Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Sue Grafton has another successful Kinsey Milhone mystery as she starts the race to the end of the alphabet. Only five books from the end of series, Grafton tells Writers Digest in the February issue that it hasn’t gotten any easier for her.  Grafton started the series in 1982 with A is for Alibi and has produced a new novel about every two years.

She describes the journals she writes for each of her novels, calling them “long, whiney conversations I have with myself about what I’m doing.” She says she thrown out far too many ideas that she decides would not be workable, hoping for inspiration to strike. She also tries very hard to keep the voice she calls “Ego” from taking over her work, preferring to let the voice she’s named “Shadow” to write. “Shadow knows how to write books. . .Shadow is that still, quiet voice in your soul that tells you if you’re on track or off track.”

This newest book has Kinsey’s curiosity roused when a young man presents himself in her office, claiming to have seen two men burying an abducted child when he was a youth. Although Kinsey finds out this fellow is known to stretch the truth, enough of his story checks out to involve her. And she’s off and running. . .

The book has tons of twists and turns, enough to satisfy any Milhone fan.  Grafton says her husband is her first reader, and this is his favorite of the novels. “He loves this book.”

I found it interesting that Grafton admits that this series was born during a brutal divorce, when she imagined various ways to murder said ex!  She found a wealth of ideas to start Kinsey on her adventures.

Grafton says each book has gotten harder and harder to write.  Even as she admits one of her favorite sayings is “trust the process,”  she says she has to keep reminding herself that  writing “should be a form of play.”

As an author awaiting the release of my own first novel, I take great comfort in Grafton’s words:

I keep saying the fate of the free world does not hang in the balance. Even if I write a book that fails, nothing will happen. I’ll be mortified and embarrassed, but lives will not be lost over this.”

Amen to that!

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Author Nina Romano is a prolific and wonderful storyteller.  She has traveled extensively and lived in Italy for twenty years.  She also happens to be a loving, sweet lady and a fantastic cook!

Nina has brought her observations from the coffee shops she visits, along with deeper poems of the heart, to her new collection Coffeehouse Meditations, now available from Kitsune Books.  Author John Dufresne (Florida Power and Light) says: “Reading Coffeehouse Meditations is a joy and an exhilaration. This is work that matters.”

Nina is a member of the Screw Iowa Writers Group, of which Auntie M is also a proud member, and I can attest to the high quality of these poems.  There is something for everyone, from her intense imagery to her exotic use of language. Nina’s poems make you think, bring you places, tell their truths, and leave you wanting more. This is Nina’s second book of poetry and she’s already working on the third.  Her first book ,Cooking Lessons (www.Rock-Press.com), where Nina’s love of food will take you on a whirlwind of Italian life, food and language. As Campbell McGrath said about Cooking Lessons: “…read this book right now, experience it all, and thank Nina Romano for creating a poetic banquet rich enough to feed a tonof hungry readers.”

Auntie M is going to give away a free copy of Coffeehouse Meditations to one lucky random winner between now and next Friday, so leave a comment and tell me why you want to be in the drawing!

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Hello to all of you out there who decided Auntie M had fallen off the face of the earth.

You may remember the Incident of the Dog, wherein a huge chocolate lab destroyed Doc’s knee.  Three surgeries, 14 months of Physical Therapy, and one artificial knee, and Doc is back limping around without benefit of canes or walkers.

My role as Nancy Nurse is pretty much over; the cap goes back up on the shelf, and the hospital bed may leave our bedroom shortly, although the over-bed trapeze gets to stay for the rest of the year.

I would like to say that it was just taking care of Doc that explains away my months of absentia, but I have to cough up the truth: I’ve been working with an incredible book designer, doing rewrites on my novel, choosing and refining a cover, reading and editing and re-reading for typo’s, all so that the files can be sent to the printer THIS COMING WEEK.

I am assured that before the end of the month, I’ll be able to hold my novel in my hot little hand.

THE BLUE VIRGIN will be published through Bridle Path Press by April 1st.  It’s the first of a series I’m writing with protagonist Nora Tierney, an American writer who lives in Oxford and is getting ready to move to the Lake District to live with her children’s book illustrator and his sister until her unplanned baby is born.  Because the baby’s father was dead before Nora knew she was pregnant, she is grateful for the support. Before she can move out, though, her best friend Val Rogan calls for Nora’s urgent help.  Val’s partner, Bryn Wallace, has been found murdered, and Val is the prime suspect.  Nora will swing into action, determined to clear her friend, while illustrator Simon Ramsey tries to keep her safe.

Auntie M is psyched, to say the least, to finally have a book-length project in print.  I’ll keep you posted as time goes by on how the process is going. I’ve learned a ton about publishing, working with a copyeditor, what a cyanotype is and why spine width is essential to get correct, getting an ISBN number and a ton of other things that are new to me.

So hang in there and take this ride with me!

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Auntie M has been on hiatus for the past few weeks due to a multitude of things you don’t even want to begin to know!

BUT I’m blogging over on ECO WOMEN: PROTECTORS OF THE PLANET today, so come on over and check me out!

Hope to back to several times a week shortly!

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Meg Gardiner caught Auntie M’s eye with her novel The Dirty Secrets Club, where she introduced Jo Beckett, a forensic psychiatrist with an unusual specialty: she conducts psychological autopsies, an investigation into a person’s life to determine whether their death was natural, accidental, suicide or homicide.

It’s an interesting premise for a protagonist, and Gardiner makes the most of Beckett, her expertise, and her background. This time Beckett is called to help deal with an aircraft passenger whose erratic behavior she finally determines is due to anteretrograde amnesia, an unusual amnesia where the patient has total recall of his past life, but is unable to hold onto new thoughts for more than five minutes.

I’d never heard of this kind of amnesia, but Gardiner does a good job of explaining it and its devastating effects on her patient, security expert Ian Kanan.  Imagine living your life by scrawling yourself messages in pen or your arm, surrounded by post- it notes to keep refreshing what you were doing five minutes previously.

It’s an exhaustive and horrifying illness, and when it starts to affect people Kanan has had contact with, Beckett knows  she is up against some kind of deadly biological agent, and the race to prevent a catastrophic exposure to this agent becomes the focus of the action.

Gardiner also has five novels in the Evan Delaney series, including the Edgar Award finalist China Lake.

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