suspense fiction

Where Did This Come From?

/ Austin Mystery Writers / 3 Comments

Today’s post is by our friend and former Austin Mystery Writer Kaye George, author of several successful mystery series. When I asked Kaye to do a guest post, I told her to pick her own topic. She’s chosen to write about her newest project, a departure from the mystery.

***

Kathy Waller gave me free rein, so I can write whatever I want here, right? Okay, okay, I’ll stick to writing about writing.

My latest project is foremost in my mind. SOMEONE IS OUT THERE came out in April, but it’s still getting noticed, which makes me so happy. I’ve done several mystery series, cozies and traditional, but got it into my head one day that I could write a suspense novel. It does kinda make sense, since I love to read them.

I’m trying to remember where the first seed for this came from, but I don’t really know, now that it’s done. I do know what went into it. I wanted to use a disaster that occurred in Ohio when we lived there. We lived in Dayton for about six years and, one day when the sky looked ominous and my husband was on the golf course, a disaster struck Xenia, a small town nearby—a town we used to drive to for chopping down our Christmas trees on a farm nearby. A vicious tornado struck the town in 1974, killing and injuring many, and wiping out, obliterating at least half of that town. That year they had what they called the 1974 Super Outbreak, one of the worst tornado seasons in US history. I figured it would make a good backdrop to a tense story.

To be honest, I also fed in some of the stories the people in Wichita Falls told me about the similar disaster they had there in 1979. We lived outside that town in Holliday years after that, but the people who had gone through it had vivid memories of every second. We had our own experiences there, too. Our second night in Holliday, there was a straight line windstorm with 90 mph winds that took off many roofs and caved in the school gymnasium, which had just been evacuated, fortunately. The night we moved out, a tornado touched down a mile away.

Anyway, enough about storms. I also needed to work up some stormy characters. I used my knowledge of nursing (from my mother, who was a nurse, and from my nurses’ aide experience) to create my main character. Unbeknownst to me, I used subconscious knowledge to create her name, Darla Taylor. I had a good portion of the book written when I realized I have a Facebook friend named Darla Taylor! I had used her name! I was mortified, and messaged her about it. She was actually okay with that, so I kept going. And gave her a copy when the book was finished. She liked it and reviewed it! Whew!

Stalking seemed like a scary thing to build the plot on, so I did that, keeping the identity of the stalker hidden until the end. I threw in my son’s family dog, Henry, a big chocolate lab (and renamed him Moose), and gave Darla a hobby of archery, since I used to love doing that.

You can see that so much of the book came from my life, because, where else would it come from? Although I have never been stalked. And hope it never happens.

This site at Rowan Prose Publishing has links to the great trailer they made and places to get the book. https://www.rowanprosepublishing.com/kaye-george

And didn’t they do a great cover?

Thanks for having me here!

***

Kaye George is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer. She writes cozy and traditional mysteries, a prehistory series, and one suspense novel, which is her seventeenth book. Over fifty short stories have been published, mostly in anthologies and magazines. A horror story will come out in 2026. With family scattered all over the globe, she makes her home in Knoxville TN. You can find out more here: http://kayegeorge.com/

You Dreamt You Went Where? Again?

/ Austin Mystery Writers / 2 Comments

 

by Kathy Waller

***

Last night I dreamt I went to Mandereley again.

The first line of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. 

Perfectly poetic, iambic hexameter: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Says Sarah Perry in the Irish Times, “Every novelist since has ground their teeth in envy: here is all the enchantment of a child’s story, with an irresistible melancholy hung about it.”

The rest of the novel isn’t bad either.

But so much depends on that first line.

Can you identify the books that begin with the lines below? And the authors who composed them?

Show what you know in a comment. (Searching the Internet is acceptable.)

Some may be a snap. Others, not so much. But each comes from a book by a major mystery author.

All will be revealed in a later post. Or, as they used to say, stay tuned.

*

  1.  On November the twenty-first, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, Rhoda Gradwyn went to Harley Street to keep a first appointment with her plastic surgeon, and there in a consulting room designed, it appeared, to inspire confidence and allay apprehension, made the decision which would lead inexorably to her death.
  2. In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times.
  3. Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.
  4. When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.
  5. My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
  6. The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
  7. There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.
  8. It was as black in the closet as old blood.
  9. My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.
  10. It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria.
  11. I feel compelled to report that at the moment of death, my entire life did not pass before my eyes in a flash.
  12.  I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person.
  13. Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much a surprise all around.
  14. There are two disadvantages to being a minor royal.
  15. It was a mob, but not yet a full-fledged riot. Over a dozen retirees, dressed in housecoats and robes, had taken to the streets, demanding action at eight in the morning.
  16. There hadn’t been a god for many years.

***

Image of book cover via Wikipedia. Public domain.