You can learn more about the Carters and their books here: RC & JP Carter Bio and books
Joe Congel Fiction Stories
Monday, April 15, 2024
Don't Miss RC & JP Carter's Magnolia Bluff Debut!
You can learn more about the Carters and their books here: RC & JP Carter Bio and books
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Best & Worst Advice
I was listening to a Sisters in Crime podcast the other day and it got me thinking about the best and the worst advice I'd ever received as a writer. What struck me at the time was the answer for the worst advice given to the featured guest writer. The interview was with Katherine Hall Page, and she said that it wasn't exactly advice that was given to her, but more like a catch-all phrase that she felt was terrible advice:
Write what you know.
It may be good advice in general, but her thought is that it's much more interesting to write what you don't know. I agree. As a writer of mysteries, I've never committed a murder, yet I write about them in all my books. I certainly didn't know how to do that before writing about it. And even now, I wouldn't be good at it in real life because it's something I really don't know about. I've also never been involved in a kidnapping, but I wrote about a judge being kidnapped in one of the short stories included in my book, The Razzman Chronicles.
Of course, that doesn't mean that including scenes from cities I've lived in or places I'm familiar with is a bad idea. Using those places in my stories enhance the enjoyment for myself and the reader because it's what I know. So, in some cases writing what you know, does actually work for me as a mystery writer.
As for good advice I've received, here are a few of my favorites that I've actually taken:
Join a writing community.
This can be in the form of a local critique group with some of your peers, an organization be it local or national, or one of several social media outlets.
I am somewhat active on a couple of the social media sites - X(Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the four where I spend most of my social media time. I've met some incredibly talented writers on these sites who also just happen to be wonderful people. I'm a member of the Charlotte Writers Club where I live, and I recently joined the national Sisters in Crime organization as well as the local chapter, Queen City Suspects (yes, men are welcome to join). I also listen to and occasionally interact with writing/writers/readers podcasts. My two favorites are Meet the Author Podcast, hosted by Rob and Joan Carter and The Charlotte Readers Podcast, hosted by Landis Wade, Sarah Archer, and Hannah Larrew. I've been a guest on Rob and Joan's show a few times and I've had a couple of blogposts posted on The Charlotte Readers Podcast website as well as being asked by the hosts to record them for playback on their show.
Do the research.
This is an important piece of advice. My mystery series takes place in Charlotte, NC and just because I live here doesn't mean I'm familiar with everything in the city and surrounding areas. For example, in my novel, Dirty Air, I had to spend hours researching the world of NASCAR and illegal street racing. Did I use everything I learned in the book? Of course not, but it gave me a sense of security and confidence that I could write the story without worrying about whether I was authentically portraying the characters and scenes. Another example was a short story I wrote where several of the scenes take place in Jamaica. I've never been to Jamaica, so research was a crucial part of making sure the story rang true for those scenes.
Carve out a writing schedule and stick to it.
It took me a while to get this one to work for me and I kind of combined it with another piece of advice which is to grow your network to help expand your marketing. Admittedly, since I am now semi-retired this advice has been much easier to make work to my advantage. I work a couple days a week and then have seven or eight days off in a row. The days I'm working my part time job are full eight-hour days and unless I'm against a writing deadline, I don't write on those days. The days off are where my writing schedule is setup. On those days I primarily spend time working on my WIP, and advertising and marketing my work. That includes setting up ads on social media, visiting local bookstores, and networking to get my name and books out there through podcasts, book clubs, the libraries, and anything else that may pop up depending on the month and time of year. I get up early and write a full day on most days and reserve at least two of the days for the advertising and marketing stuff.
I haven't had any really bad advice. But one piece that's not necessarily bad advice that's been mentioned to me that I haven't taken has to do with my method of writing. The advice was to just get the words on the page and go back later to edit and rewrite. The idea behind that is to not break the flow of writing so you can get that first draft finished. A sense of accomplishment if you will. I admit I've completely ignored that piece of advice. I write around two-thousand words a day - more if I'm really on a roll. The next day, I go back and edit and rewrite what I wrote the day before. I've been told I'm wrong for doing it this way... but I've also been told that there's no one way to write. I choose to go with the latter.
If there's one thing I've learned through all of this, it's that you need to listen to all the advice. And once you've listened and digested all the advice, do what works best for you. And remember to never stop listening when other writers talk about what advice they've received and what works for them, because you just might learn something new that will work for you too.
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Monday, March 18, 2024
A Fun New Mystery for March: Linda Pirtle's Girlfriend Retreat... Cheaper Than Therapy is available now!
First, a quick update: CW Hawes' February 2024 Magnolia Bluff debut, Who Mourns Elektra came out of the gate strong. It was featured in Amazon's top 100 in Religious Mysteries and cracked the top 50 by reaching number 25. Not a bad start for year three of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles mystery series.
A group of Caroline McCluskey's lifelong friends all come to Magnolia Bluff for a nice, relaxing weekend at the Circle R Ranch. Caroline, who is the town librarian, has put together an itinerary that promises to deliver a "weekend like none other," and the retreat certainly lives up to her claim. Relaxing may not be the best way to describe the girl's time in town. They end up facing one catastrophe after another--everything from mistaken identities all the way to murder. Will Caroline, who has proven in the past to be a better sleuth than the police and knows her way around a crime scene, be able to protect her friends during their visit?
This is Magnolia Bluff after all, where there always seems to be a dead body waiting to be discovered.
What is really fun about this story is that all of the women who are meeting up for this... not so relaxing weekend retreat are modeled after Ms. Pirtle's own real life girlfriends.
This is an awesome addition to the series and is a fairly quick read that packs a lot of punch. And you can get your very own copy of Magnolia Bluff's newest mystery by clicking here: Girlfriend Retreat
Linda Pirtle is a wonderful, award-winning cozy mystery writer. She is one of the founding members of the Underground Authors and has produced three books for the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series. But she is also the author of the popular The Games We Play cozy mystery series. She is a retired high school English teacher and spent years teaching the art of writing and understanding literature. She also taught Business Communications at Navarro College before becoming not only an author, but a business owner with her husband, the late Calab Pirtle III. Together they created and built Venture Galleries, a book publishing company. She has also served as editor for some great books presently in the marketplace.Becoming a full-time cozy author with a female protagonist was the perfect transition for Ms. Pirtle. She's long been a reader and reviewer of mysteries. She finds herself infatuated with the cozy hometown mysteries written by Agatha Christie and Diane Mott Davidson. And she is fascinated with dastardly murder mysteries solved by the lady next door who relies on intuition, instinct, and deductive reasoning. All the perfect ingredients for her to write her own award-winning cozy mysteries.
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You can find all the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles mystery books by clicking here: MBCC Series
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Thursday, February 29, 2024
Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles - In Full Swing for 2024
This is the third novel Hawes has written for the (currently) 21 book series and it's wonderful. If you've been reading along, you are aware that Harry Thurgood, the owner of the Really Good Wood-Fired Coffee Shop has been smitten with the Reverand Ember Cole since the first book, Death Wears a Crimson Hat. Now, twenty-one books later, they are planning their wedding. But as tends to happen in small town Magnolia Bluff, murder and mayhem are trying to get in the way of their happiness. The police detective wants to hang the murders on the couple and arch nemesis, Mary Lou Fight is doing everything in her power to dig up anything she can find to steal their joy and destroy their lives.
The police arrest Harry and Ember for murder, and after they're able to post bail, they begin the quest for proving their innocence. But will they be able to find the real killer and at the same time stop Mary Lou's assault on their good names, or will the couple fall victim to circumstances beyond their control and end up on trial for Murder One?
You can find out for yourself by clicking the link here and grabbing a copy of the newest Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles mystery: Who Mourns Elektra?
CW Hawes is one of my favorite writers. He has written somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-five to fifty books covering several different genres. He is also an award-winning poet. You can learn more about CW and his work by clicking the link here: CW Hawes
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The Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles is a unique multi-author crime fiction series that began is 2022. The nine books released during the first year were so well received that the authors decided to continue the series the next year. Now, in 2024, we begin year three with another round of fun and interesting mysteries to keep you reading late into the night.The Underground Authors started as a small group of mostly Texas based writers who banded together to encourage each other and help cross market their individual work. After the group published a book of short stories, each written by one of the authors, with every story being tied to one thread - the boat on the book cover - CW Hawes tossed out the idea of producing a mystery series where the common thread would be a small town in the Texas Hill Country that would be written as a collaborative, yet each book penned by a different member of the Underground Authors. A unique idea in the mystery genre.
Since that time, we've grown from that small group of Texas based authors to a larger group and are spread out from as far north as Canada, all the way across the United States, and even (sometimes) down into Mexico. What we all still have in common, however, is the passion to continue writing stories about all the shenanigans that take place in a small little Texas town called Magnolia Bluff.
You can find the entire series by clicking the link here: MBCC Series______________________________________
Monday, February 5, 2024
Rough start to the year, but finally... I can get back to writing!
Let's just say January was pretty much a blur. I spent the last week of December and most of the first week of the first month of the year in bed. Then, when I thought I was finally on the other side, the wonderful aftereffects of the flu kicked in for the next three weeks culminating in an extremely lo-o-o-ong night in the emergency room due to an elevated heart rate and some other issues. They ran a battery of tests, and thankfully, everything turned out okay in the end. But let's just say I did not get much writing accomplished during the first month of the year.
Although 2024 began with a whimper rather than a bang for me, I choose to believe that it can only get better as the months roll along. The good news is that I am back at my desk and diving into the two projects I've committed to writing this year. First up is my second book in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series. It will be the twenty-sixth book in that series and will be released in July. I'm also working on the fifth book in my Razzman Mystery Crime Files series, which will be out towards the latter part of the year.For anyone who has read Second Chances, which is book seventeen, but my first novel in the Magnolia Bluff series, I think you'll be pleased with my follow up coming in July. The action in the new book starts off quick and intensifies as the story moves along. So, if you haven't had the opportunity to read Second Chances yet, you have until July to get caught up on how my protagonist, retired NYPD narcotics officer Brandon Turner assimilates himself along with his two-year-old Labrador Retriever, into the crazy, crime filled, murderous world of that small-town nestled in the heart of the Texas Hill Country.For those of you who have read any of my Razzman PI mysteries, I hope you'll be interested and maybe even looking forward to knowing that Tony Razzolito, his partner Scott McHenry, and of course, the inimitable, pizza loving, Brooklynite, Vinny Gabrianno, along with the rest of the cast of characters that are a part of the series will be making a return before the end of 2024. I've got a cool mystery cooked up for the next full length/fifth installment and I can't wait to share it.
More about my new Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles book and the new Razzman Mystery Crime Files book as we get closer to the release dates.
Meanwhile, you can find all the Razzman mystery books by clicking the link below the lineπ
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Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Meet Underground Author Jinx Schwartz
USA Today Best-Selling Author Jinx Schwartz is best known for her fabulous Hetta Coffey Mysteries. Her series is still going strong fifteen books in and with the popularity of sassy Texan, Hetta at the helm of each story, I'm certain there will be more books to come in this wonderful series.
Last December, Jinx wrapped up the first year of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles with Born and Bred Texan. We were introduced to Blue Bonet, a recent widow who returns to her hometown of Magnolia Bluff. And of course, murder and mayhem find its way into Blue's life. This year, Jinx is rounding out the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles for 2023 with her release of Texas Summers Are Murder, book 20 in the series.
In her new book, we get to check in with Blue Bonet as she becomes involved in trying to help clear the name of one of Magnolia Bluff's long-time citizens of a murder charge. She and her best friend, Gloria, stick their noses in where some think they don't belong and soon find themselves in more danger than they bargained for.
Jinx Schwartz has written twenty books, including her most recent release, Just Like That, book 15 in the Hetta Coffey Mystery Series. A ninth-generation Texan, Jinx has lived and worked all over the globe. Much like the protagonist in her mystery series, she navigated her boat in the Sea of Cortez for thirty years. Nowadays, she spends her time between Arizona and Mexico. But now she mostly navigates using her RV, more affectionately known as her land yacht and she's not afraid to use it.Texas Summers Are Murder is available for preorder and will be released on Wednesday December 20th. You can purchase it NOW by clicking here: Amazon. And you can learn more about Jinx and all of her books on her website: JinxSchwartz.com
Here is the blurb for the book:
Blue Bonet, a well-known watercolorist in the Texas Hill Country, looks forward to a peaceful summer of painting. She has a backlog of commissions to complete and believes her studio on the lake is the perfect workplace. However, her small hometown of Magnolia Bluff has an astonishing number of murders, and this summer is no different. When a murder occurs in the park, the small-town police grab a harmless drunk known as Fergus. Blue and her best friend, Gloria, come to Fergus's defense. This move draws the ire of some who want to see Fergus tarred and feathered. But as they snoop to find the real murderer, Blue and her friends unwittingly put themselves in the crosshairs of a dangerous criminal. Join them in their struggle to bring the true culprit to justice and clear Fergus's name.
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The Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles is a unique multi-author crime fiction series that began is 2022. The nine books released in the first year were so well received that the authors decided to continue the series into 2023.
As the year closes with book 20 in the series, we are hard at work putting together all the mysterious shenanigans that will invade the small town of Magnolia Bluff during 2024. The fun begins again in February when CW Hawes releases book 21.
The award-winning writers who pen the stories for this little town in the Texas Hill Country are as diverse as the stories they've written for this superb series. But we all have one thing in common - the love of a good mystery.
You can check out the entire Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series here: MBCC Series
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Monday, November 27, 2023
Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles Book Tour
Here is the schedule for the tour:
LONE STAR BOOK BLOG TOURS
SCHEDULE:
Magnolia
Bluff Crime Chronicles
By
the Underground Authors
November
27-December 8, 2023
Giveaway
ends midnight, CDT, 12/8/23
LSLL TOUR PAGE (live 11/25/23):
https://www.lonestarliterary.com/content/magnolia-bluff-crime-chronicles-underground-authors
10
Million Ways to Die |
Review |
||
11/27/23 |
Death
Wears a Crimson Hat |
Review |
|
11/27/23 |
Series
Spotlight |
|
|
11/28/23 |
Death
in the Absence of Rain |
Review |
|
11/28/23 |
Eulogy
in Black and White |
Review |
|
11/28/23 |
Series
Spotlight |
|
|
11/29/23 |
The
Great Peanut Butter Conspiracy |
Review |
|
11/29/23 |
Only
the Good Die Young |
Review |
|
11/29/23 |
When
Bad Things Happen to Good Mice |
Review |
|
11/30/23 |
You
Won’t Know How. . .or When |
Review |
|
12/01/23 |
The
Flower Enigma |
Review |
|
12/01/23 |
The
Killer Enigma |
Review |
|
12/02/23 |
Men
Lying Dead in a Field |
Review |
|
12/02/23 |
The
Shine from a Girl in the Lake |
Review |
|
12/03/23 |
The
Dewey Decimal Dilemma |
Review |
|
12/03/23 |
The
Dog Gone Diamond Dilemma |
Review |
|
12/04/23 |
Justice |
Review |
|
12/04/23 |
Bye
Baby Bye |
Review |
|
12/05/23 |
Texas
Summers are Murder |
Sneak
Peek |
|
12/05/23 |
Born
and Bred Texan |
Review |
|
12/06/23 |
Who
Killed Lilly Paine? |
Review |
|
12/07/23 |
Second
Chances |
Review |
|
12/08/23 |
A
Chance of a Ghost |
Sneak
Peek |
I hope you'll take a moment each day to check in and read the reviews and the author profiles... and of course, if you'd like, maybe even purchase a book or two, or perhaps the whole seriesπ There's an awful lot of good reading here.
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