“I really think the
vicar has wigged out.” Isca exhaled lungs full of cigarette smoke. Her smoke
rings drifted away.
Ever since my friend, Isca Haines, began a
part-time job on a sex phone line, I’d been hearing about her clients and their
needs. Some were funny, most were routine but her stories were always
entertaining.
“Okay, now, I have two
problems with that statement. First, does anyone say, ‘wigged out’ anymore and
second, what’s with the word, vicar? It’s an English term.”
“Entirely irrelevant,
both of them.”
“Or irreverent—for a
vicar. Get it?”
Murder on the Line,
chapter 1, page 1
I had been writing a gothic novel but my
writer’s was pitching a fit about it. One night, when I was working swing shift
in a hamburger booth under the grandstand at the Washington state Fair after my
full-time, day job at Merrill Lynch, hoping to earn enough to pay for a class
at UW since I’d gone back to college, Billy Ray Cyrus was singing “Achy Breaky
Heart”, business was nil, and I came up with this opener for a murder mystery. My
group liked it but I did find out there is a pro/con debate about whether books
should begin with dialogue. The publisher, Books We Love (BWL) changed the
original title (Dial 9 Uh! Oh!) because they didn’t want an exclamation mark in
the title but didn’t seem to care about the “dialogue” issue, and the book came
out.
Fog
rolled down from Canada and pressed against the smoke a Northern Pacific engine
emitted, obliterating the view outside the train’s windows of old-growth timber
on one side of the tracks and Commencement Bay on the other.
A Feather for a Fan,
chapter 1, page 1
I was editing (a process I hate) the
sequel to Murder on the Line and
writing A Feather for a Fan at the
same time. I’d spent the better part of a year reading Tacoma, WA newspapers
from the 1870s because that when the book takes place, and I was eager to
capture what the protagonist experienced her first day on Puget Sound. Then
someone quoted to me Elmore Leonard’s first rule of writing: Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create
atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to
go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people.” Well,
dang. I follow his rules to never use a dialogue attribution other than “said”,
and to avoid prologues, which I never read, anyway, but I couldn’t let my
opening sentence go. Fortunately, GALE Cengage Learning, who published it, had
no weather issues, but, honestly . . .
The day I
saw Alice Thorndyke’s body pulled from Hood Canal was the day I gave up eating
crab. I knew what they ate.
Dungeness and Red Rock crab soft-shell season had just started, and I shuddered
at the thought of a chilled crab cocktail.
Murder, When One Isn’t Enough, chapter 1, page 1
The sequel to Murder on the Line
came out at the first of this year. So far, no complaints about crabs’ diets,
but I did have to change the title from Tahuya
Daze. Tahuya is a small community on Hood Canal where the book mostly takes
place.
I can’t imagine what I would do if I didn’t write—certainly not be a
better housekeeper. Happily, I discovered nothing is dusty if I remove my
glasses and if items always remain in their same spot. Move them and a dustless
ring shows. Murder mysteries are hard for me; I thought about one set in a
brokerage house (I worked at Merrill Lynch for 42 years, six months and
half-an-hour: guess what I did during the last half-an-hour), however there are
too many possible suspects among the angry clients, jealous brokers, assorted
people having affairs, jealous brokers’ wives, gay and straight relations, etc.
that the idea overwhelms me even though I have a great title: Fill or Kill. The term means different
things depending on the exchange the order goes to. So right now I’m editing ( :( )
Feather for a Fan’s sequel and
planning a fiction book about prostitutes. I love to hear from readers and
Facebook is probably best.
Karla Stover on facebook
A Feather for a Fan: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Walmart
Murder on the Line:
paperbank and Kindle Amazon
When One isn’t Enough: Kindle Amazon
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