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Here’s a reblog of a lovely tribute to one of my favorite authors, Lawrence Block and his greatest character, Matthew Scudder.
Guilty Pleasures
15 Friday Aug 2014
Posted in Books I like, Mysteries, Writing
Category Archives: Reading
What Romance Writers Can Learn from Eloisa James and the Essex Sisters Series: The Significance of Friendships
14 Thursday Aug 2014
Posted in Books I like, Writing
Here’s a good blog post about a terrific writer.
June, I love your tune, but…
25 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in e-books, Wisdom Court, Writing
In looking through the thicket dividing this week from next, I see the 4th of July waiting with a smirk on its face. Already.
When we get to the 4th, time slips into high gear and we zoom like helpless pilgrims in a roller coaster right toward August. And August is almost fall, and the whole damned summer is over. No.
As I’ve been threatening since sometime last year, I have finished A Signal Shown, Book Two of the Wisdom Court novels, and Book One, Edge of the Shadow, as well as Book Two will be epublished as soon as the eformatting is finished and the covers are created. So there. It took longer than I thought it would, but life got in the way, as life so often does, and what’re you going to do–stiff life? No.
So slow the hell down, June! I’m writing sales copy and blurbs for both WC One and Two, while, in the shadows, Book Three looms and lurks on alternating days. It’s very distracting and scary to boot. I’m also supposed to come up with some artful posts here and there to tweak the interest of potential readers, write reviews so others will reciprocate, and get the house clean before the health department shuts us down. Did I mention the garden? Oh, never mind. I must have time to deal with everything, and the only way that’s remotely possible is if July simply crawls by. That’ll happen, right?
No.
I’ve been workin’ on the novel, all the livelong day…
15 Friday Nov 2013
In a moment of insanity buoyed by brainless hope, I announced to the Universe that I was working to finish A Signal Shown, Book Two of the Wisdom Court series, in November. Hence the absence.
Just checking in to report that the words are flowing, the page stack’s growing, and I don’t know if I’ll be done by December 1, but I am getting there.
So, to all the writers out, there, some of you involved with NaNoWriMo, good luck, keep churning out those words and I’ll do the same.
Cheers!
Book Beginnings: Plot threads, part one
12 Thursday Sep 2013
Posted in e-books, Ghosts, Hauntings, Uncategorized, Writing
For me a book begins with a kernel of an idea I need to explore. My soon-to-be published e-book, Edge of the Shadow, sparked into life when I read an article about the MacArthur Awards, the genius grants. Six accomplished individuals had been chosen to receive a healthy chunk of money, though I don’t remember exactly how much. A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? Whatever. Point was, these people had been writing, creating, researching things the MacArthur Foundation considered interesting and worthy of encouragement. No strings attached, no required reports of how the money was used, the foundation just gave them money. I loved that idea.
Because I tend to write books with female protagonists, I thought how cool it would be to award similar grants to six not yet well-known women. And because I’ve always liked what I call Grand Hotel books, (get a bunch of people in a place and observe their interactions, named after the movie of the same name), I decided to create a women’s institute where these characters could interact to their hearts’ content. It eventually came to be called Wisdom Court, a play on the founder’s name–Wyntham–and its architecture–three structures with a fountain in the middle of a courtyard.
Then the characters started arriving, and they brought with them their luggage and back stories, and the details of the endeavors that had captured the attention of the Wisdom Court selection committee. Noreen had recently retired from her job as the headmistress of a private girls school and was compiling a book of quotations strictly by women. Dolores was a sculptor putting together an exhibition. And the main protagonist, Andrea, was a forensic artist who wanted to paint. (The others will get their due in another post.)
I liked the women, and the institute, which I placed in my home town, Boulder, Colorado. But in my life the past and present dance together, and the story I wanted to tell myself had to include that element. I wanted to know what would happen when a likeable, deserving woman had her chance to get what she really wanted but was stymied by a strange confluence of events. What would happen if this wonderful institute was affected by the lingering traces of those who’d lived there before? What if Wisdom Court was haunted?
I’m having a hell of a time…
19 Monday Aug 2013
Posted in Avoiding writing, e-books, Finny Aletter, Writing tips
…getting back into my WIP. I’ve been in merchandizing mode all summer with my two Finny Aletter mysteries, Scavenger Hunt and Obstacle Course, and my brain is skipping across a meadow of clever ploys to interest an indifferent Web. How many times can I artfully mention the titles before I’m shunned by all and sundry? Sigh.
However, my A Signal Shown manuscript is sitting beside me and it needs to be finished. How lovely it would be to see how the story ends so I can stop wondering about it. And afterward I’d have a shiny new opportunity to write the third Wisdom Court novel, a prospect filling me with both excitement and raw terror. I’ve not had enough energy for such visceral emotions during this summer of the slug.
How, oh, how can I gracefully–or even awkwardly–transition from sales whore to dedicated creator of immortal fiction? Well…here’s my plan. Ostensibly, I’m merely nattering to my hardy band of followers, but if I keep moving my fingers over the keys, magic will happen. That tiny ember of creativity lodged somewhere in my brain stem will burst forth–or even fifth–to release the words hovering near the ember. It’s getting crowded in there, so the phrases will come tumbling through the synapses, down my spine, stampeding into both arms, thundering out through my always-moving fingers.
Any minute now.
Dammit.
I’m going to have to actually work on this thing, aren’t I? I’ll need to stop fiddle-farting around and reread the manuscript. I’ll find the inevitable typos and will enter corrections, and that will lead to thinking of better ways to say what’s on the page. Then, God help me, I’ll get that nasty urge to cut a paragraph or two, just to prove I can kill my darlings. I hate that part. But I’ll do it, and that pathetic pile of what used to be my writer’s ego will show signs of revival. There’s nothing like the blood of dead descriptions and defunct characters to get that bastard pulsing again.
So now I’m off to find an illustration of the brain so all of you can see where the process begins, because I wouldn’t want there to be any confusion about it. That won’t take long, just a bit of trolling on the Web, and then I’ll start reading…wait, I’ll have to find my red pen. It’s around here somewhere; I saw it this morning. Okay, got it.
I’ll be back at it before you can blink an eye.
See?
Have I got a freebie for you!
08 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in e-books, Finny Aletter, Yvonne Montgomery mysteries
Tags
Book One
My first mystery, Scavenger Hunt, is free on Amazon.com today. Go to: http://amzn.to/13HDk9j and check it out.
I would dearly love to read some reviews from you out in blogland. Let me know what you think of my immortal prose.
As Finny says, “A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.”
Cheers!
Here they are–and by that I mean at Amazon.com–at last
07 Friday Jun 2013
Posted in e-books, Finny Aletter, Murder, Mysteries, Yvonne Montgomery mysteries
Greetings, gentle readers. As promised, my two mysteries, Scavenger Hunt and Obstacle Course, are now available at the Kindle Books section of Amazon.com. And if i can figure out how to do it, I’ll show you the covers … Look! I figured out how to do it!
These are the first books I published, set in the Capitol Hill section of Denver, starring Finny Aletter, a stockbroker who’s decided to take the carpentry skills she’s acquired while restoring her own century-old house and use them to build a new career for herself. Before she can exit gracefully, her boss and former lover is murdered, and Finny finds herself at the top of the suspects list. If she can’t convince Denver Police Detective Chris Barelli she’s innocent, she’ll never get to find out if it’s fear or attraction making her heart beat faster whenever he shows up. And if she can’t discover if a rumored manuscript actually exists, she’ll never escape the world of scavengers.
Obstacle Course finds Finny launching her her house restoration career at a chi-chi party among Denver’s upper-crust but the celebration turns grim when a controversial judge is murdered. Finny puts carpentry aside for detection when her patron and friend, Twee Garrett, becomes the prime suspect. Finny’s introduction to the Denver social whirl becomes a fight for survival as she navigates the roadblocks of secrets and lies between her and the truth.
I had fun going through the books again, and I hope you will, too. If you’d be kind enough to review them, I’ll love you forever. The books will be coming out at BN, iBooks, and Kobo, as well as Sony, Ingram, and Overdrive over the next couple of months.
Click the pictures and see what happens!
Boomer Gothic and a Year of Her Own
14 Thursday Feb 2013
Back in the day, my favorite fiction genre was gothic, and I read as many such novels as I could find. My favorite authors were Mary Stuart, Charlotte and Jane Bronte, Phyllis A. Whitney, Barbara Michaels, Elsie Lee, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Joan Aiken..the list is long. As an English major in college I read Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and discovered Anne Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, more Poe, some of Dickens, Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Stevenson’s Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. You get the drift.
By the time I got serious about writing, the market for gothics had pretty much dried up, and I was reading mysteries. I decided to write one set in Denver, and after hundreds of years and thousands of revisions, I published two of them, the previously mentioned Finny Aletter mysteries, Scavengers and Obstacle Course (both soon to appear as e-books.)
But, in my heart of hearts, I still yearned for gothics. I wanted to tell myself a story set in an old house where odd things happened, and I wanted to create characters who began to regard each other with suspicion. Dark psychological overtones would match the shadowy corners and somewhere along the line, a scream would split the night. Good times would ensue. Thus was born Wisdom Court.
Set in Boulder, Colorado, Wisdom Court is an institute for accomplished women who have not yet achieved their professional goals. Each is invited to spend a year there (short trips home allowable, but most time is spent in Boulder), all expenses paid. Artist, scientist, writer, whomever the Board chooses, receives a year of her own.
Andrea Bellamy, the protagonist in book I, Edge of the Shadow, is a forensic artist who yearns to paint, and her invitation to Wisdom Court allows her to imagine a new career as a fine artist. Widowed some years earlier, she has seen her daughter through college and now has the opportunity to truly change her life. She takes a leave of absence from her job, rents out her house, and heads for Boulder. She is welcomed at Wisdom Court by the staff and other associates staying there. As she settles into bed that first night, her heart is filled with gratitude and her mind races with excitement. At last she will be able to focus on her artistic dreams. For at least this one year she can put herself first. And then she awakes screaming…
You’ll have to read Edge of the Shadow to find out what happens to Andrea and the other women at Wisdom Court. The book will be published online in the next few months. I’m writing about it now out of curiosity. Having written EOS as well as being two-thirds into the second Wisdom Court book, A Signal Shown, I’m wondering how many fellow gothic fans are out there. I don’t yet have throngs of blog followers, but I’m impatient enough to issue the question anyway: how many readers out there are interested in gothics? The Wisdom Court story arcs through three books, so I’m committed to at least the trilogy. Will I find readers to share in the pleasures? Let me know. I’ll keep writing.
Posted by Yvonne Montgomery | Filed under 19th century novels, e-books, Gothic, Hauntings, Wisdom Court
Okay, so we’ll skip right over November…
30 Friday Nov 2012
Although it made me very happy.
I’ve been busy-busy reviewing the e-formatted manuscript of my first mystery, Scavengers. Thanks to the wonderful work of Nina Paules of eBook Prep, thiswas not an ordeal. Since I always have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the next new thing, at least technologically speaking, I did whimper a bit and had to be sweet-talked into opening the files, but it all worked out. And soon, gentle readers, my first foray into mysteries will be available at various venues. My second mystery, Obstacle Course, will be next. More about this later.
I’m also very near the point of sending off queries again for my current work, Edge of the Shadow, the first of the Wisdom Court paranormal novels. Several good souls have read the manuscript, made corrections & suggestions, which I’ve noted and included. I’ve almost finished the final nit-picky part and am printing it out, so it won’t be long. It’s my goal to then get back to the second Wisdom Court novel, A Signal Shown, and finish it. That won’t happen before the end of the year, but that’s okay.
I told you I’ve been busy-busy. And now it’s time to hunt for a recipe for gluten-free fruit cake. I am one of the few hardy souls who love fruit cake. And now I can’t eat the real McCoy. So, since last year’s recipe was a disappointment, I’ll try again. Soon, so I’ll have time to soak it with brandy. Or maybe I’ll just drink the brandy, and then try the fruit cake. It’ll work.
Cheers!
Writer in the Garret 