for fiction. So what better time to introduce a new kind of forensic expert? I’ve been in the field of handwriting analysis for forty years and occasionally, I testify in court cases as an expert witness. My practice includes working on cases of forged wills, anonymous letters, and all sorts of legal chicanery, as well as behavioral profiling. And my clients have never been as savvy or as interested in what their handwriting says about them as they are today. At the same time, there are some who believe that in an age of  the iPod, BlackBerry, and text messaging, handwriting has lost its relevance. But the truth is, your handwriting–chicken scratch though it ma...

Sheila Lowe gives us this good advice about writing mysteries. Who doesn’t love a good mystery? With six of the top ten hardcover fiction books on the New York Times bestseller list in the mystery/crime genre, clearly, many readers do. And since my own mystery series has been published over the past four years, I’ve learned that a very large number of people are interested in getting their own mysteries published, too. I’ve heard it said that there are three rules in mystery writing...but nobody knows what they are...ba dum bum. Seriously, all fiction requires plotting, characterization, setting, dialogue, and point of view, but the mystery genre has some other special requirements of its own. Before you even get to those things, though, you’ll need to know what subgenre you are writing. Subgenre affects who your audience—your all-important market is going to be. The subgenres include soft-boiled cozy (traditional) mysteries, medium-boiled psychological suspense, and hard-boiled gritty...

We arrived home this after noon after three days away. Our primary purpose was to visit our two grown daughters who live in Southern California. We stayed with our eldest daughter because our youngest was involved helping out with the funeral arrangements for her best friend--the young woman died after a heroic battle with cancer. On our first evening we took our eldest and hubby out to dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary. We went to Joe's Crabshack where I thoroughly enjoyed the Dungeness Crab Bucket. Besides visiting lots, we went to the movies twice. We saw Public Enemy which the men enjoyed more than we did, and on the next day we watched 30 minutes of Funny Man and walked out--it was far too raunchy for all of us. We then went to the Ugly Truth--that one was funny--though it had its raunchy moments too. Daughter and I attended Sheila Lowe's book launch for her latest, Dead Write . It was a lovely event with many, many people. Since it was in another beach city d...

Saturday we head off to Pasadena. We're going to the California Crime Writers Conference though I do not expect to go to much at the conference. I was asked to be on a panel about e-publishing on Sunday morning and could attend anything I wanted that day and pay for the day before. Since I'm going to the Public Safety Writers Conference the next week, I didn't feel the need or desire to spend that much time conferencing. Plus Sunday afternoon we have an important council meeting at church and being the church clerk I should get back for it. I'm not even putting my books in the bookstore. What I will do is hand out postcards with ordering information about my books. I'll be showing off my Kindle too. We'll use our Magellan to take us there stress free. Hubby listens to Mrs. Magellan as he calls the voice on the GPS device--never listens to my directions, so I appreciate having her tell us what to do and where to turn. I'll be getting my email via my Blackberr...

Long, long ago and far, far away (well, Anaheim, CA) when I was a senior in high school, my boyfriend’s mother analyzed my handwriting from a book she’d read. Fascinated with the things she wrote about me, when I found a 25 cent booklet at the grocery store (this was 1967, when you could still find things for 25 cents) called Handwriting Analysis, a Guide to Your Hidden Self, I grabbed it up and started studying. For the next ten years I haunted the library and bookstores and read everything I could about handwriting analysis. When I finally discovered there were courses in this field, I was thrilled to bits, and the rest is, well, history. Eventually, I became certified by the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation and a few years later, an attorney contacted me to handle a forgery case. I said I didn’t do handwriting authentication and couldn’t possibly testify in court. The attorney disagreed. He asked, “Do you know handwriting?” Well, yes. I’d been studying and working with handw...