Welcome to Fripp Island

Welcome to Fripp Island, South Carolina, a vacation spot with something for everyone. Gorgeous sandy beaches, golf courses, restaurants and swimming pools.

Ann feels like she's in Paradise, as she floats in one of the pools, overlooking the ocean.

But when she discovers the body of a young woman partially buried in the sand, she realizes the beautiful island has a darker side. There are alligators in the marshes and a killer on the loose. 

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A Tribute to my mother

This Tuesday my mother will celebrate her 90th birthday! She was born on June 18th, 1929, the fifth of ten children. Of course, that meant she grew up during The Depression. Through the years, she's told me many stories from her childhood, which I cherish, and they're all happy stories. No mention of how difficult it must have been growing up at that time. 

Mom was eight years old during the flood of 1937. She remembers climbing into a boat from the top floor of their house to escape the rising water. Sadly, because of flooding, most of the photos from her childhood were destroyed. Miraculously, this one survived.

Jean Lewis

Mom didn't want a party to celebrate her birthday but I needed to do something special to honor her - because she deserves it. She's the best mother I could've ever asked for. Beautiful inside and out. I decided to post a few photos of her today because - and this is strange coming from a writer - sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Mom and I have lots of common interests. We love to go to flea markets, estate sales and antique malls and we've taken more day trips together than I can count. The covered bridges in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, the Amish settlement on the east side of Cincinnati and tons of local events. 

Spanish festival

German festival

Tall Stacks - Aunt Evelyn, Aunt Flo, Mom

Butterfly exhibit at the Conservatory

We've also gone on a few extended vacations together: to Michigan to tour lighthouses, to North Carolina to go gem hunting and further south through South Carolina, Georgia and into Florida. Wonderful memories!

Gem hunting in NC

Savannah Georgia

I appreciate - more than words can express - how supportive Mom has always been of my writing. She's attended most of my book signings and she tells everyone she meets, "My daughter is an author and her books are really good."

Mom at my first book launch

Halloween, Mom's favorite holiday

Mom with Bosley, her beloved Welsh Corgi

Christmas 2018

June 2019

Mom's birthday lunch

I love you, Mom!

Happy birthday!

Letting our characters speak for us

Novels make excellent vehicles for self-expression, especially when we occasionally let our characters speak for us.

For example, I love clichés and I use them a lot in my "real" life. But, as all writers know, they’re frowned upon and considered lazy writing in novels. Writers are supposed to come up with new and innovative expressions even though clichés became clichés because they get the point across in a way that everyone immediately understands; they’re universal. But, that’s the way of the writing world. 
So, when Olivia, the octogenarian in my Malone Mystery series, says something like “Davey, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” because of her age, she can get by with it. I smile every time she does.

And, when one of my characters expresses an opinion or vents about something that also happens to be how I feel, it feels good to put it on paper. For example, I'm tired of all the commercials on TV, especially the medical/pharmaceutical ones, and I mute most of them. As it happens, Louise, another character in my Malone series, feels the same way.

She wanted to throw something at her TV and shatter the screen when she saw the constant barrage of advertisements for one pill after another to treat everything from depression to a leaky bladder. The only thing that stopped her from destroying her television set was knowing how much it would cost to replace it.

Now mind you, Louise is not one of my most likeable characters but she does make some valid points.

Kate, the main character in Secrets in Storyville, my first small town mystery, is definitely - to use a cliché - "a woman after my own heart." She knows when to say the right thing while thinking something entirely different. 
In the book . . . Kate has a flat tire and, just as she’s about to change it:

I turned around and saw a tall, dark-haired man wearing jeans, a red flannel shirt and boots get out of a blue pickup truck. As he walked toward me, I couldn’t help noticing how good looking he was.

“Can I give you a hand?”

A hand, a foot, your whole body. Instead, I said, “Oh, that’s okay. I think I’ve got it figured out.”

Anywhere you want to go

Whenever I travel to a new (to me) place, I search for a local bookstore where I scan the shelves, looking for mystery novels by local authors. I do this for two reasons. First, I think it's important to support writers everywhere and second, because when I come home and return to my daily life, I can open the pages and escape to the place I've just visited. It's a way to hang on to the "vacation" mode.

One year, I visited Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, my favorite of the three. I found a bookstore there and purchased Murder on Martha's Vineyard by David Osborn, a local writer. Back at home, I read the book and enjoyed it so much that I looked up the author on Amazon and was pleasantly surprised to see that he'd written more books in the series. I read all of his books and was able to "stay" on Martha's Vineyard a lot longer than my vacation time allowed.

Another year, I went to Wilmington, North Carolina and I loved exploring the city. So much history! The old Cotton Exchange, which now houses several delightful shops, including a bookstore, intrigued me as did the horse drawn carriages and the theater where John Wilkes Booth once performed. I bought two mystery novels by Wanda Canada, Island Murders and Cape Fear Murders. When I got home, I read both books and felt as if I were still sitting on a pier, gazing out at the Cape Fear River, watching the boats go by. And, trying to solve a murder.

But I haven't always been able to find a book by a local author while on vacation. When that happens, I try to find one by someone who isn't local but who is very familiar with the area. For example, I purchased Folly by Bill Noel, a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, a couple of months after I got back from Folly Beach, South Carolina and, because the author had spent many summers in the area, it felt like a "local" had written the book.

I could give you many more examples but, in the interest of keeping this post shorter than one of my novels, I won't. Anyway, you get the idea.

Even if you don't travel or can't get away this year, you can still take a vacation in your mind. Although I've never been to Peru, I went on an archaeological expedition there when I read William Doonan's American Caliphate. I explored an old ghost town in Arizona with Old Murders Never Die by Marja McGraw. And, I journeyed to the New England coast with J.R. Lindermuth's The Limping Dog.

I've also visited Bariloche, Argentina with author Evelyn Cullet, seen the heather-covered moors of the Scottish Highlands thanks to Amy Reade and traveled Route 66 through the Mojave Desert with M.M. Gornell's novels. I could list hundreds more.

Books can take you anywhere you want to go at any time of the year and you don't even have to go through airport security or fill your gas tank.

The View from my window

From my office window, I watched, mesmerized, as a large hawk glided effortlessly in the sky. I’d seen the hawk on several occasions and I was always impressed with him. I didn’t know much about hawks but, on this particular day, I decided to learn more. So I Googled the subject. And what I learned became an important part of the book I was writing: Secrets in Storyville, a small town mystery.

That got me thinking about some of the other characters, plots and settings I had used in my previous novels and I realized that many of my ideas came from places and/or people I’d seen in my neighborhood or in the surrounding area. 

One day, while sitting on my porch, I saw a tall, skinny man with a long gray ponytail walking his cat on a leash. For some reason, that got my attention and the man became John Berkley in Mixed Messages, my first Malone mystery. John also had a role in the second book, Unfinished Business.

Another day, I was driving not far from where I live and I spotted a dark car with tinted windows pulling out of a driveway. An everyday occurrence, right? But this time, it made an impression on me. I wondered why the windows were tinted and the scenario I created in my mind was the basis for a major character: Lawrence Berger, an albino.

The creative process amazes me! A writer never knows when a sight, a sound, a smell or a few words overheard will trigger an idea. And it usually happens when we least expect it.

I’m currently working on the second small town mystery: Murder at Maple Ridge. The setting? It’s based on a house I’d admired for years, about forty-five minutes from where I live. I love old houses and, like the Victorian in my Malone mysteries, this house fascinated me.

The point I’m trying to make is that, if you want to be a writer, you don’t have to travel to exotic places to find inspiration. Just look out your window and if something catches your eye, like the hawk, let your imagination soar.