FIRST FRIDAY: Delaney! Iyer! Lovely!

It's First Friday! The day three talented authors give their take on a single photo in 150 words or less.

DELANEY

  The shoes called me through the store window, whispering my sister’s party was tonight, reminding me of that cute guy who never noticed me. I didn’t stand out at parties, and he always looked over my head, not down at me. I wanted him to notice me. What did I have to lose if I bought the shoes? Just half a month’s paycheck and possibly my balance. It was worth it.

  I looked amazing. My mirror told me so. So did the smile on the face of the cute guy as I entered my sister’s apartment. I smiled back and took a step onto her slippery white tile floor. My ankle went one way, the shoe another and my face met the floor. Was that my blood the shoe sat in?  My nose was flowing freely. But the cute guy was picking me up.

  I had been noticed.

IYER

  His nickname was Detective Superman. There’d never been a case he couldn’t crack, until what the media dubbed The Stiletto Murders came along, six vicious slayings ago. The victims were johns, and the murderer’s signature was always the same: a different stiletto posed near the body, blood drizzled around the bottom of the shoe. Neat, clean, no prints, no hairs, no DNA. Nothing but the victim’s unadulterated semen. The shoe, sold in every chain store in the city, offered no clue to the buyer.

  Except this time. This time, she’d left a calling card. For him.

  His heart pounded. Sweat beaded at his hairline, trickled down his back.

  “You all right, Detective?” the first cop on the scene asked. “You look pale.”

  “Fine, fine,” Superman said, sloughing him off. But he wasn’t. Not by a long shot

  He recognized the red stiletto. He’d bought the expensive shoes for her.

LOVELY

  A cherry-red stiletto? Crimey. The blood is dandy. Marley steps in it often enough. But no way would my heroine squash her D-width tootsies in my cover artist’s tribute to foot surgery. What possessed Judy—my early twenties cover artist? Her arches won’t collapse for a few decades. I didn’t expect Judy to read my book, just hoped she’d peruse the synopsis. Sigh.

  Okay, try diplomacy. As authors are pitifully aware, we’re less likely to sway book cover design than President Obama is to gain unanimous Congressional approval—of anything. Guess I could photograph one of my scruffy clodhoppers. While Marley and I are far from twins, we see bunion to bunion on footwear.

FREE today on Amazon!

  Hmmm. Or I could edit. After losing a bet, Marley can be en route to a costume party wearing Madonna breast cones and shiny stilettos when she slips on some blood. Marley would you forgive me?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

KATHLEEN DELANEY

  Kathleen Delaney writes the Ellen McKenzie mystery series. Dying for a Change introduces Ellen, who’s returned to her career as a real estate agent. Finding a dead body in the closet of the first house you show is a hard way to start. Life doesn’t get any easier for Ellen in Give First Place to Murder,  And Murder for Dessert, and Murder Half Baked.

  Kathleen has just finished the fifth, Murder by Syllabub. She lives in Georgia with a dog and cat and often a couple of grandchildren who love to visit. Or is it the pumpkin/cranberry bread they like?

Polly's Amazon Page

POLLY IYER

  Polly Iyer was born on the coast of Massachusetts. After studying at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, she traveled to Italy, lived in Atlanta, and now resides in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina in an empty nest house with her husband, a drooling mutt named Max, and Joey, the timid cat. She writes crime fiction that always has a murder or two…or three, characters who cross ethical lines, and a hint of romance.

LINDA LOVELY

At Amazon

  Linda Lovely writes mysteries and romantic thrillers. Her Marley Clark series features a 52-year-old retired military intelligence officer. DEAR KILLER is set in the SC Lowcountry where Marley works as a security guard. NO WAKE ZONE moves to Lake Okoboji, Iowa. Marley will return to the Carolina Coast in book three. Lovely’s newest romantic thriller, FINAL ACCOUNTING, is a set in Atlanta and Jamaica.

  The author is a member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the South Carolina Writers Workshop. Click on book covers on Lovely’s website—www.lindalovely.com—for ebook and paperback buy links.

Join in! Add your 150-word vision in the comments. We love to read them.

IT'S FIRST FRIDAY! Delaney. Eckhart. Hurricane Sandy

The Photo

This is where I give three authors one photograph, and in 150 words, they write what they see in it. The difference in imagination and voice is fascinating. This month one of the authors, Marc vun Kannon, lost power to Hurricane Sandy and didn't make it. Maybe he'll be back sometime. 

DELANEY

I sit here, in my father’s study, waiting. Soon the candle will go out and the birthday party for my cousin, Cassie, and my beautiful sister, Alice, will be over.

Today, they are sixteen. Alice, whom I love so, wants only to be with Cassie. No longer does she read with me, play games or share secrets. She only smiles on her way to giggle with Cassie under the elm tree. They fall silent when they see me coming.

I helped Cook frost their individual birthday cakes, though. Chocolate for Cassie, lemon for Alice. It is a tradition.

My mother is screaming, my aunt sobbing, the wail of an ambulance falls silent as the front door opens. I smile as I blow out the candle.

Someone stands at the open door. Alice? No, Cassie. She sobs as she holds up a small birthday cake. It is lemon.

 We traded, she says.

ECKHART

The loud overweight lady with bad breath would be right in. But that was an hour ago, when her mother left. So she didn’t move even though the sharp edge of the metal framed chair poked the small of her back. They’d practiced for hours last week. Sit straight, shoulders back, even though she longed to skid on her bum across the room. But that she could never do, because her mother expected her to be perfect—to win. Nothing less would do.

Her face itched from the makeup. Her hair was curled and fastened just like a princess—a princess she never wanted to be. She tried to ignore the pinch between her shoulder blades, but agony worsened as she waited for the agent to appear, promising fame for the children and fortune to the parents. And not once had anyone asked nine year old Lily, what she wanted.

At Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

KATHLEEN DELANEY

Kathleen Delaney writes the Ellen McKenzie mystery series. Dying For A Change, the first in the series, introduces us to Ellen who has returned to her as a real estate agent. Finding a dead body in the closet of the first house you show is a hard way to start. Life doesn’t get any easier for Ellen in the next three books, Give First Place to Murder, And Murder For Dessert, and Murder For Dessert. She has just finished the fifth in this series, Murder by Syllabub. She lives in South Carolina in a one hundred year old house with a dog and cat and often a couple of her eight grandchildren who love to visit. Or is it the pumpkin/cranberry bread they like?

At Amazon

LORHAINNE ECKHART

Lorhainne Eckhart began her writing career five years ago. A lifelong love for stories inspired her to start writing. She read everything and naturally had the ability to create vivid characters, drawing on the experiences of friends, family and acquaintances around her. When her children started school she sat down to write her first novel. The story unfolded and four years later The Wild Rose Press published her first novel, 'The Captain's Lady.'  Lorhainne has a passion for the outdoors, her extensive gardens and preserving nature. Lorhainne Eckhart and her family live in the peaceful countryside on Vancouver Island.

The Lonely Garret

At Amazon

My guest this week is my friend Kathleen Delaney, author of the delightful Ellen McKenzie mystery series.

Most people picture authors of years gone by as recluses huddled in an attic, no heat, no food, scribbling their lives away, driven to write. They shut out the world and lived in their imagination, creating characters they hoped would live forever on the pages of their manuscripts. They sharpened their quill pens, dipped them in India ink and crossed out all of the lines and phrases they didn’t like. Re-writing was a real challenge in those days.

I’m not sure how accurate the garret thing was or how many authors warmed their freezing hands over a fire of discarded manuscript pages, but they probably had fewer distractions. Authors today have a harder time isolating themselves. Today, we have email, Facebook, Twitter, smart phones, competing for our attention.

There is one thing writers of today and yesteryear have in common, and that is the need to find a quiet place where they can concentrate, where their imaginations can run wild, where they can retreat from the real world and inhabit a world they create, where they meet characters that live only in their imagination until they’re brought to life on the pages of a manuscript. The kind of quiet writers got in their garret is gone. The world intrudes constantly with the ring of the phone, or the ding that says we have another email message.

At Amazon

Charles Dickens barricaded himself in his study and, I’ve heard, was able to so completely immerse himself in his story his pages were stained with tears as he wrote of little Oliver asking for another bowl of porridge or the death of Little Nell. I wonder, though, if some of those tears might have been frustration at broken concentration as a child played under his desk. But, on he wrote. Agatha Christie had a quiet home in rural England, but she spent a lot of time traveling with her husband in third world countries. Trains were often noisy, dirty, jerky affairs, filled with strange sounds, smells and animals. Yet, she turned out book after book. I’m told that Charlotte Armstrong, an author of many mysteries during the 1940’s and 50’s, had so many distractions at home she’d get in her car and drive a block away from home, lock herself in and write. And that was before cell phones.

I don’t think any of them locked themselves in an attic. They may not have had Facebook but they all had distractions and they all got a lot done. Maybe, today, all we need is the will power to turn off the TV, put the phone on answering machine, ignore the ding that says we have mail, and write. Ignore the real world for a few hours. It will still be there when we return from the one we’re creating, from visiting the people whose story we are trying to tell. If Dickens could ignore a screaming child under his desk, we can ignore Sponge Bob turned as high as the volume will go. At least, we can try. If that doesn’t work, I’m told Denny’s is open all night, that it’s pretty quiet after midnight and they give free refills on coffee.

Bio
After a rewarding career as a Realtor in California, Kathleen moved to South Carolina and writes full time. She now lives in a wonderful 100-year-old house, with a wraparound front porch, where she and her dogs can wile away a summer afternoon, and a big office, lined with bookcases, where she can spend her days writing. And, as always, reading. You can find more about Kathleen and her books at http://www.kathleendelaney.net/

A Little Culture

My friend and guest is Kathleen Delaney, author of Murder Half-Baked, due out May 15 from Camel Press.  She's also the author of the delightful Murder for Dessert from Poisoned Pen Press and two other books soon to be available on Kindle.

I live in a small town in South Carolina. I didn’t move here because I thought the opportunity for concerts, art exhibits, or evenings at the ballet would be on the agenda. I came because they had a good college and a good library in a quiet, small town setting. The concerts and art exhibits were close enough, so was a major airport.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that Gaffney was getting a traveling exhibit put together by the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian? Here? In Gaffney? Yep. An exhibit dedicated to the history of American music. I rushed to see it, thinking I’d be one of the few, hoping I was wrong. I was. The place has been packed, as have been the concerts associated with it.

My grandkids stayed with me over spring break. One day, while we were driving somewhere, my granddaughter announced she had an idea for a book and I was to write it. Oh, no. It’s your idea, you write it, I said. How about if we write it together, was her answer. Sounded good to me, so I asked her the plot. Talk about gory! But, we’re going to write the story. We’ve already started.

Here we have two things not connected in any way. Right? Wrong. They are both about story. The history of our country is told in the songs represented in the Smithsonian exhibit, the folk songs, the ballads, the anthems, they’re our collective story, what has made us Americans told in song. That’s one of the reasons so many people have wandered through the exhibit, have listened to the concerts. It was story, the joy of making one up, of letting her imagination run wild, that made the telling of that gruesome little tale so much fun for my granddaughter, but there were other things in there. Ghosts and other scary things were dealt with, and conquered, children were in danger, but were rescued by parents, also by the dog, and in the end, the children rescued the parents. We worked through a lot more than just some exciting plot points in that half-hour, and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Since mankind drew pictures on the walls of caves, we’ve been telling stories, in song, in dance, in drawings, and in—stories. We’ve kept our history alive through stories. We’ve made sense out of scary things, like death and destruction, and chronicled our high points and our low, At first, we told them around a camp fire or listened to them in the town square. Now we write them down, print them into books or read them on our iphones. The means have changed, but our love, our need for stories hasn’t. They connect us. They  make us laugh, and cry. They take us places we’d never go, introduce us to people we’d otherwise never meet, make us think about things in ways we’ve never thought about before. All through stories.

Story telling--it’s in our DNA. 

Kathleen's website: http://www.kathleendelaney.net/.

A little about Murder Half-Baked. Ellen McKenzie’s newest real estate client, Grace House, is a home for women in transition, and she needs to find them a new location, quick. The old one has burned down and the residences have moved in with her. The arsonist is still on the loose and the dead body of Grace House’s doctor has been found in the cemetery. It appears as if the murderer is one of Ellen’s unexpected guests, only which one? Her wedding to Dan Dunham is in just four weeks, crowds of relatives are poised to arrive, she needs to find the murderer before that happens, and what on earth is she going to do with that new baby?

5 star review from Manic Readers Review Depot

Praise for Kathleen Delaney’s other books: And Murder For Dessert. Give

First Place

to Murder, Dying For A  Change

Kirkus: “Engaging characters make Delaney’s debut an enjoyable addition to the cozy scene.”

Publishers Weekly: “Delaney’s choice of setting, gossipy milieu and colorful…suspects help keep Ellen scrambling, and move the action right along.”

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