"A Crushing Death" by F.M. Meredith

I'm thrilled to have Marilyn Meredith visiting with us today as one of the stops on her blog tour for her new release. I've read the other books in her Rocky Bluff PD mystery series and I'm looking forward to reading "A Crushing Death."

Marilyn Meredith (aka F.M. Meredith) and Craig Johnson

Patricia: Marilyn, when did you know that you wanted to be a writer?

Marilyn: Very soon after I learned how to read.  My first long efforts began after reading the Little House on the Prairie books. I wrote my own version of one. And no, I don’t have a copy, it was when I was about 10 or 11. Sometime in that same period I wrote and illustrated a book about a fairy—and I received my first rejection from a publisher. The note told me to keep on writing.

                                          

Patricia: If, for some reason, you couldn’t be a writer, what profession would you have chosen?

Marilyn: I’ve had several other jobs or professions while being a writer and I’ll start with my first:

I had my first babysitting job when I was 10 and it was with 4 tiny tots. I fell asleep and the parents couldn’t wake me to let them in—they had to go to a pay phone and call me. Despite that I continued to babysit until I married and left home.

My first paying job as a married woman was as a telephone operator, information and long distance. I did that off and on for years.

Teacher in a pre-school for developmentally disabled children. I worked there for 10 years and was one of my favorite professions. I also taught in two different day cars in low-income areas, and was also a teacher in a pre-school for disadvantaged and non-English speakers.

For over 23 years I owned and operated a residential facility for 6 women with developmental disabilities. Another of my favorite professions. During that same time period I organized, ran and taught accredited classes for people who wanted to have licensed adult residential facilities as well as required continuing education classes.

I am still writing a newsletter for residential care administrators.

You can probably guess why I’m not doing a lot of the professions I enjoyed. Yes, I’m getting older and don’t have the physical energy to do what is required for those jobs.

Patricia: Do you have a bucket list, things you still want to do and/or places you want to visit?

Marilyn: I no longer enjoy traveling as I once did, so I’ll never be traipsing off to faraway places. I have been to Alaska and Hawaii twice, Mexico several times and visited many of the states. We once tent-camped from California to Maryland and back—and I never tent camped again. I do hope to continue wandering about my home state of California and especially trips to the coast. As far as what I want to do, I hope to be able to continue giving talks to writers groups, going to book and craft fairs, and mystery conferences.

I’m thankful I’ve had such a rich life full of family and wonderful friends, and many adventures.

Some of you who have more exciting bucket lists than mine, share some in the comments.

A pile of rocks is found on a dead body beneath the condemned pier, a teacher is accused of molesting a student, the new police chief is threatened by someone she once arrested for violent attacks on women, and Detective Milligan’s teenage daughter has problem.

Buy link: http://www.amazon.com/Crushing-Death-Rocky-Bluff-P-D/dp/1610092260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457618775&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Crushing+Death+by+F.M.+Meredith

Bio:

F. M. Meredith who is also known as Marilyn Meredith is nearing the number of 40 published books. Besides being an author she is a wife, mother , grandma and great-grandmother. Though the Rocky Bluff she writes about is fictional, she lived for over twenty-years in a similar small beach town. Besides having many law enforcement officers in her family she is counts many as friends. She teaches writing, loves to give presentations to writing and other groups, and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, three chapters of Sisters in Crime and on the board of Public Safety Writers Association.

Website: http://fictionforyou.com

Blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com

Facebook: Marilyn Meredith

Twitter: MarilynMeredith

Contest: Once again, the person who comments on the most blogs during this tour, can have a character named after them in the next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery. Tomorrow you can find me here:

http://www.auntiemwrites.com/

Saddle up with the promotion Posse

I've been a proud member of Sunny Frazier's Posse for the past five years and I'm very grateful to her for teaching me about promotion and for guiding me along the way. I've asked her to tell us about how and why she formed the Posse.

   It was a simple idea, really. I began learning (and loving) promotion early on in the Internet age. As I watched others struggle, I wondered why should they beat their head against the wall trying to navigate all the information out there? I mean, I’d already done that and had it under my belt. I was linked to lots of sites that fed information to me without any work on my part.

   Perhaps it was hubris that had me announce “I can take 5 years off your writing path if you just blindly follow my instructions.” I didn’t know if that statistic was right, I made it up off the top of my head. The message was, even if you don’t understand everything you read right now, trust me—it will all fall into place.

   Understand, these weren’t my ideas, they were culled from all the sites coming into my computer. I eliminated blogs that didn’t really add anything to our collective knowledge or were a time-waste. I sought information that could boost a person’s career.

   There was a secondary requirement: members had to go over to sites where fellow Posse members were blogging and add their two cents. It was a subversive move. Suddenly, that site had dozens of comments. Posse members were a valuable commodity for site owners. We identified ourselves as Posse and people realized we were a force to be reckoned with. I was even getting requests to “send the Posse over.”

   About a month ago, I developed a FB page for the Posse. I invited the 87 members and then opened it up to everyone. There’s no charge, everyone contributes and we still support wherever one of us is posting. However, I started doing a Round-Up every Friday listing all the topics discussed that week. It gets posted all over the Internet. I also found fun Western photos to illustrate the posts.

   Why the “Posse?” It’s a tip of my cowboy hat to the fact that I worked for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department and yes, we have a Posse. They ride horses and go into the rugged foothills to locate lost hikers. While the San Joaquin Valley of California isn’t exactly the “Wild West,” we do have rodeos and cowboys. It’s an image that works as we “ride together” to promote.  

  

Sunny Frazier

 

Sunny Frazier writes the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries, set in the Central Valley of California where Sunny lives. A military veteran (Navy, Vietnam Era), she worked for 17 years with the Fresno County Sheriff's Dept., 11 of those years as Girl Friday for an undercover narcotics team. Her books are based on real cases and real places from those days--as well as a bit of astrology, which she's been doing for 45 years. Her character, Christy, has her own Face Book page where she doles out astrological tidbits and Sunny is the head honcho of the Posse, an intra-promotional Face Book group for writers.  

Books 2 & 3 of the series can be purchased on Amazon or at Black Opal Books. Book 1, "Fools Rush In" will be reprinted later this year.