Marilyn's Musings

Here is the cover and it's perfect for this book!  A forest on fire and an eagle. Niki Browning is the artist and she's done an outstanding job! Here's the official blurb: The tranquility of the mountain community of Bear Creek is disrupted by a runaway fugitive, a vicious murderer, and a raging forest fire. Deputy Tempe Crabtree is threatened by all three. I do not know the official date of publication, only that it will be sometime this month. So far I've planned a blog tour, but not much else--though I will be visiting the Great Valley Bookfest in Manteca in October. 

My June Book Bub Promo for a Boxed Set I am fortunate to have had some of my books selected for occasional promotion on Book Bub; one series’ books, anyway. The summer sales slump hits my books the worst in June and July. I write suspense, and for me, things don’t improve until late July, even early August. So with this in mind, I decided to put the three novels of my TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn series into a boxed set for the express purpose of (hopefully!) getting it on Book Bub for a summer promotion. I got a slot for the set on June 20. Because of the timing (summer slump) I was concerned about sales because the cost for a boxed set promotion is considerable. I paid a little more than one thousand dollars. I priced the set at $0.99 in an effort to get as many buyers as possible. The downside of this is that price puts it into Amazon’s 30% royalty range. One way around that might be to use Countdown days, but I wanted to have the set on sale longer than ...

Are Characters with Manners Weak? Who remembers the witty dialogue and impossible social situations of old movies like My Man Godfrey and Bringing Up Baby ?    Bringing Up Baby (1938) "Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments."  Bringing Up Baby   My Man Godfrey (1936) "If you're going to be rude to my daughter, you might as well at least take your hat off!" My Man Godfrey The movies poked fun at social conventions, but they did it with style.  Being blatantly rude to another person was unthinkable, but that didn't mean one had to remain silent.  It was all in the phrasing. Rude Response:  "You are so stupid."  Mannered Response: "I was prepared for a battle of the wits, but you appear to be unarmed." Which person would you vote for as the winner...

Once in awhile this happens. An author or publicist contacts me to be a guest on my blog--and the material never arrives. That's what happened here--I should have had a post and all that goes with it yesterday. Of course, it is possible that the post got lost in cyber space. This makes me sad because someone didn't do what they were supposed to do. Being a guest on my blog isn't going to bring anyone fame or fortune, but I do get a lot of visitors. I'd even get more if the guests promoted more--some do and I see their promotions. I also promote my posts on my blog. If someone goes to the trouble of writing a post, he or she ought to take the time to promote it. Most do, but there are those few. As long as I'm complaining, I have a problem when a guest doesn't respond to comments that others make on their posts, that's only common courtesy, Of course, I've been blogging for a long time and hosting other authors almost as long. I also am a guest ...

I always wanted to be a writer. When I was a little girl, I lived with my grandparents in a 3 story house my grandfather built. One rainy day I went up into the attic to look for something, not sure what. Keep in mind that was before phones, before TVs’ and certainly before computers. I found a wooden crate full of old books. Gialli that’s what mysteries are called in Italy. The books had been left there by my uncle Agostino who migrated to Canada. From then on I spent my week ends in the attic, reading. Agatha Christie, Rex Stout…I loved them all. In school, my best grades were in Literature. My teachers liked my writing, often would read it out loud. Then my parents moved to Belgium and I said goodbye to my grandparents, the attic and the books.             In Belgium I had to learn French, and I did. Soon my teachers liked my French essays. I still dreamed of becoming a professional writer. By the time I was fourteen,...

I used to think I had to be an English major and hole up in a garret with huge blocks of time in order to call myself a writer. This garret of my imagination is located in the Montmartre district of Paris. I’d turn out novels at an alarming rate on my manual typewriter. Alas, my background is in business and IT. No garret. No typewriter (thankfully). I work out of the converted bedroom of a 60s-era split level in Richmond, Virginia. I do spend huge blocks of time writing, but not just novels and not at an alarming rate. Short stories, blog posts, and social media posts also flow from my brain and fingers while I shoo cats off my keyboard. Presently, I’m writing the third volume of my Hazel Rose Book Group series and doing the final edits for the second volume, Murder at the Moonshine Inn . I’m also editing a short story I’ve written for a wine anthology. I love my work. I love having multiple writing projects. I’m not wedded to technology and find it difficult to be cr...

By Katherine Ramsland Recently, I published a supernatural murder mystery, The Ripper Letter , based around items related to Jack the Ripper. It all began with a mysterious correspondence known as the letter “From Hell.” Let’s get some background first about the 1888 crime spree in London’s Whitechapel. Not everyone agrees on when it began, but officially, it was the end of August. Two prostitutes were murdered in two separate events a week apart before the so-called “double event,” two killed on the same night in September. Two weeks later, a letter came to the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, accompanied by a grisly trophy: half of a kidney, seemingly preserved in alcohol. There have been many stories about this kidney, from it being a practical joke by a medical student to being the very kidney that had been cut from one of the victims. The note's author indicated that he'd fried and eaten the other half, which was “very nise.” He offered to sen...