Author: admin

We’re talking about killing offf our fictional characters on the blog hop this way. And I have a confession to make.

In the first book I wrote, I killed off the main female character at the end of the book. This was a romance, mind you, She and the hero found love as older adults. But she didn’t die of old age, she died in a car crash that harkened back to a scene in the beginning of the book which led to their first meeting.

When I wrote the scene, I cried more than a few tears. I’d fallen in love with her myself. She was a woman who had been hurt more than once in life, and had finally found happiness again. To kill her off seemed true to the story, but it broke my heart.

I rewrote the book later—several times, actually—and eventually gave the female lead a happy ending, because I knew readers would hate me and the original ending. I never released that book—it had some serious plot difficulties I couldn’t fix, so don’t look for it on my author page. 🙂

So I’m not against killing off characters if the story demands it. In Wolves’ Knight, my main character, Tasha, is a warrior at heart. As a warrior and a wolf-shifter, if the situation demands that someone dies, she’ll do what it takes to protect her friends. She’s not necessarily bloodthirsty, just practical. Since it’s true to her nature, I think readers would be disappointed if she didn’t kill someone during the story.

The Oak Grove Mysteries are a different situatio. Mysteries traditionally have a  murder or two. In the first one, The Marquesa’s Necklace, I purposely set about to write a mystery in which no one died. There were a few situations that could have gone bad, but the characters always pulled through. The second book was different—I made the deliberate decision to start that one
off with a body. (By the way, I just put the second book, Her Ladyship’s Ring, on sale for 99¢ for a few days. I’m celebrating completing the first draft of the third book in the series, The Baron’s Cufflinks, And yes, this one has a murder as well.  So if you haven’t read it yet, now is your chance! If you check out the books page here on my blog, you can see where to buy it.  Books Page)

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that death is just a natural progression of the human experience. We’re all going to die sooner or later. So to have a character die in one of my stories feels entirely natural to me. Killing of a major character can be heartbreaking but at the same time necessary for the story.

How do you feel when an author kills of a character? Especially one you’ve grown fond of? Tell us in the comments. To find out how the other authors feel about it, follo w the links below.

October 17 – How do you feel about the death of fictional characters? These can be your own or those of other authors. How would you do it? Do you have a criteria for who can die? Would you ever kill off a named character?
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Before I get started on this week’s topic, I want to apologize to anyone who might have missed me the last few weeks. I didn’t go totally off-grid, but my time and internet access were limited. I spent the time with my daughter and grandson, and wanted to savor every minute.

Which segues nicely into this week’s topic—if someone gave you a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

So many choices, so little time! In fact, can I get one of those tickets that you can use unlimited times? For the rest of your life? (They used to sell them!)

Because this is my blog, I can change the rules, Right? So you’re going to get the top three places I would visit.

First one would be right back to visit my daughter. Even though she’s in Florida and I just got back from there and she doesn’t have any electricity yet. Or maybe mostly because she doesn’t have any electricity! She’s got her hands full and I want to be there to help her. Luckily, no damage was done to her house. (The mailbox went missing, the wire that carries electricity to her house is damaged, and a tree in the backyard had to be taken down.) I assume you’ve seen the pictures of storm damage in Florida after the hurricane. She got off lucky compared to some nearby neighborhoods.

(Not my daughter’s home, thankfully)

In a dead heat for # 1 on my list would be a ticket to visit my mother. She’s still in the town where I grew up and since I admit to being an old fart, you can guess how old she is. Although we talk on a regular basis, it’s been too long since I’ve been back to visit her. She’s in good health, thank you, and I have no doubt she’s going to break her family’s record and live past 90. At least I hope so. Still, I need to get back there.

And now for the fantasy trip, # 3 on my list. Ireland. The home of my ancestors and generations of poets and writers. I’ve traveled extensively within the Unites States, but travel outside the country has been limited. Ireland has always topped my list of places I want to go.

I’ve been fascinated by the romantic descriptions of Ireland for years. From the old castles and their ancient lore to the mountains to the people themselves. The country calls to me.

Even back during “The Troubles” my desire to see Ireland didn’t fade. Sure, I plotted the “safe” places to go visit and worried if anyplace was truly safe, but decided I wouldn’t pass up a trip if I could make it happen. To this day, the opportunity hasn’t happened, but Ireland is still at the top of my fantasy list.

To find out where the other authors would like to visit, see the links below. And tell me where you’d want to go in the comments, if you want. 🙂

October 10 – If someone gave you a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
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When I first started writing Wolves’ Pawn, I knew I didn’t want my wolves to be bound by the traditional rules of werewolves. No changing only at with the full moon, I wanted my characters to be able to shift at will. But in order to break the rules, I needed first to understand what the rules were.


Which led me to research the lore of shifters from around the globe. And most particularly, the stories of shifters in Native American legends and beliefs. What I found fascinated me. There is a large variety of shifter tales and not just wolves. I mention several of them in the book.


One of these is the Navajo skinwalker. The skinwalker is a creature of great evil. Legend has it that they are tribal medicine men who, after achieving power, kill a member of their family. They gain the ability to change into the shape of any animal, but primarily favor coyote, fox, crow and wolf. 


Skinwalkers are described in some stories as being able to read human thoughts. They are also said to
be able to mimic the sound of any animal. In some of the stories they are part man part beast, other stories have them changing fully into animal form.

Traditionally, the Navajo are reluctant to talk about skinwalkers, If you’d like to check out some supposedly authentic modern-day stories, here’s a link. Skinwalker Stories. What follows is one of the antecedents which includes many of the standard elements of skinwalker tales. 


This didn’t happen to me but a very close friend of mine. I’ve heard a lot about coyotes and Skinwalkers, and had a weird experience or two with coyotes (creepiest was waking up to my sleeping bag being surrounded in paw prints without ever hearing them during the night) but never anything paranormal so to speak. Patrick’s story, however, kept me from going back to a favorite backcountry secret stash.
He was leaving the area one morning, had been camping there a couple days and said there was a coyote that always seemed to be close by, like in his peripheral vision but never overt. He loaded up his truck and started to drive down the wash out to the fire road. At the end of the wash, he could see the coyote following him. When he pulled onto the road, it was running next to him. Now he was freaked out, so he sped up. He said he was going 35 or so, and it was running along beside him. Definitely not possible. When he looked back, the coyote was running on two legs and was wearing what Patrick said looked like buckskin pants. An instant later, it was a person wearing a coyote fur keeping pace with his truck. When he looked again… It was gone.


We never went back to the grove after that.



Credit to Sean Reveron.

I ended up not using the skinwalker abilities in my book, although I do make reference to the legend. The Navajo aren’t the only tribe with shifter stories, and the shape that shifters take vary from tribe to tribe.

To find out what folktales the other authors are talking about, follow the links below.

Additional rescources

Sept. 12 – Folktales –
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This week on the Blog Hop, we’re talking about Labor Day. To me, it’s always marked the end of summer.

As a kid, school never started until after Labor Day. Although I liked school, it always seemed like summer wasn’t long enough. There were still hills to climb and bikes to ride and nights to spend sitting on the front porch listening to the whippoorwill calling down in the valley and watching the fireflies flash among the willow trees. I feel bad for today’s youth, who start school in the middle of August. It feels like they are getting cheated.

As an adult, I no longer have the free time to spend my summers in pursuit of wild huckleberries or trying to track down the ends of elusive summer rainbows. I have duties and responsibilities and a paycheck to earn, by gum. I must prove that I’m a productive member of society. When I manage to slip away to the mountains on a weekend, no one needs to know that I spent time watching the clouds form pictures while pretending to try to catch a fish.

In the mountains, Fall comes early. Much earlier than the official date of September 22nd. In fact, I’d have to say it has already arrived. There’s been snow in the mountains and we’ve had to turn on the heater several nights. We’re taking bets on when the first snow will fall where we will live. I’ve seen in snow as early as mid-September.

So it’s fair to say that Labor Day really does mark the end of summer. The leaves on the trees are already starting to show a change in color. It’s time to pack away the shorts and throw another blanket on the bed. The extra day off work will be used to cut the grass one more time and do housework that was neglected all summer long.

What does Labor Day mean to you? You can share your thoughts in the comments. And if you click on the links below, you can find out what other authors think.

Sept. 5 – Labor Day – What does it mean to you or how do you celebrate?
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If you’re here from the Sunset on Summer Romance Blog Hop, welcome!  Before I give you a scene from my book Wolves’ Pawn, let me present the book’s description.

Dot McKenzie is a lone wolf-shifter on the run, using everything available to her to stay one step ahead of her pursuers. When she is offered a chance for friendship and safety with the Fairwood pack, she accepts.

  Amazon (Kindle)    Barnes & Noble   iTunes  Kobo   Inktera for mobile

This week we get to highlight our books in the firm of excerpts. I thought it might be fun to get acquainted with Tasha, a minor character in Wolves’ Pawn, who ended up being the hero of her own story in Wolves’ Knight. But first, for those of you who managed to stumble upon my blog and haven’t read Wolves’ Pawn yet, here’s the blurb:

Outside
the conference room, a number of men and women with guns stood at
alert in the hallways. Dot shivered at the sight, and Gavin placed a
comforting hand on the small of her back. One of the women, a tall
blonde with two guns strapped across her back, a pistol stuck in the
waistband of her pants, and a nasty looking knife strapped to her
thigh, jumped out of the chair she’d been sitting in, and
approached them.

Tasha got written out of the story about halfway through it. Spoiler alert! No, she didn’t die. But I guess she wasn’t real happy with that, because about a year after Wolves’ Pawn was released, she started bugging me. She wanted me to tell her story. I tried putting her off for awhile, but she wasn’t listening. I finally gave in and Wolves’ Knight was the result.

First, here’s the description of the book:

Tasha Roeper knows what it means to protect your own. So when her friend, Dot Lapahie, CEO of Lapahie Enterprises, suspects that the Free Wolves are under attack, Tasha immediately signs on to lead the investigation and guard Dot.


But Tasha’s not convinced it’s the Free Wolves that are the target. She fears that her own pack—the Fairwood Pack—are the actual quarry and Dot is only a decoy.


The deeper Tasha digs, the more puzzles she uncovers.


Torn between tradition and a changing world, will Tasha risk everything to save a friend—including her own life—when old enemies arise?

In this excerpt, Tasha, after being gone for over a year, is meeting with the Fairwood’s pack arms-master, Elder Fenner.

 “We weren’t sure you’d
want to come back. The reports we got were that you fit in well with
the pack in Maine. I half-expected you to find your mate.”

So Tasha is responsible for turning Wolves. Pawn, which was intended as a stand-alone book, into a series. Yes, there will be more books in the Free Wolves’ Saga.  If you haven’t bought the books yet, the links follow.

I can’t wait to see what all the other bloggers posted. You can find out by following the links below. And feel free to leave a comment!

Wolves’ Pawn

Amazon

smarturl.it/tyseu6  (Amazon world-wide)

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wolves-pawn-pj-maclayne/1119391168

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id873248397

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/wolves-pawn

Here are the links for Wolves’ Knight, Tasha’s Tale

http://www.amazon.com/Wolves-Knight-Free-Book-ebook/dp/B0199BC6YI/

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/wolves-knight

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wolves-knight-pj-maclayne/1123127673

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1066865102

https://www.createspace.com/5920665

August 29 – Excerpts from Your Novel. This is probably the easiest. It has the added advantage of allowing us, your potential readers, to “sample the brew.” Just write a paragraph to set up the excerpt. Oh, and be sure to link to your book, so we can buy it.

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When I saw the topic for this week’s blog hop— a visual post—I thought it would be easy. Pictures! I have them! Lots of them! But it turned out not to be as easy as I thought. First, I wanted to make sure I didn’t post things I’ve previously shared on here. Second, how the heck can I cut down all the beauty I’ve seen to one post? How many pictures can I get away with showing everyone without totally overwhelming the site? And last but not least, mountains or flowers? I never did make a decision on the last one, so I give you both. Oh, and I threw a few trees in there just because I could.

By the way, all these pictures were taken either by my husband or by me. So welcome to the Rocky Mountains (and a bonus pic!)

I’m looking forward to seeing what  everyone else has posted. I’m planning on following the links below, and I hope you are too. And if you want to leave me  a comment, please fell free to do do!

August 22 – Image/Graphics/Visual Post – Include a collection of images around a central topic or idea.
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This week we’re supposed to  gather notable quotes from influential people in hopes of inspiring our readers. But if you’ve followed my blog, you might realize that I don’t always do things in the most conventional fashion. With that warning, I give you a list of things they NEVER said.

• “Just the facts, ma’am.“
  • This, the best known quote from the Jack Webb series Dragnet, was never said by Sgt. Friday in any of the Dragnet radio or television series. The quote was, however, adopted in the 1987 Dragnet pseudo-parody film starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks in which Aykroyd played Sgt. Joe Friday.
  • Correct versions:

“All we want are the facts, ma’am.”“All we know are the facts, ma’am.”
Source: Urban Legends via Wikipedia
Elementary my dear Watson
Meaning: 
The supposed explanation that Sherlock Holmes gave to his assistant, Dr. Watson,

when explaining deductions he had made.


Origin:
In fact the line doesn’t appear in the Conan Doyle books, only later in Sherlock Holmes’ films.
He does come rather close at a few of points. Holmes says “Elementary” in ‘The Crooked Man’, and “It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you” in ‘The Cardboard Box’. He also says “Exactly, my dear Watson, in three different stories.



The phrase was first used by P. G. Wodehouse, in Psmith Journalist, 1915.
Source: The phrase Finder

Abraham Lincoln is frequently misquoted:
“There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. there is nothing good in war, except its ending.”


In 2014, model Bar Refaeli posted this quote on her Instagram, attributing it to Lincoln.


Unfortunately, she’s more than a century off. In reality, it’s a “Star Trek” quote, according to the Times of Israel.



In a season three episode of the show, Spock, Kirk and Lincoln all end up in a battle with villains from history and, although the Lincoln character does utter those words, the real Lincoln did not. #oops
Source: New York Daily News
“Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss


It certainly feels Seussian, doesn’t it? All topsy-turvy and self-affirming. But he never wrote it. It was something an extremely successful (remarkably non-childlike and whimsical) businessman and presidential adviser, Bernard Baruch, said to a newspaper columnist who asked him how he handled the seating of all the rich bigwigs at his dinner parties. “I never bother about that. Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter.” However, Baruch was probably quoting an already well known phrase from the 1930s coined by that great philosopher Anonymous. The first part of the quote, “Be who you are…” just attached itself over the years.
Source: Mental Floss
Here’s another one, just for fun.

Have you ever been misquoted? Join the greats! 
Let’s find out what the rest of the gang put together for us. Just follow the links below. And please leave a comment, if you feel so inclined. But don’t quote me on that—or do, as the case may be! 

August 15 – Quote Post – Pull together multiple quotes from influential people (other writers, publishers, industry experts).
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This week we’re doing a statistics post, so I decided to revisit an old post pf mine. 



I’ve not had much luck with paid advertising, and as a result. I’m always shy about doing it. My last book launch, I hired a company to arrange a blog tour for me. They warned me up front they wouldn’t guarantee sales, I should look at it as a way to get my name out there. It was good they made the statement, because I didn’t see a jump in sales on any day I was featured on a blog stop.

But I’ve been hearing good things about RobinReads in various groups I’m a part of, and decided to give it a try. The cost was withing my budget, and I wanted to see if it would increase sales.

First off, it was incredibly easy to sign up. Their criteria for accepting a book is posted and easy to understand. Here’s what the sign-up page says is their criteria for a listing:

So that was the old post. Now for some updated information. RobinReads has upped their prices, and I’d have to sell a lot more books to break even. The sales of the collection Stories of Sun, Sand and Sea jumped when we advertised with RobinReads, putting us into the top 100 in Amazon sales in several categories, although not in the overall Amazon standings. I believe this is the right image of that day:

So would I still advertise with RobinReads? The answer is a big yes, even though I didn’t see the hoped-for bleed over into sales of my other books. Maybe next time!


To find out what other authors are sharing this week, check out the links below.

August 8 – Survey Post/Statistics Post – Collect some data or do a bit of research and share the results. Highlight key takeaways, important findings, or ways to implement the new information.
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Based on the research I do, I bet I’m on a government watch list somewhere.

But, I suspect many writers of mysteries are. We write about things that are against the law and—hopefully—make them believable even if they only happened in our imaginations.

That means we have to learn a lot about topics that normally are untouchable in polite society. What’s the best way to dispose of a body? Can you tell what caliper a bullet was by looking at the exit wound? What shape will a body be in if found two years after death in the desert?

Okay, I haven’t used any of those in one of my books—yet.  I have, however, learned a lot about guns in general.

My heroines are not shrinking violets. In fact, they kick ass when its needed. Luckily, I have a husband who was an armorer in the military so he’s my first source of information. If needed, I can turn to the several guys at work who are hunters and are willing to talk about ammo and shooting in general. There’s also a email group that I am a member of where the participants discuss anything and everything crime related. If all else fails, I resort to a writer’s best research friend—Google.

Although I’m still no expert, I know a lot more about guns than I used to. For example, a revolver and a pistol are not the same thing. Sure, they are both handguns, but the way ammunition is fed to the chamber is different. (Kind of like a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square!)  Oh, and did you know cops always have a bullet in the chamber? And while an AK-15 is not a real gun, the AK-47 is.

As a writer, there are times when I need to take “liberty” with the facts to make a story work. and while some people may object to that, as long as it’s done deliberately and with great care, I feel there’s nothing wrong with it.

The problem with doing research on the internet is that’s it easy to get lost. By that, I mean to wander from one interesting fact to another because it might be useful to your current writing. For example,I went looking for the handgun manufactures that have the best reputations. Glocks made the top ten, but barely. The Sig Sauer, which I’d never really known about, was #1. So that’s what I gave my heroine in Wolves’ Knight for her “personal” carry. (Plus a retired police officer recommended it.)

So far I haven’t explored the topic of really big guns. Cannons. I could easily lose an hour or two in that topic. Ones that are so big they need their own railroad track to move on.  Guns that can hit targets 70 miles away. I don’t know how I’d work one of those into my books, so I’ll close that window on my computer and come back to all of you.

Now let’s do a little research and find out what the other writers in this hop have to say. You can find them by following the links below. And, as always, feel free to leave me a comment! Who knows, you may lead me to an interesting topic to waste my time on the internet—I mean research!

Oh, and to whomever the poor soul is from the unnamed government agency that watches over me, thanks for reading!

August 1, 2016
Research Post. Post your interested, unusual or eye opening research. Or, in the alternative, you can post about how you research.
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