Please Welcome My Guest, Mystery Author, Jean Henry Mead

Today I'm happy to host Jean Henry Mead, a delightful mystery writer and Internet friend.
 

Jean Henry Mead

 Jean Henry Mead is a mystery/suspense and western historical novelist. She's also an award-winning photojournalist. One of her fortes is interviewing writers, actors, politicians, artists and ordinary people who have accomplished extraordinary things. She began her writing career as a California news reporter/editor/photographer,first in Central California and later in San Diego. Mead later transferred to Casper, Wyoming, to serve as a staff writer for the statewide newspaper. While there she served as editor of In Wyoming Magazine and two small presses. She also freelanced for other magazines, both domestic and abroad, among them the Denver Post.. Her first book was published in 1982. She's since published fourteen novels and nonfiction books.
You can reach Jean at http://www.jeanhenrymead.com/


Writing with Humor

by Jean Henry Mead

I’m not a comedian but I’ve found that adding humor to my books increases sales. In fact, I’ve received several reviews stating that the reviewer hoped I would add more humor in my next novel. A Village Shattered takes place in a central California retirement village where Sew and So club members are dying alphabetically. Nothing humorous about that, but I added a couple of quirky characters to the mix: a love starved widow and a rednecked cassanova, which not only makes it a fun read but enjoyable to write.

The second book in my Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series is Dairy of Murder, which takes on a more series tone when Dana Logan and Sarah Cafferty, two widows traveling in their motorhome, learn that Dana’s sister has died and her husband claims it was suicide. Dana knows her sister Georgi, a mystery writer, would never take her own life, so she and her friend Sarah set out to prove it was murder. Along the way they stumble over more bodies and a vicious drug gang. The only humor comes from Sarah’s dialogue and reviewers complained that it wasn’t as funny as A Village Shattered.

My first novel, Escape on the Wind, republished twice and retitled Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, was probably my most humorous as well as my best selling novel to date. It features a kidnapped young heiress, Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and a little known member of the gang, Tom “Peep O’Day, an alcoholic horse thief who nearly takes over the plot because he was so much fun to write about. Good-natured and bungling, he causes the gang to botch the Belle Fourche bank robbery.

I added humor to my first, recently released children’s novel, Mystery of Spider Mountain, as well as the second, The Ghost of Crimson Dawn, which I’m currently writing. I’ve also added humor to my nonfiction books. Casper Country: Wyoming’s Heartland, was researched by spending two years behind a microfilm machine reading 97-years’ worth of newspapers, dating from 1889. I’ll never do that again, but I found some funny incidents to add to the centennial history book, which was eventually used as a textbook at Casper College.

One of the things I remember was an article about three young boys stealing watermelons from a railroad boxcar. They were housed briefly in the county jail during the early 1900s. When police were asked about the case by a reporter, an officer remarked about how good the watermelons tasted. I doubt the young boys had watermelon for dessert.

In my latest novel, Murder on the Interstate, Dana and Sarah discover the body of a beautiful young woman shot and killed along I-40 in northern Arizona while traveling in their motorhome. The killer returns to make sure his victim is dead and disables their RV. A woman trucker then comes to their rescue and they chase the killer in “Big Ruby” MCurdy’s produce truck to record his license number. Along the way Ruby alerts other truckers to keep an eye out for his dark red Dodge pickup and the resultant conversations are humorous. When the two women find themselves trapped in a Hummer during a flash flood, they’re cracking jokes to prevent hysteria.

To research the book, I drove my own 36-foot motorhome along the same mountainous interstate while listening to truckers on my CB radio, so the language is authentic.

                                      To order Murder on the Interstate, go to http://tinyurl.com/3qvolo5.

                                      To learn more about Jean and her books, you're welcome to visit her at her website at http://www.jeanhenrymead.com/.

Please leave a comment below to welcome Jean to Acme Authors Link.

Pavlov's Dog is Wagging its Tail for Writers

Robert W. Walker’s Psych 101 Questions -- Over time, I have considered these 10 questions that delve into the relationship between psychology and writing the novel, and being a novelist. In other words, what has psychology got to do with imagination and creating whole worlds populated with people out of ink marks on a page? The following questions and answers delve into the psychology of the author himself, and eventually will also ask about the psychology of characters an author creates: This is Psych 101 for Authors and readers interested in the craft and creative impulse.

Q#2 -- How does 'abnormal behavior' enter into the realm of creative writing and fiction?

Answer: Have you read any one of my books? OK...risky word phrase this 'abnormal behavior' as you have to ask then what is 'normal' behavior in a species that 'won' out as the meat eater of all the great apes? Authors are forever dealing with perceptions of what is right and what is wrong, what is good, what is evil, and the common error of taking things at face value. Is writing and painting and creating 'abnormal' in itself since, like actors, all artists have to be driven and obsessed to become a player in this field? This question may be too complex to answer here, but let's keep exploring.

Appearance is seldom what it seems in a novel, especially a mystery or suspense or thriller. Societal norms are taken to task. Since I write about murder and often times serial murder, murder is my stock and trade, my INC. This means 'abnormal behavior' is my bread and butter but once removed as I have killed no one except on a stage. My evil antagonists are always into aberrant and sickening words and actions; what he says, thinks, and does is who he or she is (see Final Edge for the worst female killer in all the history of books! Laurelie Blodgett). Such characters are motivated by sick fantasies, mania, fear, psychological disorders, obsessions, phobias, actual physical deformities, actual illnesses just as are Shakespeare's worst villainous scum like Iago. They are motivated often by 'abnormal' beliefs, but often such 'abnormal' beliefs come out of popular cultural beliefs, legends, even religion as in anti-religious behavior on a grand scale. Some sick beliefs have a foothold in historical fact about mankind--as in cannibalistic behavior, perhaps even necrophilia--sex with the dead. Certainly there are enough scatologically disgusting elements about mankind and his history to provide fodder for many, many an aberrant behavior or belief system or 'nutty' fantasy, desire, want, goal.

I don't have to mention Stephen King and Anne Rice made a killing on abnormal behavior, do I? Still there is a fine line at work here. Abnormal can slip over into caricature and unintended funnies in the blink of a Cyclop's eye if one is not careful. How far from the 'norm' can our 'abnormal' Grandma Grimwood go before she becomes a twisted Dickensian comical granny?

In books about psychotics, sociopaths, organized and disorganized killers of every stripe there is great latitude in defining abnormal, but in all cases the sociopathic monster has to have its\his\her roots in humanity and where we've come from...from the primitive lizard brain to the present...roots are sunk deep. This is why the abnormal among us, in the end, are human after all. Humanity swings a wide arc across the rainbow from purity to the unspeakably vile and no author can turn away and not see this if the story demands it. Those who do turn a blind eye to the absolute end of the spectrum, the deepest rung in the pit miss an entire part of the human condition and it's like being color blind, missing an entire spectrum of the rainbow itself.

OK...believe it or not.  Am sorry as I had promised Abnormal Behavior.  Will have to hold on that...Pavlov chewed my notes. Will get to it. Meanwhile, next Friday right here I will take up Question #3 which is:  How does 'health and stress' play a role in fiction writing?

Catch my new ebook on Kindle - Killer Instinct, a Dr. Jessica Coran novel...in fact her first introduction, and by the way, do DO do leave a comment!
Rob Walker

http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.makeminemystery.com/

A Mystery In Our Own Backyard, Literally - by Morgan Mandel

Thursday night, the DH and I went to a program at our library lasting until 9:30. Afterwards, we stopped at my brother's house to pick up my bookmarks, so we didn't get home until after 10pm.

The next morning I noticed a few strange things. When I went to walk Rascal, thank goodness she was on her leash, because our gate was open. We never leave the gate open, because we often let her out in the yard by herself. If she got away, since she's deaf she wouldn't hear us call for her.

We went on our usual walk. Then, when I went to put her duty bag into the garbage on the patio, I noticed something else strange. The grill had been knocked over. Its cover was off, the rack part was on the grass. Someone had been in our yard overnight.

The idea made me very uneasy. What was going on?

Saturday I stopped at my neighbor's house. That's when she mentioned the street had been blocked off Thursday night, a patrol car was parked in front of her house and it was shining it's light in the direction of our garage. The patio is on the other side of it. This was around 9:30
She didn't know what was going on. That's when I told her about the strangeness in our yard.

I called the police, but got no answer. She followed up and someone called back. Apparently, a runaway, I don't know how old, was being sought by the police that night and was caught. Part of the time the runaway had to have been in our yard, maybe even hiding there when we came home.

In Killer Career, something horrible happens in the heroine's neighbor's yard. You don't expect bad things to happen so close. The first reaction is disbelief, followed by nervousness.

At least my own mystery was solved. I know the person the police were looking for was caught. Has anything strange like that ever happened to you or someone you know? Please share.

Morgan Mandel
http://www.morganmandel/
http://chooiceonepublishing.com/
Killer Career now available at most outlets
and Barnes & Noble