So Very Happy to Have Earl Staggs on the Blog Today!

Derringer Award winning author Earl Staggs has seen many of his short stories published in magazines and anthologies. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine and as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. His novel MEMORY OF A MURDER earned thirteen Five Star reviews online at Amazon and B&N. His column “Write Tight” appears in the online magazine Apollo’s Lyre. He is also a contributing blog member of Murderous Musings and Make Mine Mystery. He hosts workshops for the Muse Online Writers Conference and the Catholic Writers Conference Online and is a frequent speaker at conferences and writers groups.  Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net  Website:  http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com

Photo by CAROLE RYAN

 Here’s How I Roll
by Earl Staggs

When School Bus 117 rolls off the lot in Southlake, Texas, the driver is concentrating on picking up his students and getting them to school safely and on time. He may also be thinking about the next story he will write. I know because I’m that driver.

A few years ago, I retired from full time employment in sales and began writing. I wrote some short stories and even started a novel. After a while, I discovered I didn’t like retirement. If you don’t have to get up in the morning, go somewhere and do something, you can grow old. I was not ready to grow old. There was too much I still wanted to do. The solution? A part time job.

Finding the right part time job wasn’t easy. I wasn’t ready to put on a Walmart vest, stand by the entrance and say, “Welcome to Walmart. Want a cart?”

After a few weeks of looking, I discovered the local school district had openings for school bus drivers. I’d never thought about driving a bus, but decided to check it out.

The hours, I learned, were perfect for a writer. Drivers work two hours in the morning getting the kids to school and another two hours in the afternoon taking them home. In between, I’d have  about six hours of time free for my writing. Sounded good, so I signed on.

After four weeks of studying for the Commercial Driver’s License test and actual training on a real bus, I was ready. Was I nervous the first few times I got behind the wheel? Oh, yeah. Those babies are huge. Plus, there’s that tail swing thing.

Tail swing comes into play because the rear wheels of a bus are some ten feet in front of the rear bumper. When you turn, the tail end makes a wide swing, easily taking out anything in its path. In my first year of driving, I destroyed a mailbox and clipped the side view mirror off a parked car. Not just any car, mind you. A brand new Cadillac.

I started with a Special Needs route. Two people are necessary on a Special Needs bus. In addition to the driver, an aide rides in the back to keep an eye on the students. Some of our students were in wheelchairs, some were autistic and non-communicative, most had learning disabilities. But they were beautiful and I came to know and love them.

Not that there weren’t problems.  We always had to be on the lookout for seizures, which are not uncommon. We also had to be ready for outbursts of any kind. Some of the kids would suddenly scream for no apparent reason or decide to take off their clothes.

Tyler, a wheelchair boy of eleven, announced every once in a while he “had to go to the bathroom.” There are no bathrooms on a school bus. While I pulled the bus over, the aide undid his straps and belts. I then carried him off the bus and held him upright beside it while he “went to the bathroom.” I’m happy to say he was capable of unzipping and lowering his own pants so I didn’t have to do that.

I’ve since switched to another school district and no longer drive Special Needs. Now I have regular kids from kindergarten to eighth grade, and I love them all. Well, most of them. I still love the job, though, and still think it’s the best part time job in the world for a writer.

As a writer, I may never turn out the Great American Novel, and as a citizen, I may not find a cure for cancer or a solution to world peace. But as a school bus driver, I can make sure sixty-five kids get to school and back home safely every day. Maybe one of them will cure cancer or achieve world peace. To me, that means something.

And about that Great American Novel thing? I still have a shot at that.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, you’re invited to drop by my Blog/Website at: http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com and visit with my special guest for the day.  

While you're there, you can read Chapter One of MEMORY OF A MURDER, my first mystery novel, which earned thirteen Five Star reviews.

You can also read for free, “The Day I Almost Became a Great Writer,” which some say is the funniest story I’ve ever written.  There’s another one called “White Hats and Happy Trails,” about the day I spent with Roy Rogers. 

Also while you’re there, don't forget to sign up for the drawing on December 9. The first name drawn from those who leave a comment will receive a print copy of MEMORY OF A MURDER.  The second name drawn will have a choice of an ebook or print copy of SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS, a collection of sixteen of my best short stories.  

Let's All Welcome Anne Albert!

I'm really happy to have Anne Albert posting today, 'cause it's my birthday, and this Mystery Blog Tour was all Anne's idea!

Bio: Anne K. Albert’s award winning stories chill the spine, warm the heart and soothe the soul…all with a delightful touch of humor. A member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and married to her high school sweetheart for more than a quarter of a century, it's a given she'd write mystery and romantic suspense. When not writing she loves to travel, visit friends and family, and of course, read using ‘Threegio’ her cherished and much beloved Kindle 3G!

Thanks for featuring me today, Alice. It’s Day 5 of the second 2011 Mystery We Write Blog Tour and I’m so happy to be here. Let’s talk writing!

Alice - When and why did you begin writing? What inspired you to write your first book? 

Anne – In the late 1980s I worked as a display advertising sales representative for a small weekly newspaper. That was the very first time I came face-to-face with a computer. I fell in love with the sound of fingertips flying across the keyboard. It may sound silly, but that’s what inspired me to write my first book! I still love the sound. It’s music to my ears.

Alice - When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Anne – That happened less than a year ago, actually! I mentioned to my editor that I planned to enter Frank, Incense and Muriel in a contest for published authors. I gushed that doing so would make me feel like a real writer. “You are a writer,” she replied. Honestly, until she said it, I didn’t believe it! (I do now, especially as Frank, Incense and Muriel received the prestigious 2011 Holt Medallion Award of Merit. J)

Alice - What books have most influenced you the most? 

Anne – That would be the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Trixie Belden books. I read them all as a child, and always imagined myself as the sleuth. They began my love affair with the mystery genre. Later I stumbled across Agatha Christie, and she had me at ‘hello’!

Alice – Tell us about Frank, Incense and Muriel.

Anne - Frank, Incense and Muriel is the first book of my Muriel Reeves Mysteries. It’s the week before Christmas when the stress of the holidays is enough to frazzle anyone’s nerves. Tensions increase when a friend begs Muriel to team up with her sexy high school nemesis, now an even sexier private investigator to find a missing woman. Forced to deal with an embezzler, kidnapper, and femme fatale is bad enough, but add Muriel’s zany yet loveable family to the mix and their desire to win the coveted D-DAY (Death Defying Act of the Year) Award, and the situation can only get worse.

To read an excerpt, click here: http://amzn.to/pg67sx.

Readers can visit me online at my website http://www.AnneKAlbert.com/ and blogs http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com/ and http://muriel-reeves-mysteries.blogspot.com. I’m also on Facebook www.facebook.com/annekalbert and Twitter www.twitter.com/AnneKAlbert.

I’d like to encourage readers to enter my comment-to-win contest.

CONTEST DETAILS: Three names will be selected at random from comments on all 14 of Anne’s Mystery We Write Blog Tour guest appearances. Winners will receive an e-copy of FRANK, INCENSE AND MURIEL, book one of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries. Visit http://tinyurl.com/3hzpqvv for her schedule and contest details. Good luck!

* * *

Here's a link to buy Frank, Incense and Muriel: http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Incense-and-Muriel-ebook/dp/B004CLYDRO/

Let's Hear it for Beth Anderson!

Alice Duncan has asked that I write something on mysteries. For the new writer who’s not quite sure of the differences, or maybe doesn’t know that there are differences, I’m going to start off by explaining the difference between Cozies, Hard Boiled, and Police Procedurals. Other blogs by me in this blog tour will explain and go into detail on other kinds of mysteries. 

COZIES:

Cozies are for the reader who wants to curl up with a cup of tea and read a story that’s not terribly gory. Most of the early British mysteries were cozies; for instance, Agatha Christie. Actual violence is offstage and if you get a glimpse of the corpse, it’s a quick one as he’s photographed and then hauled away in a body bag.

Quite often in a cozy, the corpse is someone that several people want dead. I had a corpse like that in Night Sounds. You never saw him onstage but just about everyone he knew had a good reason for wanting him dead, and any one of several people could have made it happen. 

Cozies sell well because they’re generally fun and faster and easier to read. They may be scary, full of tension, and they should be, but they shouldn’t contain anything truly revolting because the market for these books is clearly defined. People who want to read cozies are not aren’t at all interested in gore and in fact can become quite put out if you include any.

Amateur Detective stories are usually cozies. Those usually center around a person who stumbles over corpses or illegal activities by accident time after time, to his/her vast surprise, and this protagonist might be well known in his/her neighborhood for solving crimes.

Think Murder She Wrote or Diagnosis Murder. Those were cozies. Just remember, the big thing with cozies is that there is no gore, no guts spilling over the countertop, just a nice, quiet, dead corpse, if you see one at all. You’ll often find cats or puppies in a cozy, because cozy readers really love pets, and you’d better not kill one in your book or you’ll lose your reader right then and there.

Some authors take offense to the term ‘cozy’, but it’s not offensive or demeaning in any way. It just defines a certain type of mystery.

HARDBOILED:

If the detective isn’t an amateur, he’s doing it for money, and if he’s doing it for money, he’s usually a hardboiled kind of guy (or woman). Hardboiled is the exact opposite of cozy. You won’t find any cats in this one. This type of guy keeps a piranha or a python, if he keeps anything. 

He’s the one who runs through the alley dodging bullets, jumping over trash cans, climbing up the outside escape stairway, beating up two guys who are trying to stop him before he jumps from the top of one tall building to another, breaks a wrist in the process but still continues on, chasing the crook till he catches him. He stops for a Jack Daniels after he’s done and the crook is arrested. Then, and only then, he might see a doctor about his wrist but probably not. 

These guys are larger than life characters, more freewheeling, tougher, some may say more loveable, but they’re probably not the kind of guy you want your daughter to bring home for Thanksgiving dinner. They cuss, they drink, they know their street people well, they like their women hot and their crooks cold.

In both of the above examples the detectives aren’t necessarily true to life, but that’s what makes them so interesting and so much fun to read. 

POLICE PROCEDURALS:

Usually the main character is a policeman or woman. Think Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series. The structure of police procedurals is a prescribed format, in which a cop with megatons of integrity outwits or outruns the perp. In these, you’ll use a lot of investigative terms and regulations, and in the process, teach the reader more than she ever thought she wanted to know about police work—if you do your research, and for this type of book, you must. You can’t fake this one.

There are loads of good research books on law enforcement procedures. Writer’s Digest has some good ones, The Howdunit Series. You can find them everywhere, or order them online.

If you’re doing a serial killer type of police procedural, John Douglas, among others, has written quite a few books on profiling and apprehending this type of criminal. I have a shelves full of different police procedure research books, from Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation, which cost me almost $90 for one book, all the way back to Time-Life books on Criminals Throughout History. Look around, you’ll find what you need. 

But do find them, because there’s nothing worse, to a die-hard mystery reader, than when the writer has mistaken a revolver for a pistol. Barbara D’Amato has gone on ride-alongs with Chicago cops while doing research. Some towns will let you do that. Mine will, and also, when I wrote Murder Online, I spent the afternoon at Area One Headquarters in Chicago, picking up a lot of authentic tidbits of information I’d never find anywhere else. Make sure you check every detail out if you do this type of book. Or any for that matter, but especially this type.

 

Author Bio

Beth Anderson is a multi-published, award winning author in several genres including romance and  mainstream crime fiction. A full time author, she now lives in Washington state. She has appeared on Chicago's WGN Morning Show, The ABC Evening News, as well as numerous other radio and cable television shows. She has guest lectured at Purdue University, Moraine Valley College, and many libraries and writers' conferences. She loves music, particularly jazz. Her website and blog are at http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com .

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Book blurb:

RAVEN TALKS BACK by Beth Anderson

Krill Press, ISBN 978-0-9821443-9-8

Beautiful Valdez, Alaska. Home of twenty-three-inch snow in the wintertime, but in the summertime, gorgeous mountain scenery where the early morning fog rolls down the mountainside, bringing soft whispers of the past with it. And this year...murder.

Valdez Chief of Police Jack O'Banion's take:

Voices.  Visions.  A sadistic killer running around loose, a hysterical woman, two teenagers on the verge of home-grown terrorism, everybody including the Alaska State Troopers and out-of-town media driving him berserk twenty-four hours a day. And now Raven wants him to arrest someone, anyone, because she thinks her husband is about to be charged with murder and she just can’t face it.

Raven Morressey's take:

She knows nothing she's saying to Jack makes any sense to him because it doesn't to her, either. After all, it's not every day a newly murdered, tattooed, headless and handless body is dug up in your back yard and then you start hearing voices of your dead ancestors and seeing things that never happened--at least yet. She just wants to keep her home together--at first. She's not trying to butt in and solve the murders in Valdez. But she just can't help it.

======================================================

Links:

Website:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com

Blog:  http://www.bethanderson-hotclue.com/blog

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/bethanderson43

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Beth-Anderson/e/B000APMRR4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Barnes & Noble:  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Raven-Talks-Back/Beth-Anderson/e/2940012515407/?itm=1&USRI=beth+anderson#MeetTheWriter

Also available at your favorite independent bookstores nationwide.

It's Ron Benrey's Turn on the Old Blog!

Why Are Mystery Novels Fun To Read?

By Ron Benrey

Oddly, many of the mystery lovers I know have difficulty answering this simple question. I suspect that’s because most of us don’t waste much effort pondering philosophical conundrums, when we could make better use of our time reading (and writing) mystery stories.

On the other hand, the related question––Why are readers entertained by mystery fiction?––his been around for a long time, because it does seems strange that perfectly normal (probably smarter than average) people would find enjoyment in reading about murder, death, and assorted kinds of unpleasant criminality.

I believe the simplest explanation is that mystery novels entertain without being challenging. They are “mind relaxing” reads that follow well-known genre conventions and, unlike so-called “literary novels,” don’t require much mental concentration to enjoy.

Good mystery fiction takes a reader on an “out-of-body” journey that, for a few hours, drives everyday worries out of his or her mind. The reader is transported to interesting places s/he is unlikely to actually visit, and introduced to fascinating people s/he will never meet in daily life. A well-written mystery novel will amplify this chief source of enjoyment with clever dialog, interesting settings, exotic locales, eccentric characters, and often painless opportunities to learn interesting things—about topics ranging from food, to bell ringing, from sailing to monasteries, from golf tees to high tea.

If these details are presented without too much clutter, the reader vicariously enjoys a ride on the Orient Express… lunch in a Greek taverna … family members far worse than his or her own… opportunities to work in unusual occupations… chances to have a Walter Mitty moments pursuing unusual crafts… the list goes on and on. And, of course, some mystery novels are laugh-out-loud funny.

Mystery novels also offer puzzles that are fun to contemplate, even if readers don’t actually solve them (I’m perfectly happy to read a mystery cover-to-cover without trying to figure out who-dun-it).

The most erudite reason I’ve come across for why people enjoy mystery novels is the most speculative: When the times are especially grim (filled with war, economic upheavals, social unrest, and natural disasters), readers find solace in entertaining novels that show good triumphing over evil, showcase traditional right/wrong values, and have tidy endings in which the world is put right again.

The storylines of most good mysteries put interesting people into difficult circumstances—and we get to watch them react. The protagonist’s world goes out of kilter and s/he spends the rest of the story restoring the order of his/her world. Given the tumult and uncertainty of our real lives, it’s satisfying (fun!) to harmony replace chaos and calm replace fear as the story progresses.

If all of this is true, this decade will be a boom time for mystery novels.

My wife, Janet, and I write cozy mysteries that strive to be entertaining. Cozies minimize in-your-face violence and maximize the other fun aspects of mystery fiction: particularly the clever puzzle, an interesting setting, unusual characters, and the clear triumph of good at the end.

One of our favorite “children” is “Dead as a Scone,” the first novel in our “Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries” series:

Murder is afoot is the sedate English town of Royal Tunbridge Wells—and the crime may be brewing in a tea pot!

Nigel Owen is having a rotten year. Downsized from a cushy management job at an insurance company in London, he is forced to accept a temporary post as managing director of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Alas, he regrets living in a small town in Kent, he prefers drinking coffee (with a vengeance), and he roundly dislikes Flick Adams, PhD, an American scientist recently named the museum’s curator.

But then, the wildly unexpected happens. Dame Elspeth Hawker, the museum’s chief benefactor, keels over a board meeting—the apparent victim of a fatal heart attack. With the Dame’s demise, the museum’s world-famous collection is up for grabs, her cats, dog, and parrot are living at with Flick and Nigel—and the two prima donnas find themselves facing professional ruin.

But Flick—who knows a thing or two about forensic science—is convinced that Dame Elspeth did not die a natural death. As Flick and Nigel follow the clues—including a cryptic Biblical citation—they discover that a crime perpetrated more than a century ago sowed the seeds for a contemporary murder.

Ron Benrey writes cozy mysteries with his wife Janet. Together, they have written nine novels in three series: “The Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries,” “The Pippa Hunnechurch Mysteries,” and “The Glory North Carolina Mysteries.”

Ron has been a writer forever—initially on magazines (his first real job was Electronics Editor at Popular Science Magazine), then in corporations (he wrote speeches for senior executives), and then as a novelist. Over the years, Ron has also authored ten non-fiction books, including the recently published “Know Your Rights — a Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers” (published by Sterling). Ron holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a juris doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law. He is a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

It's Pat Browning's Day on My Blog!

Pat's the person who tortured me until I agreed to join this blog tour, so I'm glad she's here!

THE DAY I ALMOST MET TOM BROKAW        

Pat Browning on a camel!

President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet Communist Party Chief, showed up in Vienna in 1979 to sign the SALT II treaty. Guess who else was in Vienna? The timing wasn’t planned, but there I was. 

Cover of Time magazine, Europe edition, 25 June 1979

 Vienna just happened to be a stop on my TWA Getaway Tour “The Dalmatian.” Our tour hotel was the Hilton, where the world’s movers and shakers were staying. I actually walked up to the pressroom on the mezzanine and looked over the handouts. There was no one about, but the room itself was intimidating. The vibes were heavy, man, heavy. I left without sampling the handouts.

Alas, my brush with the famous consisted of chatting with a woman who rode in the elevator with Tom Brokaw. It was like the old song “I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales.”

Vienna remains one of my favorite cities, although I’ve only been back once. I remember it as elegant, with a history going back to the Roman Empire when it was Rome’s eastern outpost. It has a long and tangled history, a subject for another time.

 Vienna photo from Wikipedia.com

For some reason, the people I met on my travels never made it into my fiction with one exception, a character in my WIP who is based loosely – very loosely – on a tour guide I sat with in every café in Vienna and Paris, with Antwerp thrown in for good measure. He shows up on Page 68 of METAPHOR FOR MURDER, when Penny learns that her live-in lover wants to start a dude ranch:

“Something else to mull over. Living happily ever after, with horses in the corral and Watt’s first wife and her tony friends clinking drinks around the fireplace in the parlor. Too bad I didn’t have an ex-husband to round out the friendly, fractured family.

“Puck. The name floated up from my sub-conscious like a dead body. Puck had been a close call, a flaky tour guide whose Viennese charm hadn’t traveled well, a souvenir my globe trotting parents picked up in Europe. They called him Puck because they couldn’t pronounce his real name and he had convinced them he desperately wanted to attend an American university.

“What he really wanted was to visit California. Toasted himself to a dark brown in the September sun. Turned morose when early November fog set in. His Christmas present from my parents was a one-way plane ticket home. God only knew where he was now. Probably playing his zither for tourists in the Wiernerwald. Poor Puck. Lucky me.”

All grist for the writer’s mill. Stay tuned …

***

Alice, thank you so much for hosting me today! I hope your readers enjoy reading my post as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Pat Browning

Thanks for joining me today, Pat. I loved your blog and your pictures! You've lived a much more exciting life than I.

Please Welcome John M. Daniel!

Why is Guy Mallon so short?

When The Poet’s Funeral, my first Guy Mallon mystery, was published in 2005, it got reviews kind enough to make a grown man weep. Best of all was a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which thrilled me because I’d written the book as a tribute to my colleagues in the publishing business.

The only negative review of The Poet’s Funeral that came to my attention was from the Contra Costa Times, whose main objection was that I called too much attention to the fact that my protagonist, Guy Mallon, who eventually became the series protagonist, was short. Real short. The reviewer was offended, and asked why size matters so much to me, the author of this book?

Well, yes, Guy is short. And it matters to him, mainly because it matters to other people. In fact he doesn’t think of himself as “short,” but rather as he counters, “I’m tall. Five feet tall.”

For an idea of what five feet tall looks like, think Mickey Rooney. Think Danny DeVito. You might notice that these two actors play cocky, hard-driven, competitive succeeders. You might say they overcompensate for their size.

Overcompensation plays a big role in a lot of mystery fiction. Consider Michael Connolly’s P.I. Dan Fortune: he has only one arm. Penny Warner’s Connor Westphal is deaf. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe is overweight. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is a recovering-relapsing alcoholic with bouts of depression brought on by post traumatic stress syndrome. And the list goes on: the crippled sleuth, the dyslexic, the Tourettes sufferer, the broken-hearted, the forgetful senior, the woman in an otherwise all-male precinct… They all face difficult odds in addition to the usual danger in their quest to find the truth and right what’s wrong.

So it is with Guy, the shrimp. He has to stand up tall to get in the face of bullies, thugs, and domineering bosses. The odds are stacked against him, which makes his survival and success as a sleuth something to cheer for.

The newest Guy Mallon mystery, Behind the Redwood Door, has just been published. Here’s the blurb from the back cover, to give you a hint of what its about:

Guy and Carol Mallon own a used bookstore on the north coast of California, a land of rocky shores and redwood forests, with a rich history of gold, lumber, Native Americans, and hardy entrepreneurs. They are content with their small-town life until Pete Thayer, their friend and the publisher of the local alternative newspaper, is stabbed to death behind their favorite tavern. Urged on by Pete’s girlfriend, River Webster, Guy begins to poke around, uncovering a past festering with power politics, a newspaper war, a multigenerational family feud, marijuana traffic—and murder. Guy’s investigation takes him from the town square to the harbor to the forests and into the mountains, where he must confront evil in the form of a bully nearly twice his size.

BIOGRAPICAL STATEMENT

 

John M. Daniel

Post Office Box 2790

McKinleyville, California 95519

jmd@danielpublishing.com

 

John M. Daniel was born in Minnesota, raised in Texas, and educated in Massachusetts and California.  He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University and a Writer in Residence at Wilbur Hot Springs. He has taught fiction writing at UCLA Extension and Santa Barbara Adult Education and was on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for nearly twenty years.  He now teaches creative writing for Humboldt State University Extended Education.

 

John’s stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His thirteen published books include four mysteries: Play Melancholy Baby, The Poet’s Funeral, Vanity Fire, and Behind the Redwood Door, recently published by Oak Tree Press.

 

John has worked as a bookseller, a free-lance writer, an editor, an entertainer, a model, an innkeeper, and a teacher.  He and his wife, Susan, live in Humboldt County, California, where they are small-press book publishers. Susan enjoys gardening, John enjoys writing, and they both enjoy living with their wondercat, Warren. 

 

john@johnmdaniel.com

www.johnmdaniel.com

blog.johnmdaniel.com

amazon.johnmdaniel.com

facebook.johnmdaniel.com

 

Behind the Redwood Door is sold by Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It can be ordered by your local independent bookseller, or bought directly from the publisher at http://www.oaktreebooks.com/. For an autographed copy, call John at 1-800-662-8351.

Our Mystery We Write Blog Tour Begins on Black Friday!

Our Mystery We Write blog tour begins tomorrow! Here’s the schedule for people visiting my blog (http://aliceduncanblog.blogspot.com/):

November 25:                                                  John M. Daniel

November 26:                                                  Pat Browning

November 27:                                                  Ron Benrey

November 28:                                                  Beth Anderson

November 29 (my birthday, by gum):             Anne K. Albert

November 30:                                                  Earl Staggs

December 1:                                                    Jinx Schwartz

December 2:                                                    Mike Orenduff

December 3:                                                    Marilyn Meredith

December 4:                                                    Jean Henry Mead

December 5:                                                    Jackie King

December 6:                                                    Timothy Hallinan

December 7:                                                    M. M. Gornell

December 8:                                                    Wendy Gager

And I’ll be appearing on the following people’s blogs on the following days:

November 25:                                                  Wendy Gager

November 26:                                                  M. M. Gornell

November 27:                                                  Timothy Hallinan

November 28:                                                  Jackie King

November 29 (my birthday, by gum):             Jean Henry Mead

November 30:                                                  Marilyn Meredith

December 1:                                                    Mike Orenduff

December 2:                                                    Jinx Schwartz

December 3:                                                    Earl Staggs

December 4:                                                    Anne K. Albert

December 5:                                                    Beth Anderson

December 6:                                                    Ron Benrey

December 7:                                                    Pat Browning

December 8:                                                    John M. Daniel

On December 9, we’re all going to do a recap (those of us who survive), and most of us will be picking winners of our various books! In fact, I’ll pick a couple of winners, and whoever they are can choose whatever book they want from my enormous, if unremunerative, backlist!

Don't Forget Our Mystery Blog Tour!

Friday, November 25 through Friday, December 9, 2011 will be an intensive, two-week blog blitz of author interviews, excerpts, fun facts, and giveaways by fifteen mystery authors.

Who's involved? (Click name to visit author’s blog.)

Beth Anderson

Ron Benrey

Pat Browning

John M. Daniel

Wendy Gager

M. M. Gornell

Timothy Hallinan

Jackie King

Jean Henry Mead

Marilyn Meredith

Mike Orenduff

Jinx Schwartz

Earl Staggs

Anne K. Albert

And Me!

Please be sure to visit every day and leave a comment. Many of us will be giving away books at the end of the blog tour, and most us who are giving away books will pick winners from those folks who comment on various blogs!

This should be fun. Stay tuned . . .