by admin | Jan 8, 2013 | Uncategorized
Thanks to my good friend, Diana Orgain, for allowing me to enter her blogosphere! Full disclosure: when I visited here in March, I had just killed a librarian (in THE PROBABILITY OF MURDER, by my aka Ada Madison) and I got some well-deserved grief from blog visitors. I hope in the end, readers could see that Charlotte would still be alive if she had been ONLY a good librarian, but she had many dark secrets that contributed to her demise. Now the next book in the Professor Knowles series has been released. In A FUNCTION OF MURDER, I’ve killed the mayor of the town. Shall I wear body armor while you pummel me with hardcover books? It’s time to see who’s more popular, librarians or mayors. Will it be close? Here’s a snippet of A FUNCTION OF MURDER. All the graduation speeches and parties are over, and Sophie is happy to be meeting her boyfriend Bruce, a medevac pilot, for a late night stroll on campus. You can read the full first chapter on my website. Make a comment for a chance to win a copy of the book. From A FUNCTION OF MURDER Bruce assumed his ritual hunky stance as I approached the parking lot near Franklin Hall. He leaned against the front fender of his new black muscle car, his arms folded across his chest, his dark hair rustling in the slight breeze. All he needed to complete the picture were pointy leather boots and a cowboy hat, but instead he wore his usual off-duty khakis and a black polo shirt. I couldn’t see his grin, but...
by admin | May 3, 2012 | Uncategorized
Good morning. I’m a stranger in these here parts. I feel like I should be wearing chaps, boots, six-guns, and a very large, very dirty hat. And maybe a shirt. Definitely a shirt. And I should have just pushed my way through wooden saloon doors, strode across the floor (thumping my heels down firmly, as one must do in cowboy boots) bellied up to the bar, and asked for a drink. Probably a Diet Coke, or an Arnold Palmer. And there you are, on the stool next to me, with your own Diet Coke, or Arnold Palmer, and we know it’s just a matter of time before somebody over at the card table growls, “You callin’ me a cheater?” And somebody else says, “Yup, I’m a’callin’ you a low-down dirty dog of a cheater.” And the first guy says, “Smile when you say that.” And then all heck breaks loose. But in the meantime here we are, our whistles adequately wetted with our beverage of choice, and we have decided conversation is desirable. And, since I’m the stranger in town as well as a closet narcissist, it’s gonna be all about me, me, me. The funny thing about this post so far is that it actually reflects a true thing about me, as well as my three sisters. We grew up on a ranch, to a father who probably needed sons but loved us anyway, and figured we could be just as useful if we developed our brains, since our biceps were letting us down. I spent a significant part of my life in trucks and tractors, and a...
by admin | Mar 6, 2012 | Uncategorized
My friend, the fabulous Camille Minichino, joins us today for the launch of her latest book. For a chance to win a copy leave a comment for Camille. One lucky winner (in US only, please) will win. Camille, your second book in the wildly successful Professor Sophie Knowles Series is being released today. Congratulations! Give us the elevator pitch. Thanks for this great opportunity, Diana. It’s always fun to visit your blog! The pitch: In “The Probability of Murder,” Sophie Knowles, college math professor and puzzle-maker, is stunned when her friend, Charlotte, the college librarian, is found murdered in the limited access stacks. It takes Sophie’s sharp sleuthing to unearth the secret, stretching back two decades, that led to her friend’s murder. My website, www.minichino.com has a full synopsis. Tell us a little about how you came to write the Professor Sophie Knowles Series. I’m turning every phase of my life into a mystery series. I’ve done my physicist era, my miniatures hobby; it was time to do the college math teacher career. There are still six more phases, so be ready. They say to write what you know and I KNOW you like math – LOL. Tell us about Sophie Knowles. Share three things that you and Sophie have in common, and three ways in which you’re absolutely different. And I know YOU like math, Diana, and you’re going to pass that on especially to your daughter! Sophie and I love to teach. Often I’ve learned something just so I could teach it—from miniatures to making muffins to physics. Sophie and I both love doing and making up puzzles. My husband and I often...
by admin | Jan 9, 2012 | LadyKillers
Dorothy Parker Didn’t Go Bowling By J.J. Murphy, author of the Algonquin Round Table Mysteries “Write what you know”—that’s the advice people give you when you say you want to write a book. Bad advice (for me, anyway). To keep my sanity, I had to write about something far, far different from what I knew. Why, you ask? Because all I knew about when I started writing was baby stuff—Cheerios, The Wiggles, Pampers and peepee. You see, I was (and am) the parent of young identical twins. (We sometimes went through 16 Pampers a day, if my memory serves—though it rarely does anymore.) I loved my little identical blond babies (still do, of course), but I had to get away! So, I checked out. I didn’t have the time to write, but I couldn’t help myself. I went on vacation…I left for New York City in the Roaring 20s. How? I started writing a mystery series featuring Dorothy Parker and the members of the Algonquin Round Table. These people and their daily lives—their witty banter over long lunches and sparkling cocktails—were about as far removed as possible from my long days full of Teletubbies and temper tantrums. Dorothy Parker, as you may know, was a Jazz Age writer and poet who was as well known for her clever wisecracks as for her writing. (Even if you don’t know her, you’ve probably heard something she said or wrote, such as “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” or “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”) She was a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, which was a group...
by admin | Nov 8, 2011 | LadyKillers
I Kid You Not: Children in the Silver Rush mysteries – by Ann Parker Years ago, when I was started writing my Silver Rush historical mystery series, I pondered about the maternal standing of Inez Stannert. Should she have a child? Or not? You see, Inez leads a hard and complicated life. She lives at the ten-thousand-foot mark in the Rocky Mountains, in Leadville, Colorado, in the 1880s. Leadville is a silver boomtown—chaotic, bursting at the snowy seams with men and women driven by greed, desperate to get rich by any means including murder. Not an ideal time or place to raise a child. In addition, Inez’s husband, Mark Stannert, has disappeared without a trace before the first book even opens. Inez has given up hope of finding him alive, although a part of her wonders if her smooth-talking, good-looking gambler husband might have skipped out with a “pretty-waiter girl” or one of the actresses passing through town. In Mark’s absence, Inez manages the Silver Queen Saloon and runs a high-stakes poker game on Saturday nights. And then, “stuff happens.” The mysterious (but incredibly attractive) Reverend Sands comes to town. People close to Inez start to die under unusual circumstances (after all, this is a mystery). Inez investigates (after all, she is the sleuth). I wanted to make Inez a mother, even though I wasn’t sensing a lot of maternal attributesin this poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, pocket-pistol-toting woman of the West. But I thought that Inez would make a fiercely protective, passionate parent. She would do whatever it took to protect her children, if I were to bequeath them to her....
