LadyKillers | Diana Orgain

Guest Post by J.J. Murphy

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...

Guest Post and Giveaway – Ann Parker

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....

Shoes!

I’m blogging over at the Ladykillers today. Our topic was shoes and I interviewed 3 yr. old Tommy on his new rainboots, but we had a little situation that needed big sister, Carmen’s, help. The situation could have led to many secrets revealed – which is just the thing mysterys are made of! Check out the post at the Ladykillers to see my little cuties in...

Crime TV…or Not

Posting over at the LadyKillers group blog today – our topic is TV Crime Shows…only I really don’t watch them – so I’ve broken out of the mold and talk about Reality TV instead! hehehe...