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Hello Dear Readers
I’ve been a writer for more than forty years. I’ve worked as a freelance journalist, a staff reporter, a copy editor, worked many times as a media coordinator and have produced a handful of promotional publications. I’ve also published two dozen fiction books under several pseudonyms. Nowadays, I’m turning my attention to writing mystery/intrigue novels, you know, murder mysteries, kidnappings, missing persons and characters who find themselves in dangerous situations.
I happen to believe that things in the US and the world are getting more difficult each year. And now we even have climate change issues to deal with —storm after storm ripping apart our country. Something we need now, more than ever, are good stories. Stories that we can lose ourselves in for just a while. Two or three hundred pages in which we can have adventures, dangerous or otherwise, that end on a positive note. These stories have resolution, good outcomes that our characters can control. The reader, by proxy, also gains this control. Such a satisfying feeling when everything around us seems so far out of our control.
My latest novel, currently with a publisher, is a fun romantic intrigue. To start off, there’s been an unusual murder at the local high school in Calypso Shores, a small coastal town in southern Texas.
Sidenote: I actually lived in South Padre Island, Texas for about five years. I can’t say enough good things about living on the Gulf. The people of the island were so colorful, so laid back, and when I was there, it was still underdeveloped and underpopulated. It’s very different now, with high-rise hotels and businesses stretching all the way north into what used to be sand dunes.
Okay, back to the book. I created the fictional coastal village loosely based on the island. My main character is Betsy, who owns and operates Tea Haven, a busy tearoom in the tourist mecca of Calypso Shores. The town is infused with a cast of colorful characters who live and work there but Betsy’s absolute best friend is a Quaker parrot named Ringo, who is her constant companion and also her dream interpreter when she can’t remember the important insights her prescient dreams reveal.
See, Betsy has some inherited psychic abilities. She, when younger, began having visions but they were buried in dreams.
But things are changing for Betsy. First of all, handsome deputy Jameson arrives in town and he affects her in ways she doesn’t expect. Secondly, on Jameson’s first day on the job, the Calypso Shores Police Force is faced with the horrific murder of the seventeen-year-old basketball star that I mentioned earlier. Betsy’s cousin, Mike, also a deputy on the force, has been receiving crime tips from Betsy’s psychic dreams for many years. On the down low, of course, because she doesn’t want to seem too weird. Now those dreams have invaded her waking moments and, at present, they mostly concern the vicious murder of the high school student.
As Jameson and Mike start investigating the murder, without clear clues they face daily frustration, but Betsy’s enigmatic visions keep the case moving forward
I really enjoyed crafting this novel. I love losing myself in other worlds when I am writing. I also love humor and just think how much fun a noisy, demanding parrot can be. He certainly became a major character this novel and fills a very important part of the plot. So, having finished the book and sent it to the editors, I’m enjoying catching up on some household organization that I sorely neglected when immersed in this novel.
And as I clean house, I am already plotting my next romantic intrigue. It centers around a kidnapping and a rescue. Stay tuned to Callie’s Comments and I’ll let you know how it’s coming along.
Later!
