KRL This Week Update 9/30/2023

Editorial Note: As it always does, the message today references the morning, but this did not arrive in my inbox until a couple of minutes ago and long after the noon hour had passed. 

Up on KRL this morning we have reviews and giveaways of 4 more fun mysteries, one is set at Halloween, and one has a supernatural twist--perfect for the Halloween season-"A Clue in the Crumbs": A Key West Food Critic Mystery by Lucy Burdette, "A Shimmer of Red": An Odessa Jones Mystery by Valerie Wilson Wesley, "Mischief Nights Are Murder" by Libby Klein, and "Murder at the Elms" by Alyssa Maxwell https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/end-of-september-mystery-catch-up/ 

We also have a review and giveaway of "Death 101: Extra Credit" by Kelly Brakenhoff: Author page along with an interesting interview with Kelly https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/death-101-extra-credit-by-kelly-brakenhoff/

 

And the latest of the new version of Mystery Coming Attractions from Shawn Stevens https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/mystery-coming-attractions-october-2023/

 

For those who prefer to listen to Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast directly on KRL, you can find the player here for the latest episode which features the prologue and first chapter of "Secret Identity" by Alex Segura, read by local actor Cady Mejias https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/mysteryrats-maze-podcast-featuring-secret-identity/

 

And we have a mystery short story with a big of spooky to it as we approach Halloween season--"The ESC Choice" by Chuck Brownman https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/spooky-mystery-short-story-the-esc-choice/

 

And another local ghost story from Sarah Peterson-Camacho, perfect for the beginning of Halloween season! https://kingsriverlife.com/09/30/the-haunted-palace-wayward-spirits-of-a-bad-luck-bordello/

 

Up during the week we posted another special midweek guest post, this one by mystery author J.M. Donellan https://kingsriverlife.com/09/27/threats-regrets-and-a-dante-themed-restaurant/

 

And another special midweek guest post, this one by mystery author Joe Cosentino where he interviews the voice actor for his new audiobook of "Drama Christmas" https://kingsriverlife.com/09/27/audiobook-of-drama-christmas-by-joe-cosentino/

 

Up on KRL News and Reviews this week we have a review and giveaway of "Darjeeling and A Deadly Disappearance" by Victoria Tait https://www.krlnews.com/2023/09/darjeeling-and-deadly-disappearance-by.html

 

And a review of a fun middle-grade mystery, "Drew Leclair Crushes the Case" by Katryn Bury, along with a giveaway of this book and the first book in the series! https://www.krlnews.com/2023/09/drew-leclair-crushes-case-by-katryn-bury.html

Happy reading,
Lorie

Mystery Fanfare: The Poison Book Project: Arsenic & Other Heavy Metals in 19th Century Bookbinding

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Scott's Take: The Isles of the Gods by Amie Kaufman

The Isles of the Gods by Amie Kaufman has four protagonists, but only two are included in the book jacket synopsis and for good reason. The first one is Sally, who intends to leave the ship she is being trained on to go find her father’s fleet. Her attempts to flee her current situation are stopped when a  prince, a powerful magician, hires the ship Sally’s training on to escort him to the Isle of the Gods so that he can make a sacrifice to their country’s god.

While he is doing that a pleasure cruise of his rich friends is on a route to another country under public banner of being a diplomatic mission to prevent a war between the prince’s country and a nearby country. While they are supposed to be doing diplomatic stuff they treat it all like a party boat. Of course, things do not go as planned. The short voyage that they were supposed to embark quickly becomes a fight to survive instead.

If you are familiar with the books of Amie Kaufman, you know what you are getting. As expected here one has, excellent world building, complicated characters, and the usual slow burn romance where one character has major misconceptions of another and hates them on sight. Likeable characters who would be main characters in other works die horribly here. The good guys suffer a lot and there is surprising amount of dark content for a young adult series.  The villains are interesting and have their own reasons for doing what they are doing.

The Isles of the Gods is a high seas fantasy novel. So, of course, ships, crews, and the weather, etc., play a huge role. There is strong LGBTQ representation if you care about that, but it is not overwhelming. The sexuality of a character is part of their character, but it is not their whole character. The sequel will come out next year and based on the ending here, that should be a better book than this good one as that ending sets up something incredibly interesting. At this time, the title of the sequel has not been announced.

 

 

My reading copy came from the Lakewood Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

 

Scott A. Tipple ©2023

Lesa's Book Critiques: KEVIN’S CORNER ANNEX – RACING THE LIGHT BY ROBERT CRAIS

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Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE BLACK WINGS BY MORAY DALTON

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In Reference To Murder: Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Death on Remand

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FFB Review: Fantasy in Death: Eve Dallas Mysteries by J.D. Robb

 

Burt Minnock is one of 4 partners in the business named U-Play. A small startup high tech computer company, they are working on cutting edge computer and gaming technologies. He loves the classic Star Wars movies and loves technology. He especially loves gaming. It is the year 2060 and he is wealthy and a three-level home. One level is a hologram room where he can run his own hologram program and try out video games. That includes his latest company project. It is also the locked room he will be found dead in hours later in Fantasy in Death by J. D. Robb.

As it happens, Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Detective Peabody get the case. Murder by way of hologram video game is a new one and sure to shock jaded New Yorkers once the news gets out in the media. As it also happens, Roarke knows Minnock and his partners. While he doesn’t own the company, but he gave them business advice, and liked Minnock a lot.

Like Dallas, he takes the murder personally for his own reasons, and helps her and her team work the case. In this instance, a game was used to kill, despite all the safeguards. That means that if it happened once, it could happen again.

Fantasy in Death is the 30th installment in the series and is a good one. All the usual caveats apply. One notes again that having wealth and success does not immune one in this series from dying the hard way.

 

My reading copy in eBook format came from the Dallas Public Library System through the Overdrive/Libby app.

 

Kevin R. Tipple © 2023

Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 92 Calls for Submissions in October 2023 - Paying Markets

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In Reference To Murder: Mystery Melange 9/28/2023

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Lesa's Book Critiques: MRS. CLAUS AND THE TROUBLE WITH TURKEYS BY LIZ IRELAND

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Patricia Abbott: Short Story Wednesday: "After Emily" from INTO LOVE AND OUT AGAIN, Elinor LIpman

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Short Story Wednesday.... And A Little News

Like last week, there is not a short story Wednesday review from me today. I have not read anything the last two weeks that would qualify. I also decided not to search for an old repeat of mine as I did not want to take the time. Like always, I will link to other short story reviews as I see them later today.

 

I did not want to take the time as I have been busy with some things here. Not only was that the Longmire review you saw yesterday, but I have also been writing a new short story.

 

I recently was gifted a membership to the Sisters in Crime North Dallas Chapter and the National group because a certain wonderful person in the leadership here decided she really wanted me to write something and submit it for the next Dallas anthology. I thought she was wasting her money and tried very hard to talk her out of it.

 

I have not written anything new since February of 2022 and that tale wound up in the Back Road Bobby and Friends anthology. What you have seen come out in Crimeucopia: Strictly Off The Record and will again in January in another Crimeucopia anthology, have been reprints. I just have not been writing and thought I was pretty much done.

 

Grief remains a major presence in my life and I struggle almost daily to deal with it. December 1^st will mark six years since Sandi passed and I am still having a very hard time with it. Whatever muse I had, tat creative side of things, seemingly died with her as there just has not been any inspiration to do anything.

 

I tried to explain all this to my benefactor who insisted that she wanted me to have the chance to do something for it and understood that money is a serious issue for me. Money is a huge issue and I have been cancelling things and scaling back as best as I can as what little I have left from my inheritance after my Mom passed is like sand passing through the hourglass. Things are kind of grim.

 

Anyway, after several back-and-forth emails and Scott pushing me to say yes, I finally agreed, she did, and I became a very grateful member.

 

I still had no idea at all. I used to easily get ideas, but after Sandi passed, once I came out of the fog about six months later, and I started functioning a bit again and actually taking a daily shower and all the rest of it, the ideas were gone. I had nothing.

 

Coming up with something for Backroad Bobby and Friends was brutal and it did not happen until very last minute. That time I suddenly had an image in my head one morning and built a story around that image.

 

This time has been a little better and it has helped that they just moved the deadline back to October 18^th.

 

About a week and half ago, I got up just before dawn to use the bathroom as one must once one gets to that certain age, and then went back to bed. I did not get back to sleep right away and was in that weird state where you are not asleep, but you are not awake. My mind tends to drift when I am like that and I started thinking about the anthology and the fact that I had zero ideas and the clock was ticking. As I laid there, trying to not think so I could go back to sleep, a gem of something drifted through.

 

A title.

 

That was it. Just a title for the story. A three word title.

 

It would not go away.

 

Instead of going back to sleep, the thing flickered to life like an ember in a cold fireplace. I lay there and mentally poked at it and gradually realized there was something to it. I think I dozed off a couple of times and yet kept walking back up and thinking about it.

 

Eventually, after about an hour, I gave up and got out of bed. Once I was dressed and had my morning pills in me, I went out on the back wooden deck outside my house with a pen and pad of paper. I do everything longhand whether it be reviews or my own fiction. Then it gets typed. Scott types my reviews, but for the fiction I do it as I edit and tweak as I go once the longhand first draft is written.

 

Things have fallen cooled off enough here that one can sit out there in the morning before the sun really gets going. That morning I wrote for about an hour and a half before Scott joined me out there. Over the next several days, I sat out there each morning and wrote a bit in the quiet of the morning. The story just unspooled every day. I would make a note or three about what was going to happen at the end of each writing session. The next day I would glance at the notes, though I usually did not need the reminder, and got to work.

 

It just rolled along as the entire thing came alive in my head with very little thinking effort.

 

It took about a week and then the rough draft was finished. That was last Friday.

 

I started typing yesterday afternoon and got a little over 1700 words down (about four pages of my horrible handwriting) before the body screamed enough and my hands started acting up too much to keep going. I hunt and peck so I am slow as it is. Even slower when I tweak things as I go. But, the words are getting down on the page and that is what matters.

 

So, in a few days, I just might have the second draft done.

 

I have no idea what this means for my ability to write going forward. Right now, I am just focused on getting this one done and off before deadline.  

 

And now you know why I am not reading as much as normal. I am writing.

 

 

The First Two Pages: “The Forlorn Penguin” by Daniel Stashower

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SleuthSayers: Be Careful What You Wish For

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Markets and Jobs for Writers 9/25

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Review: The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson

The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson finds Sheriff Longmire thinking about the past and a future beyond being the good Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. The next election is coming in a few months and Longmire might be done as Sheriff. Between the politics, the strain and stress of running for office yet again, and recent events, he could be working his way around to calling it quits.

He’s out at the family cabin in the Bighorn National Forest as the book begins and Cady, his daughter, inadvertently stirs up the past by cleaning the place. She came across an old picture of her great grandfather, Lloyd Longmire. Cady and his granddaughter are out at his place cleaning and keeping an eye on him as he recovers from recent events. She has questions about her great grandfather and Walt would just as soon not talk about him.

He might have been family in name, but he was a man that Walt had a rocky relationship with despite, or maybe because, of the family tie. He was a hard man with strong expectations and constantly passed judgement of others. That included his grandson, of whom he apparently did not think much of at all. The picture shows Lloyd Longmire and a group of others outside the Bank of Durant many years ago. That picture has started a line of questioning that Walt Longmire could do without as he lies in a hammock holding a book and his sleeping granddaughter.

Then Undersheriff Victoria Moretti shows up and drags him with her to go looking for a missing woman. The woman from Minnesota, who was following the navigation map on her phone and thus followed bad directions, got her car stuck on a relatively nearby Forest Service Road. She walked a bit, finally got cell service, called for help, and then instead of staying put and waiting for that help, left the area. Now she is missing and Undersheriff Moretti wants Longmire to come do a ride along with her to go check out a possible route the missing woman might have taken.

Recent events in Montana have a taken a toll and though he is physically healed, mentally and spiritually he isn’t, and he really doesn’t want to do it. But, with Cady pushing him as well, he goes with Moretti. and it isn’t long before the problem of the missing woman lost in the mountains.

Longmire finds Trisha Knox.

He also finds a rifle, a specially customized rifle, that could be tied into a killing from long ago.

The killing of Bill Sutherland, known as “Big Bill,” happened back in 1948 and was declared a hunting accident. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. But, Lloyd Longmire as well as Walt’s dad were involved. Finding the gun brings ghosts and more to life in a complicated tale of oil money, mercenaries, and politics in The Longmire Defense.

Much is going on in the read that spends most of the time looking at events in the past with a somewhat morose Walt Longmire more contemplative than usual. In the here and now, Walt is facing the possibility of big change in a couple of areas as well so that means he has a lot on his mind. Introspection is good and all that, but it does get to be a bit much here at times as it grinds the read to a near halt. This reader also gets the impression that the series might be ending fairly soon. One hopes not.

Despite everything, The Longmire Defense is a good read. The story keeps the reader engaged, even when it moves forward at a glacial pace, and we learn more about the Longmire family and their legacy. All in all, a good read.

 

My reading copy came in eBook form from the Dallas Public Library System by way of the Libby/OverDrive App.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023

 

George Cramer: FRANK ZAFIRO – The Pain and Joy of Writing A Long-Running Series

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: For the Love of Pawpaws: A Mini Manual for the Growing and Caring for PawPaws – From Seed to Table by Michael Judd

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In Reference To Murder: Media Murder for Monday 9/25/2023

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Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 32 Outstanding Writing Conferences and Workshops in October 2023

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