Tag: Mae Martin Mysteries

Spinning Off

I’m letting the ninth Mae Martin Mystery rest a while, though I’ll be back to work on it soon. I’m taking an intensive course on revision and self-editing. Even after ten years as a published author, I can learn and improve. Meanwhile, I’ve begun the first draft of the first book in a spin-off series featuring Azure Skye, the Santa Fe medium who plays an important role in Soul Loss and in Shadow Family.

The creative challenges are exciting. The kind of mystery Azure will solve is different from the ones Mae is asked to handle as a psychic. Azure’s gift is communication with the dead. I’m disinclined to have her solve murders, but the question of how someone died has already come up. So far, it looks like Azure and Mae will need to collaborate to find the answer. Of course, I’m only on chapter two, and I don’t plot. I put the characters in a difficult situation and see how they react. Azure is in a situation only Mae can help her out of, and Mae has a problem she hopes Azure can solve.

The biggest challenge for me is that Azure wants to speak in the first person. I didn’t plan that she would, but that’s how she’s coming through.

Three of my novels use only Mae’s point of view, but I still had certain freedoms. I used prologues and epilogues in other points of view in two of those books. Mae’s visions as a psychic revealed events in in the restricted point of view of a silent witness. First person is the opposite of that. It gives me too much information to work with. I have to hold back some of what Azure knows, thinks, feels, and recalls about her past, her work, and the people close to her, in order to keep the story flowing. But I can share her inner life at the right moments more easily, since I never get outside her head.

Will I stick with first person or change to close third? I don’t know. For now, I’m getting to know Azure this way, like an actor exploring a role. Then I’ll have to set her story aside for about six weeks while I work on Mae’s most recent story in the revision class. Once that’s polished enough to send to my critique partners, I’ll plunge back into the spin-off.

*****

 Book two in the Mae Martin series, Shaman’s Blues, is on sale for 99 cents in all eBook stores though the end of January.

 

Books Make Good Gifts—Yes, Already

I don’t normally think about the holidays this early. I’m stunned to see that the neighbors two doors down have strings of red lights in their front window, and that the city has wrapped fake spruce branches around the light poles in the plaza as well as tiny white lights around the trunks of the palm trees. I hope this doesn’t herald the return of the inflatable snowmen. I confess I don’t understand the custom of pretending to be northern for winter holidays, when we have perfect winters here. Perfect meaning no snow.

I will be happy to head off to the post office on one of those sixty-degree sunny days with orders of books. I have to mention it this early because book rate is a tad slower than other options, and I include shipping in the price because book rate is inexpensive. Order one book at full price and get a dollar off other books in the same shipment. If you’re buying the whole Mae Martin Series, that would add up.

This offer goes through Dec. 8th.

Revising with Help from My Characters

I finished the second draft of the ninth Mae Martin Mystery. It took two drafts to find out who was the real “villain” was and why they acted as they did. Now I’m reading through the book and taking notes on what works, what needs to be changed, and what might be okay to cut. I find this stage of the revision process absorbing and challenging. I have to get creative within the existing framework and pay even closer attention to my characters’ inner workings. When a scene needs alteration, it’s often because I made someone do what they really wouldn’t do. I’m critiquing and analyzing my book in progress, but the characters are guiding me through it.

Smashwords Sale is Still Happening

Shop for discounted e-books by author, by genre, or by price in the Smashwords Store.

My books are 25% off, which really adds up if you’re buying the whole series. Use this page to find Mae Martin Series the series in order, and click on the Smashwords links.

The sale runs through the end of July.

Inspirations: From the Archives of the Little Pink Phone

My sister called it a Barbie phone. It’s tiny and pink, circa 2009. I used it through 2019. I’d given no thought to the pictures on it for years, and had never downloaded them while it was my working phone, so I’m not sure why I finally did—but I’m glad I did. On it, I found pictures of Truth or Consequences and Santa Fe in the years during which my books are set. The work in progress, book nine, takes place in 2013.

When I took these photos, I was collecting material for my books. I chose the settings through Mae Martin’s eyes, her delight and awe in discovering New Mexico, and the feeling of deep change and emergence that her new home gives her.

In Shaman’s Blues, Mae is often struck by the intensity of the light in Santa Fe. Encounters with outdoor art trigger key moments for her, for Jamie, and for the boy Jamie tried to help.

The nearly-dry Santa Fe River plays an important role, as does the image of the Lady of Guadalupe. I took a picture of this blue door in Santa Fe one year, and the next year the Lady had been painted on it.

As I look at the colors in my old pictures, the book’s title echoes them. Blues.

I’ve also photographed settings that had meaning to other characters or played roles in later books, and will share some in future posts.

Boxed Set Sale, Book Club Discussion Questions, and Work in Progress

The boxed set of the first three Mae Martin Psychic Mysteries is on sale for $2.99 through April 26th.

Is your book club reading either The Calling or Shaman’s Blues? These have become book club choices, I think, because of their genre-spanning qualities, with elements of women’s fiction, mystery, and the mystical/paranormal. After discovering how much my book club likes using the suggested questions for books, I’ve created a Book Club Discussion Question page on my web site. (I’ll eventually get around to adding the link to the end matter of the books. So far, I’ve added the task to my to-do list.)

Book nine in the Mae Martin series is in progress. I’m a slow writer, so it will probably take another year to bring it to its final form. Using the almost-finished first draft and an earlier, unfinished half draft as foundations, I’m creating anew while revising and recycling the earlier material. Always an adventure—following where the characters lead me.

The Annual Whole Series Sale

All books in the Mae Martin Series are discounted through the end of January, on sale for $3.99 each .  Book one, The Calling, is free. The prequel, The Outlaw Women, is 99 cents, and book 7.5, the short story suite Gifts and Thefts, is $2.99. No murder, just mystery. No inflation, either. Available through all major eBook stores.

 

 

 

T or sCenery

I do my best to capture the colorful character of my town in my books, describing enough to give a flavor of the setting and to ground the story in a place. For fun, I’m sharing a little more of what makes Truth or Consequences unique. A full tour would take many blog posts. If you enjoy this glimpse, I’ll do another T or sCenery post in the future.

The mural above is in an alley beside the Pink Pelican, a portion of the Pelican Spa. Mae Martin book six, Death Omen, has many scenes set at the Pelican.

New murals pop up all the time, many in unexpected places. This one is an an alley across from the the main Pelican Spa building.The wild fence below is on Riverside Drive, near Niall and Marty’s fictitious house which has an eccentric, art-embellished wall. (The mirror shot is as close as I’ve ever come to a selfie.) The guitars on the fence, and the hats that used to crown it, gave me the idea for the fence and gate at Joe Wayne’s house in Snake Face. (His fence is far tamer than this, though.) One of my neighbors claims this is not the weirdest fence in T or C. He says that his bears that distinction. I’ll have to take its picture and few others for a future post and let you decide.

 

New Release: Chloride Canyon, Mae Martin Book Eight

Chloride Canyon

 The eighth Mae Martin Psychic Mystery

Could a faked haunting in a ghost town stir up a real one?

Mae Martin’s college summer session is off to a rough start. A classmate is out to make her life miserable. Her English professor is avoiding her. And the Paranormal Activities Club plans to investigate her psychic abilities. Her boyfriend, Jamie, is on a song-writing retreat in the ghost town of Chloride, New Mexico, population fourteen humans, twenty-three cats, and—supposedly—zero ghosts. He’s working with a famous friend who doesn’t want Mae, or anyone, to visit. But then Jamie’s neighbor claims her house is haunted, and Mae has to learn who’s behind the frightening events—the living, or the dead.

The Mae Martin Series

No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.

Buy

Reading a Series: In Order or All Over the Place?

Usually, I read series in order. I want to get to know the characters the way the author developed them. It’s like growing close to friends over many years of shared experiences. Starting late in the series doesn’t let me build the same relationships. Once in a while, I’ve borrowed an audiobook from the library that was far along in a series I’d not yet read, and while I enjoyed the books, I often didn’t go back to the beginnings. Some authors write their series so there are virtually no spoilers if you discover the books out of sequence. A few others provide what I feel is such an excess of backstory that I turn off that audiobook and lose interest in how the series began.

Needless to say, this makes me cautious with backstory, trying to give as little as possible. With each new book, I find a new beta reader to join the team, one who hasn’t yet read my other books. That person’s fresh perspective helps me present the small doses of necessary backstory at the moment they’re needed—for new readers, for readers who’ve forgotten elements of earlier books, and for those who are zigzagging around in the series.

I’ve heard from people who started my series somewhere after book one, The Calling. One wanted to start with Shaman’s Blues, because it’s the book in which Mae Martin moves to New Mexico. Another started with Ghost Sickness because of the setting on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Others started with book six, Death Omen, because of its theme—fraud and exploitation in spiritual healing. And they liked the books out of order. I never asked if they went back to book one, though.

I wrote the suite of six short mysteries, Gifts and Thefts, to bridge the year and a half between the end of Shadow Family and the beginning of Chloride Canyon. Because it’s numbered book 7.5, Amazon doesn’t list this book on my series page. They have Gifts and Thefts off by itself as it were a stand-alone book. The other major online bookstores, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple, are more flexible about numbering and include book 7.5 on the series page. So, if you are a read-it-in-order person and buy from Amazon, heads up. There’s a book between seven and eight. It’s short, and you can finish it before book eight, Chloride Canyon, comes out at the end of the month.

Do you only read series in order? If you start with a later book, do you go back to the beginning? I’m curious how others relate to series.