Crime Contest Writer Bios

Writing - I've been writing a long, long time, but have only recently let people outside of my immediately family know about it. I do novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, and am willing to try anything else that sparks an interest.

Reading - I've never met a genre I didn't love. However, the books have to be well-written. I also enjoy non-fiction books on history, biographies, and politics (if I agree with the author's position, of course!)

Fave authors - this has changed over the years, and currently I have too many favorites too count.

Crime/mystery subgenre - As I mentioned above, there aren't many types of genres I don't like. My favorites are those that have a twist, or catch me by surprise at the end. (That doesn't happen much anymore...)

I wrote my entry, Nova Summer, because I don't like playing by today's rules! It's a futuristic murder mystery, set on the planet Nova in the year 2205. Crime is regulated by the Agency, that era's version of modern-day FBI and Police, combined.

My heroine, Tanis Ranger, is an entry-level Officer who joined the Agency specifically for a career in Homicide. She's haunted by the murder of her own mother, something that happened when she was a child. 'Nova Summer' follows Tanis as she joins an investigation on a case that bears an eerie resemblance to her mother's murder.

I hope you all can take a moment to look over my chapter! Best of luck to everyone in the contest.

Thanks for the post, Dale.

I'm Erin S., author of WHIP. WHIP is a crime story, but it's also a "six degrees of separation" story. There are several main characters. The first chapter introduces Fred (a young woman) and Leander, roommates and heroin addicts who suddenly have a very big problem on their hands. It then shifts to Darius and Renata, a police officer and his office-manager wife, who are trying to conceive a child. As you read the novel, you will see how the characters are all inter-related-- and why this book is called WHIP. It may remind some of the film Pulp Fiction.

I write short stories and non-fiction articles, and have been published by web 'zines including Clean Sheets, The Erotic Woman, The Shadow Sacrament, Oysters & Chocolate, and For the Girls. Yes, these are erotica websites; I got into writing erotica because some of the later chapters of WHIP are sexually explicit. My first print story will soon debut in Hustler Fantasies. But don't let that scare you off; WHIP is mainstream entertainment.

I also write mainstream nonfiction. In January, I'll have an article about how to hire a contractor in the Saturday Evening Post. I've been published about 25 times total.

I enjoy reading things that are a little unusual or different. I'm not a fan of the by-the-numbers crime story without an unusual twist. For fun, I read paranormal romances by Kate Douglas, Charlaine Harris and J. R. Ward.

I began writing WHIP in Feb. 2006, and ever since I've been writing part-time and wishing I could do it full time.

My writing career so far . . . ah, I'm been writing for, like, ever. My family has come to the conclusion that I write so much because I'm a closet hermit and a passively social old fart. I've had college stories and papers published, and I've also had short stories published on Rutger Hauer's website every year he sponsored his short story competition. Nothing that generated income . . . not yet ;)

I've written shorts in all the major genres, but my goal before I die is to write 5 full-length novels: crime/mystery/thriller (done it!), sci-fi, western, romance, horror, and humor. Obviously, I'm not a math whiz since that makes six. So, my revised goal is to write 6 novels before I die. Unless I write a western-horror, which might be pretty interesting.

What I like in a book is a plot that grabs me from the beginnning and doesn't let go until I read the final page. What I dislike is stilted writing that sounds unnatural. I'm guilty, however, of sometimes catching myself doing that selfsame thing; I guess my brain just shuts down after awhile and I start channeling Faulkner.

In crime stories, the ones that capture and hold me are the ones with unexpected plots and twists and turns. I like to be startled by a revelation in the middle of the book that was already there at the beginning, but I didn't realize it at the time. That type of story is a keeper and one that I will read over and over again. I hate formula plots.

I don't limit myself to crime stories - I read a lot of bios, specifically the Kennedy's, but also ones like Cher, Jerry Garcia, Phyllis Diller, Paul what's-his-face, etc.; I'm a WWII nut (as the two bottom rows of my bookcase will attest to); Dean Koontz's horror and some of Stephen King's; westerns (fav is Evan Connell); classics that don't make me snore; anthing by John Irving because he is so off the wall; Sci-Fi (Deathlands series and Brian Lumley especially, but I also collect Star Trek books by various authors); the entire M*A*S*H* book collection, some romance as long as it's not about "helpless" wimpy women, and anything else that catches my fancy.

I like to think that what sets my entry apart from the rest of the crowded bookcases is that it makes you think, what if? What if this part could really happen? What if this part has already happened and the general population doesn't even know? What would you do if it happened to you?

I'm Neal S., and my entry in the contest is "A Murder in the Garden Club" (which can be found at http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977170256). 'Garden Club' is, in a sense, my first born. Two years ago, I decided it was time to do something about the writing monkey that had been on my back for a couple of decades. The first manuscript (there are now six) to be completed is the one I've offered on Gather.

"A Murder in the Garden Club" is about three things. The first is Liz Phillips, fifty-something suburban matron with a hole in her life where her absent family ought to be. The second is John Flynn, retired Boston detective who has gone to work for a suburban police department where, to put it mildly, he is overqualified. The third thing is the town. You won't find Hardington, Massachusetts on a map, but you've heard of towns like it. It's a quaint exurb of Boston where 'starter castles' are replacing the tract houses from the fifties and appearances are everything.

At the beginning of the book, Liz finds the body of close friend Sally Kahn at the bottom of her basement stairs. It takes Liz just ten minutes to determine it wasn't an accident. It takes a lot longer than that for her to convince John Flynn that Hardington has its first murder in a decade. By the time their investigation is over, the trail will have wound through email inboxes and wireless Internet routers, hazardous waste disposal and the economics of tearing down houses to build 'McMansions'. Their search will also take them through an emotional landscape of adultery and the simmering resentment between 'townies' and the new-money affluent.

'Garden Club' takes the convention of a cozy. It emphasizes character development and plot equally. The violence is off-screen, and the intent is to make you want to see the two characters again in a new mystery. To me, however, the 'cozy' genre has meant encountering a book featuring a nosy, dithering amateur female sleuth with a weight problem and a bumbling detective who can't see a clue to save his life. I wanted to avoid those cliches. Further, if cozies are a 'Red States' genre, then 'Garden Club' and its sequels have some decided 'Blue States' overtones. A key one is that there's a definite attraction between Liz and Detective Flynn. It may not be acted on, but it's there. Call "A Murder in the Garden Club" a 'cozy with a kick'.

As for me, I live near Boston in a town that feels a lot like Hardington. I'm 58 and married. I've never been a member of a garden club, but my wife was president of one and she shared certain stories about the people therein. If this book wins the contest and gets published, she will be burned in effigy (or worse) by her club.

I devour mysteries of all kinds. I look forward to reading the other entries.

My entry: Promiscuous Mode, Genre is Amateur Sleuth

What do you do if the boss doesn't know you've accepted a new consulting gig to work under cover in the Northwoods and you leave an "I'm outtahere" note for your husband and no note all for your boyfriend and then the guy who just hired you turns up murdered and there is no Plan B?
If you're Emma Lee Devens, you put your head down and drive an old Datsun pickup into DuBois, Wisconsin, determined to get to the bottom of the computer crime that you've been hired to solve. You realize the Northwoods aren't the sylvan retreat you wanted, and you look over your shoulder for the bad guys while snooping around the office in the middle of the night, and trying to get the lay of the land by lunching with "the girls" at the Coffee Pot Café, bass fishing with the bigwigs, and drinking with the locals at Nub's Pub. You adopt a stray cat because you're lonely.
The stress level skyrockets when your husband and boyfriend turn up importuning you on alternate weekends, a bad guy kidnaps the cat, and another body drops. You ramp up your powers of analysis and deduction to solve the computer crime and to unmask the murderer. You donate the Datsun to charity and trudge home for one of many reconciliations with your impossible husband. And then you're off again to solve another computer crime and crash into even crazier adventures in Festival Madness.


My Bio:

I am likely the only person you will ever meet who was born in Montana. I grew up on the High Plains of Colorado and moved down to Houston to pick up a B.A. in English from Rice University. After a stint in Chicago, I moved to New England where I spent twenty-plus years as an Information Systems nerd, a natural choice for an English major. Bet you didn't know that English Lit. and Computer Science go together like tomatoes and basil. That's because analytic skills are transferable to any occupation and helped me survive Dilbert-like re-engineering projects and the Millennium Bug. In my writing, I like to put a literary spin on technology, and to show technology's humor and quirkiness along with its scary aspects.

When I'm not writing, cooking or digging in the garden, I'm on a Baltic beach or at Burning Man in the Nevada desert researching my next novel. I belong to Toastmasters, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. I'm also a founding member and on the board of the New England Crime Bake Mystery Conference.

I was so busy rattling about myself, I forgot to post my First Chapter link (blame it on old-timers):

"False Positive"
The illusions of normalcy.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977151675

Hi, Judith! Your mystery sounds superb... is there a link? And, a question: how do you get to be a member of both Sisters in Crime and MWA without having been published?

Wow, I wish I had a great story to tell you about myself, but the truth is... I love to read and I'm a retired hair stylist who decided to write a book about a year ago, out of the blue, and "The Apollyon" was born just in time for the contest. I'm a little out of my league, panic stricken, and way over my head, but it's after midnight and too late to turn back now.

Dale, thanks for hosting! And a shout out to J.C.! I'm a former journalist, so I've written non-fiction for quite some time. I started writing fiction about five years ago. The novel entered in this contest is the first one I've ever let anyone read. I entered it in FC1 and got a huge amount of helpful critiques, which was the best thing about that contest. That and the other writers I've gotten to know on Gather.

Favorite authors make up such a large list because I read across a pretty broad spectrum. But the two who inspire me the most and give me the greatest pleasure to read are Margaret Atwood and James Ellroy.

June, do not be stricken by panic. We all are. LOL! I hope you'll enjoy the experience.

Regards, Ann

Two Birds, One Stone – first chapter

Thanks Ann, I appreciate your kind words. I've decided that even if I come in last, the experience is worth it's weight in gold. I have a feeling I'll gain a multitude of knowlege once I find my way around gather. Right now, I'm totally lost. God help me!

I've worked in a nuclear power plant polishing water and in the Bronx and Philadelphia as a paramedic. In addition I have worked in Emergency Management and administration since 1997, starting with appointment as the Division 6 (South Bronx & Harlem) Paramedic Coordinator for a year and than as FDNY Citywide Paramedic Coordinator (1997-2002). I currently work as a death investigator.

Since 1991 I've authored over 35 articles on EMS and emergency management. I wrote the new equipment column, The Gear Bag, for the Journal of Emergency medical Services (JEMS) for 2 years and have been writing the Medical/EMS column for the Domestic Preparedness Journal com since 2005.

I like hard boiled detective stories with believable plots but most important good characters. I'm a big fan of the damaged or imperfect hero. Having interesting locations or cultures isn't bad either. Mostly I like the puzzle, not the "who done it" part but rather the process the hero goes through to reach the villain. I guess that sounds like I'm a big fan of Police Procedural, but that's not it, it's all about how the hero puts scattered bits together to carry the day. Some of my favorites are Hammett, Spillane and Parker.

I'm also a big fan of sci fi and horror; again it's the solution to the plot that interests me, the best stories however characters have well crafted enough to keep me interested in the trip as well as the destination.

My entry in the first chapter contest is The Wages of Sin. It's set in the Bronx of 1995, a Russian Diplomat is killed and the lead investigators find a trail of sex and dugs. I hope my story falls into this description; it certainly is the ideal I was reaching for.

Thanks and be safe

JC

I've done technical writing (journal articles, engineering reports, manuals, proposals, etc.) for more than 30 years. I've always had the desire to write novels, but the mundane reality of making a living kept getting in the way. Now that I've taken early retirement, I finally have the time to pursue my dream of writing fiction. (I've written more than a hundred proposals for government and aerospace industry contracts, so some people actually think I've been writing fiction for years!)

Mystery is my favorite general reading genre. My favorite mystery writers include late greats such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Ed McBain, and Lawrence Sanders, and current authors Dick Francis, Sue Grafton, John Grisham, James W., Parnell, and Patricia Hall, P.D. James, J.A. Jance, Jonathan Kellerman, Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky, and Robert B. Parker. I've read most of the novels published by those writers, as well as many, many books by numerous other mystery authors.

I'm also a golf fanatic — I'm not very good at it, but I absolutely love to play. To me, golf is the purest form of entertainment ever devised by man. If I could figure out how to play during the night-time hours and during our frigid Minnesota winters, I wouldn't have any time for reading OR writing.

Given these two passions, it was only natural that my first effort would be a mystery novel featuring a golf fanatic. In Snowman, Matt Davidson, an underachieving golf bum and a somewhat nerdy engineer, inadvertently witnesses a shocking scene while playing golf, which launches him on an adventure that becomes an emotional roller coaster ride. Though unsure what to do or how to do it, he drops everything to help a stunningly beautiful woman he's never even met. His clumsy efforts soon entangle him in a web of sex, fraud, and abuse that could end up costing him his life.

Here's a link: Snowman -- Chapter 1

Hi everyone, I'm Lisa, and I love reading mystery novels, or novels about the 19th century, (Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite books).

My favorite part of the a good crime/mystery genre is the twist. I love books with an ending that you never saw coming, and I made sure to incorporate that in my novel. My book is "The Friend Behind the Mask." You can find it by clicking on my name below. Thanks everyone, this is going to be a great competition.

Hi everyone! Dale, thanks for hosting for us.
My name is Meredith and my novel is called One True Path. It's definitely a thriller, but I'm also working with mostly gay characters.
I've been writing for a few years now, mostly short stories, some even published, but this is the first novel I've completed.
I wish all of you the best of luck in the competition and welcome any feedback you might have on my work!

Hello Everyone, and a special thanks to Dale for being the gracious host.

My name is Demetriace, everyone who knows me calls me Dino and I invite you all to do the same. I am a native of Washington, D.C. our beloved nation's capital and the murder capital as well. I am the product of a public school system that was overrun with violence and staffed by burned out teachers. By the time I reached graduation from High School, I had been arrested over 10 times, stabbed twice, and shot in the back. I have seen over 75 percent of my friends killed on the streets and of the few who remained I watched them shipped off to prison.

I had never read a book for pleasure until I was serving time in prison on an assault charge and an "old head" lifer handed me a book by an author named Donald Goines. I read this small paperback and cried when I completed the final page. It was the first thing I had ever completed in my life. A year after my release, I walked away from my life on the streets and began the journey to become the man that I am now.

I left the mean streets of Washington, D.C. for the rual roads of Richmond, Kentucky where I attended college. During my time there I shared some of my experiences with a professor who later encouraged me to share my story as a way to exercise the deamons that still plagued me at the time. It was then that I began writing The Rhythm of the Streets .

I am by FAR not a traditionally trained writer, but it seems I have a gift for just telling the story. If it seems my novel is a bit too detailed, it's because I am writing from very vivid memories of experiences I have had to endure. I have infused the brutal reality into this work of fiction as a way to teach as well as entertain.

... I cry everytime I talk about this work because it is something born from me out of a great deal of pain. It is my soul's work and ... I just feel overwhelmingly greatful to be a part of this experience.

I sincerely thank you all for reading The Rhythm of the Streets and I thank you for allowing me to share this small part of myself with you.

Just peeking in, I'm not in the FCC. Cool Dale.

Hello Dale, I'm brand new to Gather.com. I'd never heard of this site before this contest. Thanks for hosting this page.

I hope everyone will take time to read my story. It's called The Case of the Curious Cousin and is one in a series of books I've done about a young Investigative Reporter who of course, helps save the world.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977164448


I've been writing for years not just for fun but sometimes to preserve my sanity.

Writing is a release from everyday pressures and has been my salvation over the years since I write mostly when I can't sleep at night due to pressures events in my life.

The seed for the Jade Andrews series for instance, came when my husband was dying from Parkinson's Disease.

About the only other article I've had published was a story I wrote when my son Steve, died from Aids in 1997. You can read that article at:http://www.thebody.com/content/art46.html. It was one of the hardest stories I ever wrote and it was one of the first first person stories published by The Body. The rest of the stories having come mainly from other publications.


I was born in New Mexico but have lived most of my adult life either in Arizona or Texas. In Texas I worked for Travelocity.com as Manager of International Training and Support, traveling in Europe and Canada setting up call centers and training agents on software. I retired in 2002 and now live in Arizona where I spend time either in the pool, reading or writing.


I love to read, love to write and love to eat, all 105 lbs. of me. I also love to travel and have had the chance to do a lot of it both for business and for pleasure. My favorite city is Paris, France, but I've been to China, Africa, and Japan, Malaysia, Canada and Mexico, and loved those too.

I like Dino above am grateful to have the chance to to be in this contest and hope you will read and comment on my First Chapter entry.


Bonnie W

Hello, all. My name is Todd and I've been writing for eight years now. I work nights in the newspaper industry as an editor, which allows me lots of time during the day to think of ways to avoid writing. I've completed three novels and am currently beginning my fourth.

My entry, READY FREDDY, was my second fininshed product. If you'd like, you can check it out here: Ready Freddy

Some of my favorite authors are Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Anne Tyler, Nelson DeMille, Caleb Carr and Harlan Coben. The last book I read was TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer. The best book I've read in the past year has been SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessel. It's an amazingly good read.

In addition to writing, I also enjoy photography. I've posted some of my photos on here. Feel free to check those out and tell me what you think.

Thanks, Dale - this is a great idea.

I'm Kenna, mother to five wonderful children, wife to an incredibly understanding and tolerant man, a professional environmental engineer by career, and, as I've recently discovered, a creative writer in my soul.

Like a couple others here, I've been trained as a technical writer - it pays the bills, and it's very practical. However, I have always been an avid reader - Agatha Christie, JA Jance, Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, PD James, and many, many others. A few years ago, as a stress reliever, I began writing fan fiction.

It was fun, but I finally decided that I definitely had an original novel in my head, and the result was my entry, Identity Crisis. It took me about 6 months to get the entire book out of my head, and another two months of editing to get to the ms that I submitted for this contest. I've begun preliminary work on a sequel, which I'm sure will consume me soon enough.

Creative writing is almost an undeniable compulsion for me, now. I find myself thinking about my current story line during any idle moments, which tend to be brief, between child crises, running our new Market, and demanding environmental consulting clients. It then becomes nearly unbearable until I can actually get any coalesced ideas down on paper (well, into the computer).

I think what is different about my story is the interrelation between the two main characters, Nancy and Andy, who are mother and daughter. Andy also has a young daughter, Sam. I've always been struck by the number of female protagonists in mysteries who are loners. I don't know about you, but most of the people I know have so many varied, and at time polar-opposite demands on their time, and I wanted to portray that constant tug of war in my story.

My goal in writing this was to creat engaging characters that the reader feels a desire to get to know. I hope I've accomplished this with Identity Crisis, and I hope, if you get a chance, you'll take a look and provide critical feedback.

Thanks and good luck, everyone!

Aaack. I set this up and then didn't add my own bio:

I've been in all three of First Chapters contests so far. I made it to the semi-finals in FCR with a different novel. I'm a computer person by trade, and an avid amateur historian. I self-published a print on demand book of Alternate History essays called American Indian Victories a few years ago, and actually made a little money doing it, which is unusual for that sort of venture. I have a short police procedural/Science Fiction story called The BEMs in the Amazon Shorts program. I've also had a few paid articles published by the Military/Political website StrategyPage.com.

My entry in the Crime contest is called Char. Here's a blurb:

One Fourth of July evening near a small town in near-future Wisconsin, Char of the Real People walks out of a mud hole that she didn't walk into, wearing a deerskin skirt and carrying a crude wooden spear. She has a larger than life-sized wolf-head tattoo on her chest. She is bleeding from a spear wound in her leg. She finds herself in what to her is a strange and empty forest. She is apparently being chased by mysterious and powerful enemies. Is she dreaming? She hopes so, and that's the only explanation she can think of, but if this is a dream it seems frighteningly solid. Two worlds are about to collide and the result could be murder.

I worked to create a believable, sympathetic, and yet unique and mysterious character in Char. I'm enthusiastic about this chapter and about the book. If you have a little time and would like to drop by and read, rate, and hopefully comment on Char I would be most grateful.

The direct link to Char is:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977174399

Hi all. Thank you Dale for hosting. And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I'm driving up to R.I. to see family at 4 a.m., so I'm currently debating whether to go to sleep or play around on Gather...Strangely, that decision seems to have been made.

Some thoughts on my crime novel, which is called The Well Trained Moose.

The story is set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, as well as Montreal, Brooklyn and Harlem. It features a retired NYPD detective who has become a private investigator. He fled New York in the aftermath of the blackout and subsequent riots in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 1977. The story starts in 1981. The P.I.'s name is Fick Redmond. The set up is that a dead body appears outside his house in Vermont. It is a naked, obese man, who also just happens to be a criminal figure from the Harlem underworld. His name is Porkchop Sides. (You can see that I really went for subtlety in this one.) I had a hell of a good time writing this. Hopefully that comes through. My goal is to stick with this character and write a series from his perspective, developing recurring characters and settings, as well. Certain characters become associated with their haunts. I want the writing about the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, as well as the atmospheric New York City of the late 1970's/early 1980's to separate Fick in that way. However, I also hope that the character is more interesting than the landscape! You can only write about snow in so many ways. (I know, I know, the Inuit supposedly have 400 words for snow, but I just googled that and wikipedia claims it's rural legend.) Anyway, sorry for the digression.

Crime novels are my passion, but I've come to them in a circuitous way - perhaps via the more spy thriller variety, combined with a dollop of "western" American writing. (Quotes are because that's such a nebulous term.)

Authors I recommend: the great P.D. James, Colin Dexter, James Crumley, Howard Frank Mosher, Henning Mankell, and Ian Rankin. I think good writing is almost always married to place and time, and my hope is that I've picked a good hook in that way. And, though she is less well known, Lynda La Plante, who wrote the screenplays for the Prime Suspect t.v. series (BBC).

My bio? I'll keep this blessedly short. I've been writing for years. I've published some poetry in journals, but no books of any kind. That's the dream, just as with everyone in this contest.

I am a high school English teacher at a prep school in New York City, formerly of Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Montana, and Vermont.

Best to all and please check out my chapter if you're at all intrigued.
Thanks.
Ricky

The Well Trained Moose

I forgot someone really fantastic and (in truth) important to me: JAMES ELLROY. Read the L.A. trilogy (White Noise, L.A. Confidential, The Big Nowhere). He's electric.

It feels a bit bizarre even talking about all this. The reason is, I did not know I was a writer until I'd gotten clean and sober, off the streets, no highschool diploma, and went to a junior college to be an alcohol counselor. My first writing class scared the hell out of me, and when we were asked to write a description of our best friend, and the next day the professor had my story to read aloud, I thought I was in trouble. I grew up under circumstances that left me with a raving case of PTSD and the self knowledge of a particle board. When this professor began to read, I tried to slip beneath the table. Did I say I was 27 years old? Never finished tenth grade, was a hood...in those days that is what a gang member was called, at least in Maine. So this was really new territory. the fellow next to me, an older man kept jabbing me, asking me how did I do that. I spit back, "I don't know" I thought he was asking me how wretched can a person be. I mean, my family still hates me. I didn't exactly have a launching pad. I was terrified. So when she was done reading, and everyone agreed that this was the work of a real writer, I was really confused.
I was not allowed to stay at the junior college and was pushed into the university at Orono Maine. I studied acting, a little bit of writing, and the sciences etc. I kept breaking records academically so I was pushed out of that nest and into Smith College. I had no idea what Smith College was, that I had literally broken the sound barrier by being there. I wrote more at Smith, and also did more acting. But nothing serious. When I acted and recieved high praise, I would try to avoid getting cornered by a director who might ask me to audition for them. I started writing. Play writing. The same thing happened. I excelled, so I made myself scarce. Still I graduated with honours and Magna. Some people including professors wanted me to proceed into life as a writer. I became a master of ed. and worked with youth and created a street theatre group. after two years, ptsd caught up with me, and I hospitalized myself. I have a son who was eleven at the time. He is my pride and joy.
After the hospitaliztion I could not get back onto my feet financially or emotionally. I haven't written since college. that was sixteen years ago. and in reality, I have not written much at all. I've never been published.
The only reason I joined gather was to see if maybe the people were right and that I was a writer. But I didn't participate until at least June. As I got writing it felt good. But I was and continue to feel like a loser, In that I am living in poverty, my son and grandchildren are in CA. I am in ME. he has a great Raggae band in Santa Cruz. I feel like a lump. So I was laying here looking out one of my windows in sept. thinking, do I try this contest or not. Ok, Iwill try. The reaction to my work was pretty strong. But I did not think I would compete because there was little time. Yet a part of me was saying, "You have a God Given Gift, Use it. Or sit here and this time maybe your emotional russian roulette will help you opt out of this life. A couple of new friends on Gather pushed me relentlessly to enter the contest. I am dyslexic so one of those friends helped alot with the editing. I reverse things.
And I entered. The response has been far beyond what I expected. So much so that I have been sick for three weeks, and part of me says, just the flu. But the reality is, I am going against the biggest farce of my life. My family said that I didn't make sense, and I literally stopped trying to communciate for years. This is a major win for me. The contest yes, if that happened. However, it is the emotional impact of saying no to my family and to a life long belief that I am a loser. Oh, by the way. Ihave been clean and sober for 27 years. that certainly helped.
That is all I can write. I feel sick again. I am a mess. lol.

I'm not competing; just thanking you Dale for providing a place to meet the writers.

Hi Dale!

I'm not TOO late to the party... Thanks for the information / message letting us know you created this group. :)


So, you asked us to tell you a little about ourselves.... I've been writing for the last 7 years. I don't have anything published (except a case study), yet.

I write in a variety of genres. Mystery/suspense is my favorite, but I also write SciFi and Romance. Most of my stories have at least a romantic subplot. I've written some "romantica" for fun.

What I like and don't like in books and stories... Cliched characters and simplistic plots are dull and boring. I love a good mystery or lively adventure. I generally read mysteries and classics. Three Musketeers trilogy is among my favorites as is Pride and Prejudice. I've read just about every Poirot mystery and have read the complete Sherlock Holmes collection of cases (twice). I've always preferred English locked door mysteries, but have recently tapped Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler for something different. The thing I dislike about hard-boiled detective stories is just that no one is good. No one is innocent... I know that's the point, but I'm not quite so disillusioned as Spade and Marlow.

I've found that I've thrown down quite a few romance novels in disgust, lately. BAD dialogue, no attention to detail / description, no believability (sci-fi romance genre). Before the bad romance novels I found (market research), the last book I tossed down in disgust was Lasher by Anne Rice.

Favorite Authors: Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen, Martha Grimes, Agatha Christie.

In the way of other things we feel comfortable sharing... I guess I'm just happy to relate to others with similar passions. My husband is an engineer who has never been able to understand me. We're currently (recently) separated, mostly because I spent too much time (in his perspective, I guess?) pursuing writing and not enough time with him. But writing has been my in my blood since I was 8. :-/

What I like about my entry... It's a story about redemption. I gladly fail at being quite so hard-boiled and taking a detective who starts out in a similar vein to Marlowe - tired, disillusioned with people, hard/rough around the edges, and the heroine manages to, despite his protests, redeem just a bit of his lost faith in humanity.

I'm sure it's pure fantasy that it could serve as a new genre in women's fiction, but I'd like to believe that the nostalgia of the original genre is there along with a softening to some degree that makes it appealing to more women than the traditional hard-boiled detective stories.

I like that it weaves into a real-life (historical) events, which was quite accidental when I sat down to write the very first scene in my head. And I like that while the title was difficult at first to come to, by the end of the first chapter - the last line struck and suddenly my title was applicable. Before then, I wasn't entirely sure why I had this list of titles that had to do with rain...

And finally, I like that there really was a woman on the Las Vegas police force in 1954 - who had served stints as a secretary. When I wrote it into my chapter, I didn't even know.... It's funny how that works out sometimes. :)

Anyway, I didn't mean to write another novel. Just wanted to chime in. Thanks for creating this community!

~Rose

Sahara Downpour

Envy.......http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977139249

Well I have been writing since I was in about the sixth grade. I used to write stories and let my teachers read them. I enjoyed their feedback and got a kick out them saying that I had a scary and dark imagination. It was a great outlet for me because I was bit of a loner. I have never competed in a competition like this and I am really nervous. I have never had anything published but that is my dream.

I enjoy mystery and thrillers and if I am not reading them I am always tuned into court tv or watching crime shows.

My favorite author of all time is Stephen King. I think he is a super story teller and that it what I really describe myself as.

I also write poetry and short stories and alot of Sci-fi fantasy types of shorts. Actually my main character Envy was converted from a character in a series of stories I wrote about a Sucubbus.

The one thing that I like about my book is the fact that I am telling the story from Envy's prospective. I am wanting to draw you into her feelings, thoughts and experiences. I wanted to make her into a victim, a villain and then back into that helpless victim and the only way to do that is to experience and understand her anger and rage. I wanted this story to be different from the stories that you read and hear about what a serial killer does but not fully understand how or why or what was going on the mind of the person at the time certain events take place. I want someone to read her story and be frightened because you can almost relate and feel for the bad guy or girl.

So I hope you get a chance to check out Envy
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977139249

Hi, everyone and many thanks to Dale!

I started writing stories as soon as I learned to read. I wrote a couple of romance novels before writing this mystery, but as yet, am not published, unless a college newspaper, college research project, church newsletter and Letters to the Editor in our local newpaper count.

Like most people, I like a story to engage me--whether it is with gentleness or strength. I want it to propel me along so I am disappointed when it ends, because I want more. For me that takes engaging characters and a believable story.

I read many authors and genres, but love a good mystery--Vince Flynn, Patricia Cornwell, Tami Hoag, Jonathan Kellerman. I aslo loved Thorn Birds!

My novel, MURDER IN WINNEBAGO COUNTY, began as a way to explain my father's death when there were no satisfying explanations. It is a story of a woman consumed with hatred for those she believes are responsible for her son's suicide and the sheriff's deputy and an investigator who are determined to identify and stop her. To build and maintain suspense, the novel is slightly more action than character-driven, but relationships and romance add emotional depth to the characters. In fact, I like the characters so much, I have several more books planned for them.

Personally, I am blessed with a wonderful family. I enjoy reading, writing, gardening, community theater, traveling. I worked in the criminal justice system for nine years, as a corrections officer and deputy sheriff. I also worked with mentally ill, chemically dependent, chronically homeless people for two years, in a congressional office for 2 years and held some other part time jobs when my kids were little. Great positions, filled with stories I can tap into for inspiration.

I invite you all to read MURDER IN WINNEBAGO COUNTY and offer any comments you'd like to make. I sincerely appreciate your time. I am doing my best to get through the list, but there are a lot of entries! I will make a note of everyone in this group and be sure to read your entries. Best of luck to all of you.

Hi everyone!
I hold degrees in Business and Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin and enjoyed a successful business career for many years. However, ten years ago, I resigned from the "corporate world" to pursue my love of writing, adopt a child, and get married--in that order. Since that time, I've written two novels: INTIMATE MURDER (see the link below to review for the Court TV Crime Writer's Contest) and CONFINED, a commercial fiction piece. I've spent a considerable amount of time studying the craft, as well as revising, revising, revising each book. I am busy writing another novel and marketing both INTIMATE MURDER AND CONFINED to agents.

Thanks Dale for creating this thread! When I first saw it, I thought I had to "publish" the bio, which I did, but now I realize I just could have threaded it! Oh well, I'm new to Gather and still trying to figure everything out.

I invite you all to read INTIMATE MURDER, and if you think it is worth publishing, rate it a 10!

Here is the link to the first chapter of INTIMATE MURDER

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977174021

Hmmm, I've been writing since the day I discovered that books were written by people.  Until college, I wrote primarily poetry (and one very boring novel because, after all, how much do you really have to say when you are still a teenager?).  In college, I fell in love with psychology and continued into graduate school.  My original plan was to get a master's degree and then return to being a starving writer.  But, after I got the master's, I took a job in a law office as a receptionist to earn the bucks to move to San Francisco ~~ a place I thought ideal for starving writers.  While working in the law office, I started reading legal materials and became fascinated with how the law thinks people learn, remember, and use information.  In short, the law's assumptions were miles apart from what was happening in psychology.  I decided to research how juries evaluate evidence for my dissertation.  A few more years researching this topic post-doc.  Then, faced with the need to make a living, I became a consulting jury psychologist.  Again, the plan was to spend a couple of years consulting and then return to being . . . well, this is repetitive.    Being a jury psychologist was great fun, endlessly challenging and almost never boring.  During these years, I wrote rarely.  And the years sped by . . . and then I figured if I was ever going to write those books, it was long past time to do so.  

Given my background as a jury psychologist, I've been writing books about courtrooms and crazy people.   In the process, I've raking in the rejections trying to break into print.  The book I entered in this contest centers on Lenora Huntington, a  prestigious art gallery owner in her seventies . . . with a trail of dead daughters behind her.  A lesser theme reflects the influence and tactics that can be wielded in a trial by wealthy defendants. 

I read a lot of commercial fiction but am captured by good writing in any genre, any field.  I grew up around writers and have always enjoyed them, their play with words, the way they see the world, the way elaborate ideas and plots can grow from tiny, ordinary kernels in life.

I appreciate all your comments and will read as many of your chapters as I can before the deadline.  The direct link to my chapter for A Web of Guilt is:  www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977171654

Thanks to Dale for hosting this lounge  and good luck to all!

Sidenote: I'm on a Mac and I have no idea why I keep getting these strange A's in my posting. It looks right and then I post . . . Sorry.

Some programs and platforms mangle the formatting of certain characters. I have similar problems sometimes where odd characters appear in place of quotation marks or apostrophes.

JC


The Wages of Sin

The Wages of Sin - Back page synopsis

The Wages of Sin - Reviews

The Wages of Sin – Author Bio

Thanks for providing a place to trasmit this info. Great idea!

Thanks Dale this is a wonderful idea and a great way to get to know more about the writers.

Blessings