Showing posts with label historical mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical mystery. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers: MARY REED AND ERIC MAYER DIG INTO THE PAST FOR THE...
Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers: MARY REED AND ERIC MAYER DIG INTO THE PAST FOR THE...: Mary Reed and Eric Mayer co-write the John, Lord Chamberlain, Byzantine mystery series set mainly in and around the court of Justinian an...
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers: AUTHOR MERRILEE ROBSON TAPS INTO FAMILY HISTORY FO...
Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers: AUTHOR MERRILEE ROBSON TAPS INTO FAMILY HISTORY FO...: Merrilee Robson is the author of Murder is Uncooperative , a traditional mystery set it a housing co-op, as well as numerous short storie...
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Saturday, April 28, 2018
SMFS Member Publication News: O'Neil De Noux
SMFS
Member O'Neil De Noux has a
historical mystery short story in the new issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine:
Issue 2. “The Gorilla Murders” was first published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine:
July/August 2004 (Volume 49, Nos. 7 and 8) and is set in 1889 New Orleans.
Detective Jacques Dugas (also seen in The French Detective published in
2014 by Big Kiss Productions) investigates a series of murders in the French
Quarter where witnesses describe a gorilla as the killer.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
SMFS Member Guest Post: Writing Short and Long by Edith Maxwell
Please welcome SMFS member Edith Maxwell to
our blog today as she discusses writing in both short and long form.
Writing Short and Long by Edith Maxwell
I am
primarily a book author. I have three series under contract, so I write three
books every year. But I also love writing short stories.
Sometimes
it’s fun to branch out and write a short story about a new place, with new characters.
I did that for my submission to Mystery Most
Geographical, this year’s Malice Domestic anthology. I lived
in West Africa for two separate years, and the second time (already twenty
years ago) I wrote a book of essays about my experiences. I figured no one else
would be submitting a story set in rural Burkina Faso to the Malice anthology,
so I dusted off one of my essays and turned it into a piece of crime fiction.
I’m delighted to say “A Divination of Death” was accepted and the anthology
will be out in April.
Most
commonly over the last few years I’ve written shorts using the late 1880s
characters and setting of my historical series, the Quaker Midwife Mysteries. I
can get my midwife Rose Carroll and her sidekick, postmistress Bertie Winslow,
into all kinds of new trouble when it’s short form. One crime, one solution,
bam. In one of my stories, “Adam and Eva,” (Kings River Life Magazine, 2016)
I tell the tale through Bertie’s voice and not Rose’s, although they work
together to solve the mystery.
Writing
a 300-page book is so much harder in a way than creating a short story. I
invariably trudge through the muddle in the middle, even now as I write my 19th
novel. I have to keep my arms around everything I’ve written up to that point
and still keep the story moving forward until we get to the exciting climax. By
now I know I can do it, so I no longer lose hope (well, I do just a little).
And I’ve more than once had to kill off a new victim so I can keep the suspense
up. I guess I’m doing something right – for two years in a row one of my Quaker
Midwife mysteries has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical
Novel, with Called to Justice nominated this year. Delivering the Truth was also
nominated in the historical category for a Macavity Award last year.
On the
other hand, writing a great short story, with nothing superfluous and a twist
at the end? That’s a challenge, too. I’ve had several stories nominated for an
Agatha Award, “The Mayor and the Midwife” being the most recent, and yes, it
features midwife Rose Carroll. But I’ve never won the award, so clearly I have
more work to do. Until then, I’m happy to lose to my talented fellow Short
Mystery Fiction Society friends.
Edith
Maxwell ©2018
Agatha- and Macavity-nominated author
Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries,
and award-winning short crime fiction. Called
to Justice, Maxwell’s second Quaker Midwife mystery, is nominated for an
Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. As Maddie Day she writes the popular
Country Store Mysteries and the new Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. As Tace
Baker she wrote two books in the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries.
Maxwell is president of Sisters in Crime
New England and lives north of Boston with her beau, two elderly cats, and an impressive
array of garden statuary. She blogs at WickedCozyAuthors.com,
KillerCharacters.com, and Under the Cover of Midnight (http://midnightinkbooks.blogspot.com/). Read about all her personalities and
her work at edithmaxwell.com.
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