Okay, the only secret I'm talking about here is in the title of the eighth book in my Silver Rush series, THE SECRET IN THE WALL. So please feel free to share the news! First, it has been showing up on a number of awards lists (all of which warm the cockles of my little writerly heart): Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Traditional Novel (awards will be presented on June 24, at the WWA convention in Rapid City, South Dakota) Finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Mystery (winners will be announced online June 15) Nominee for Left Coast Crime's Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery (attendees vote at the conference, and winners are announced at the banquet on March 18) Second, you certainly have a chance to win (and keep!) a copy of SECRET by entering a Goodreads giveaway contest (sponsored by my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press / Sourcebooks), which runs through March 25. Just go here , click on the "Enter Giveaway" button, and fil...

Since I write primarily historical fiction, I glean inspiration for stories, scenes, settings, plot points, characters, etc., mostly from history itself. "I can use this" is a constant mental refrain as I scour historical sources, looking for fodder for fiction. For example, my Silver Rush mystery series  is set in the 1880s, with the first five books in Colorado, primarily Leadville, and the three most recent in San Francisco, California. Why did I pick Leadville as the starting point? Well, that also springs from history, in this case, my family's history. When I was in my mid-forties, I learned that my paternal grandmother had been raised in Leadville. I knew nothing about the place, so at the urging of my uncle, I began to dig around into Leadville's beginnings as a silver-mining boomtown, with an eye to setting a novel there. I found many parallels between those heady days of the late 1870s/early 1880s, when folks rushed to this remote Rocky Mountain location, a...

I have to say, my year is starting off well, with MORTAL MUSIC (the 7th in my Silver Rush series) released on January 27. What a way to ring in 2020! But that one is now written and done. What would make this the "best writing year ever" for me is to figure out how to write Book #8 with less stress. For some time, I've joked that what propels me to write is deadlines and panic. But there's more truth than fiction in that statement. Adrenaline drives me and makes me productive in my writing life, but that sort of propulsion eventually takes its toll. One day I realized that when I begin to feel stressed and panicked, my right knee starts to buckle. When writing deadlines loom, the right side of my neck, and my right wrist and shoulder stiffen and ache to the point where it's difficult to go to sleep, much less spend hours at the keyboard. Stress! (There's gotta be a better way to write.) Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay So, for me, if 2020 is...

This month's theme is perfectly timed since I recently returned from the Public Safety Writers Association Conference (PSWA) in Las Vegas. In addition to meeting and hearing from police officers, PIs, firefighters, 9-1-1 dispatchers, hazmat responders, military personnel, a postal inspector, SWAT members, and more about their jobs and experiences, I participated in a panel titled "Perfecting Your Writing. " Thanks to my fellow panelists, I am able to provide a selection of #writing tricks and tools for your perusal. Below, you'll probably find something old , something new , definitely a lot borrowed , and a bit of blue . Without further ado... From Thonie Hevron SmartEdit is wonderful free software that takes some of the pain out of culling those oft-repeated words. You can pre-set your own filters. I always use this. Hemingway is a fee-based (free online and app is one-time $19.99 and well worth it) program that identifies confusing and complicated sentenc...

It may be the end of July, but the reading never stops. For your browsing pleasure, please check out the lists below. You'll probably find plenty to add to your TBR (to-be-read) virtual or paper-based stacks of books for the rest of summer and beyond. The Booklist Reader has a list of authors and books to tackle for various July events, including Canada Day, the Fourth of July, P.T. Barnum's birthday, and Bastille Day. (Note: the list is nine years old, but hey, some authors never go out of date.) BookBrowse lists their Best book for July 2019 . You'll find all kinds and flavors here. Click on a cover to learn more about a particular book. For the Fourth of July, the Cincinnati Public Library has recommendations for all ages and tastes. To stretch the timeframe a bit, Listopia's Best Children's Books about Summer provides plenty for small fry to devour—251 books in all. Now, to mysteries, because that's my favorite genre.  The Cozy Mystery List Blog ...

Ah… Valentine's Day! Bring on the romance and the love, the chocolate, and the lacy, cutout paper hearts. Sooooo lovely! (By Chordboard - Self, from material in my possession., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4310800) ] --> But I'm a mystery author, so I can't help but think of the "dark side" as well: The downside of love—jealousy, possessiveness, obsession.  The poisoned box of candy.  The scissors, sharp enough to cut paper, but maybe sharp enough for other, more deadly uses…  ... And now for the dark side. "Jealousy" by Edvard Munch, 1895 (Edvard Munch [Public domain]) Whether you prefer the light-hearted romance or the emotional ruin of this special day dedicated to lovers—or something in between—there's something for you to read as the following lists show… Let's start with some cozy-with-murder mysteries, provided by The Cozy Mystery List . Here's the latest list from the ever-...

Now, when I was growing up, I was admonished by my parents, "Don't toot your own horn," "Let your work speak for itself," and so on and so forth. In this day and age, however, if you don't pick up that horn and BLOW, no one is going to have any idea that you've got something to celebrate. Get out there and blow your horn! (Adriaen van Ostade [CC0]. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951) Since Blood Red Pencil has designated January as the month to reflect on the past year, here are some 2018 writing-related triumphs I feel pretty darn good about. A Dying Note , the sixth in my Silver Rush historical mystery series, was published by Poisoned Pen Press in April 2018. Whew! Seeing a book in print is ALWAYS something to celebrate. The fact that it garnered positive reviews in Publishers Weekly , Booklist , and Kirkus just enhanced the glow. Just about the time that the book came out in audio (which pleased me grea...

Veterans Day is celebrated on November 12 (the actual date being November 11), but why limit thinking about and honoring our veterans on just a single day? And how about reading a book (or two) that would help us learn more about and appreciate the men and women who have served and are serving their country? The following lists offer some possibilities for you to consider. I'll start with mystery-related reads, since mysteries are "my thing": Mystery Fanfare by Janet Rudolph salutes Veterans Day mysteries in this post , mentioning Jacqueline Winspear's series with protagonist Maise Dobbs (a World War I nurse veteran), as well as Charles Todd's two series featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge (post-World War I) and battlefield nurse Bess Crawford (World War I). You can read more of her suggestions here .  A 2007 In Reference to Murder post by BV Lawson highlighting mystery series for Veterans Day includes the series by John D. MacDonald featuring Travis McGee, a...

Slang is so much fun! When used correctly in historical fiction it can add to the feel of the time period. But slang is also slippery. A phrase that “sounds” historical can be a lot more recent that you think. So, unless you like getting tetchy notes from readers, it pays to check your slang. A word as simple as “okay,” for instance, can take you down the rabbit hole of etymological research and confusion. Okay sounds so… modern, right? Well, it depends how you spell it. According to Oxford Dictionary online , the first use of this word (spelled OK) appeared in the 1830s, perhaps originating as an abbreviation of orl korrek t—“a jokey misspelling of 'all correct' which was current in the US in the 1830s.” So, if your fictional setting is firmly planted in late 19th century U.S. (as mine is), OK is okay! But—guess what!— okay is not! It didn’t appear until 1929, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary . Another useful tool for chasing down the time frame of period s...

When I heard Flora was the topic for April, I didn’t think of my backyard. Instead, I thought of era-appropriate names for the women characters who populate the setting I write about—the late 1800s U.S. Flora sounds so “old-fashioned.” Surely there was a blooming of Floras, Florences, Roses, Violets, Daisys, and all those floral-type names during this era? Faced with that question, I did what I usually do when musing on the unknown: I went a-researching and geeked out a bit… My first stop was the Social Security Administration, which has a great site for researching popular baby names for any decade going back to 1880. I pulled up the ranking of names for babies born in the 1880s in the U.S. here . And then, I made a little chart of all the flower names I could identify, plus the ranking for "Inez," the name of my Silver Rush series protagonist:  Most popular name for baby girls? Mary. Out of 1,399,571 female births, 91,668 little ones were Marys. (Ida came in at ...

First, thank you to the Blood Red Pencil for hosting me for this stop on my two-week-long virtual tour for Mercury’s Rise , the latest book in my Silver Rush historical mystery series. Truly, I have to thank BRP for more than that, because it was BRP’s Dani Greer who helped me out of a tight spot regarding word usage in Mercury’s Rise . It all began with whiskey. And whisky. I had taken great pains to determine under what circumstances my protagonist Inez Stannert would use which term. After all, Inez runs a high-class saloon in 1880s Leadville, Colorado, so she would certainly know the difference. My conundrum began when the line editor at my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, noted that some places in the manuscript were “whiskey” and others read “whisky.” Which is correct? she asked. I sent her a long reply (with links!) noting that they weren’t the same. (New York Times weighed in here and The Boozin’ Blog had a discussion here .) But I began to worry that switching between the...