Crime Writers Caught Recommending Crime - Day 16

Today's recommendation comes from Beth Groundwater who is known for her Claire Hanover gift basket mystery series. And in 2011 she's adding to her bibliography with the beginning her new series, DEADLY CURRENTS. Beth really knows how to enjoy her reading time, as you can tell from her photo below.

Beth is recommending Nancy Pickard's novel, THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING. Here's why Beth thinks this book would make a great holiday gift:

"I absolutely loved Nancy Pickard's The Virgin of Small Plains, but The Scent of Rain and Lightning is even better. Nancy is a magician at making you feel what her characters are feeling and at weaving enough suspense into her writing that you just know something dreadful is going to happen on the next page, and you have to get to it to find out what. Nancy's mysteries transcends their genre into mainstream, almost literary, fiction because of the beautiful prose, the spot-on descriptions of the Kansas cowboy country setting and life, the complexity and depth of the characters, and the masterful way they're plotted."

Who can argue with that? I happen to know that Beth is off on a photo safari - I'm very jealous - so it was great of her to make time to send in a recommendation. And obviously, this is a recommendation that comes from the heart! Many thanks Beth! Hope you're getting fabulous photos!

Today my recommendation is an amazing debut. John Verdon knocked it out of the park with THINK OF A NUMBER. The suspense, the plot concept, the characters. This was an incredible book and he'll have a challenge to raise the bar on this book! I gave this book to my dad a couple months ago and he's just now getting to it in his TBR pile but he said to me this morning, "I just started THINK OF A NUMBER and it is really good." So you have votes from the both of us on this one!

Hope your holiday shopping is going off relatively painlessly. I've finished my gift for the blogger exchange and am ready to get it in the mail. Hope my Secret Santee likes it!

Happy Reading!

You Have the Right to Six Words - Better Hold on to Your Hats!

I have a loaded post for you this week - Week 9 of YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SIX WORDS! - so folks, hold on to your hats and away we go...


We'll start with our recap memoir. Beth Groundwater is the author of the Gift Basket Designer mystery series. Beth spent the first part of her career working in the computer science field where her writing talent was put to use in the technical arena. She wrote manuals and proposals and reports. But good planning and goal-setting allowed Beth to retire from the computer software world early and put her writing skills to work in the fiction arena. When she's not writing, you can probably find Beth in her garden or in the setting for her second Gift Basket Designer mystery series novel, on the ski slopes. Beth's first novel, A REAL BASKET CASE was a nominee for the "Best First Novel" Agatha Award in 2007. Earlier this year, Beth followed that up with the sequel TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET accompanied by an ambitious blog tour. Beth certainly knows the value of hard work:

Networked and persisted until surprise - published!

New on our list of memoirists this week is a man who is far from new to the world of crime fiction writing. He's a New York Times best selling author many times over and he leaves us on the edges of our seats with thrillers such as THE MILLIONAIRES, THE ZERO GAME, THE BOOK OF FATE, and of course his newest hit THE BOOK OF LIES, which was released this year in paperback. Of course you know I'm talking about Brad Meltzer. Brad wrote his first New York Times best seller THE TENTH JUSTICE while a student at Columbia Law School. As a matter of fact, Columbia gave him credit for writing this book! Brad's books have been translated into over 25 languages. But not only do we know Brad for his crime fiction novels, he's also a comic book writer. Last year he won an Eisner Award for his JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. And he was also one of the co-creators of the television show JACK & BOBBY. It seem contradictory to the genre Brad writes in but by golly:

I'm a Meltzer, not a fighter.

Lisa Lutz has been a bit of a nomad for the first part of her life. She attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, the University of Leeds in England and San Francisco State University. After those college adventures, and no college degree, Lisa set to work on trying to be a screenwriter. And she succeeded in writing and optioning a screenplay called PLAN B. However, she also learned that screenwriting was not where she would stay in her career. So, she packed herself up and headed out to - Westernville, New York? Yep! And that is where she wrote the bulk of THE SPELLMAN FILES. Since then, Lisa had found her way to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and most recently she's made her way back to San Francisco. She's also found her way to two more Spellman publications: CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS and REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS. And she's found herself nominated for both a "Best Novel" Edgar Award and a "Best Mystery Novel" Macavity Award. Her fourth book in the Spellman series, THE SPELLMANS STRIKE AGAIN, is due out at the beginning of 2010. And Lisa thought she didn't get around near enough, so her books are extending her reach. The Spellmans are published in over 20 languages around the world. For Lisa:

Six words is WAY too long.

The final hitter in this powerhouse line-up is also a writer who is no stranger to successful books. His ten mystery and suspense novels have won him nominations for Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Agatha and Macavity awards. Jeff Abbott is the international best-selling author of two highly acclaimed series: the first being his Jordan Poteet mystery series about a librarian and then his Whit Mosley series about a justice of the peace and a detective. He has also penned three standalone thrillers and tomorrow he will release TRUST ME, his fourth standalone and eleventh novel. In his new novel, Jeff will introduce Luke Dantry who works tracking extremists on the Internet. However, the safety of his computer job will soon be shattered.

The novel is not Jeff's only writing format, however. He has also written short stories included in such anthologies as BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and THE WORLD'S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES. So what is a successful thriller writer's favorite book? Why it's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, of course!

Jeff says, "writing brought me my wife, a career I never dreamed I’d have, tons of opportunities, getting to meet the most interesting people in the world . . .you get the idea." So it is not hard at all to understand why his memoir would be:

Writing opens a thousand doors.

This week I think we loaded the bases and hit a grand slam! Many thanks to Beth, Brad, Lisa, and Jeff for being great sports. Are you groaning from my baseball analogies yet? This was a fun week of memoirs. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope to see you back here again, same time next week! Happy Reading!


Bouchercon countdown: 85 days!

Getting Creative with Beth Groundwater

Beth Groundwater is the author of the Gift Basket Designer Mystery series featuring Claire Hanover. Beth's first book, A REAL BASKET CASE was nominated for an Agatha award in the Best First Novel category. Now Claire is back in TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, which Kirkus Reviews claims "...leaves the bunny slope behind, offering some genuine black-diamond thrills.” So, here today, joining me on her book blog tour to share the ins and outs of her writing, is Beth Groundwater!

Q: Beth, you wrote “Freddie” stories when you were in the fifth and sixth grades, then you did an independent study in high school that enabled you to dabble in fiction and poetry. So, what made you decide to earn your college degrees in psychology and computer science?

Beth: Like many young people, I had many interests when I was a teenager and young adult. Besides writing, I was good at math and fascinated with how computers worked and the logical construction of software programs. I was also interested in how the human “computer” or brain worked, particularly left-right brain hemisphere differentiation since I am left-handed. I took courses in both subjects in college. I couldn't decide which I enjoyed more, so I double-majored.

Q: You were able to retire early and devote your time to writing. Was that always the plan or did something happen along the way to steer you in that direction?

Beth: My husband and I always had the plan to retire by the time we were 50, so we could pursue whatever interested us after that. To do this, we lived on one salary and saved the other one. The last couple of years that I worked, I started writing short stories and realized how much I enjoyed writing fiction again, so I decided to try to get some of them published after I retired. And that just snowballed!

Q: Did you always have aspirations to write mystery? What motivated you to write in this genre?

Beth: I tried a few different genres before settling on mystery. My first novel-length manuscript, which may never get published, was a futuristic romantic suspense. Though I was told my love scenes were well-done, I was never comfortable writing them. Many of my published short stories were mainstream, because that's the type of short stories I read. In 2003, I wrote a hard science fiction novella, The Epsilon Eridani Alternative, that earned an Honorable
Mention in the prestigious Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Science Fiction Novella contest in Barcelona, Spain. It will finally be published this fall in eBook, eSerial, and paperback form by Virtual Tales. I decided that too much
research was required for science fiction. But once I wrote my first mystery novel, A Real Basket Case, I became hooked on the genre. That's because I'm a puzzle person, loving all kinds of puzzles—crossword, jigsaw, sudoku, you name it—and that's what a mystery basically is, a puzzle.

Q: You’ve said that you spend three to four months prepping a novel. What’s involved in that preparation process for you? What kind of research is involved for you in the gift basket designer mystery series?

Beth: That preparation process involves three main parts: research, character profiling, and creating a scene-by-scene outline of the plot. I research the setting, how the local police operate in that setting (since I use real locations), activities my sleuth must do in the book (such as snow-shoeing in To Hell in a Handbasket), killing methods and firearms, etc., etc. To research the gift basket business, I interviewed people who have their own gift basket businesses, toured their work areas, read trade journals, and so on.

Q: How about the writing process itself? Do you outline your plot ahead of time and then fit your characters to the events or is your writing more character driven, sometimes taking you off the beaten path?

Beth: As my answer to question 4 states, I plan out my plots ahead of time, though I do stay flexible and allow for creativity during the writing process, so scenes may change or new ones may be created. I also try to get to know my characters really well before I start writing the book, so if I put two characters in a scene together, each with a goal in mind, they start talking and acting in my head and I just transcribe the conversation. I love being in that zone when everything works. If a character balks at what I need her to do in a scene, then I step back and re-evaluate, because I may be trying to make her do something that's out of character. If so, either the scene has to change or I have to box her in so she has no other choice but to do that something anyway. I never want a character not to be true to herself or himself.

Q: Claire Hanover is your protagonist in A REAL BASKETCASE and she will be returning in TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET this month. Claire is a well-meaning wife and mother who sometimes isn’t especially clued in to the “big world.” So her life lessons end up being rather humorous. How did Claire come about? Was there an inspiration for her somewhere or was she just born from your imagination?

Beth: Claire is not based on any real person in my life, because she is her own person, as real to me as any of my close friends. I've come to know and love her well. I wanted her to grow and learn through the series, so she couldn't start out as a knowledgeable super-sleuth. In fact, she's a bumbling sleuth, as any amateur would be when starting out. And many of her lessons, she has to learn the hard way. Though Claire has some similarities with myself, being about the same age I was when I started writing the series, also having two children, and living in Colorado Springs, I like to say she's a lot braver than I am, getting into situations I would never venture into, but I'm smarter than she is and can figure out how to get her out of them. So yes, Claire was born from my imagination, but now she tells me who she is and how she's going to react to situations.

Q: And I have to ask because I absolutely loved his character, are we going to see Leon again?

Beth: Oh, yes indeed! Leon, the drug dealer with a soul, is a favorite character of mine, too, because he's such a fun and colorful personality. Claire has to consult with him in To Hell in a Handbasket to obtain information vital to solving the mystery in that book. What's interesting about Leon is that he sprang from my head one day fully formed and characterized, complete down to his speech patterns, so he didn't really need to be profiled like my other characters. He is definitely his own man and tries to take over every scene he's in.

Q: Travel is one of your passions and it sounds like you have been all over with your family. TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET will find Claire on the ski slopes of Colorado, which is also a pastime of your family’s. Are any of your other travels going to morph into new settings for the Hanover family?

Beth: I love using settings from my home state of Colorado in my books, so even though I've traveled many other places, I don't envision Claire and her family getting that chance anytime soon. I'm toying with Durango, Colorado as the possible setting for the next book in the series.

Q: I understand there is another possible series in the works, a series around a white water river ranger. First can you share with us exactly what a white water river ranger is? And how did this idea take seed?

Beth: I used to do a lot of whitewater canoeing back in the 1980s before I had my children, and I absolutely loved the sport. Nowadays, people use self-bailing rafts and kayaks to ride the rapids, and I still enjoy whitewater rafting, though I don't get to do it as often as I'd like. In the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area centered around Buena Vista and Salida, Colorado, there is a special breed of park ranger called a whitewater river ranger, that patrols the most commercially rafted river in the world. I thought it would be interesting to revisit the “river rat” culture of those who are addicted to the thrill of whitewater and set some murders in that beautiful and exciting part of Colorado. So, after interviewing some rafting guides and river rangers and sitting in on a day of river ranger training, the ideas started to flow. I've written the first manuscript in the series and my agent is trying to sell it now.

Q: How about Claire Hanover? What’s in the future for her after TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET?

Beth: My publisher, Five Star, tends to put their mystery series authors on a roughly two-year cycle with a book release every two years. So, my hope is to alternate writing books in the two series, producing one per year and keeping me fresh and interested in each series. Of course, there are lots of variables in the publishing industry that I have no control over, so I have to remain open to possibilities.

Q: I have to say I was rather envious when I read about your picture with Robert Crais that hangs in your work room. Are you a fan of RC’s work? Has he or anyone else been an influence on you in your writing?

Beth: That picture, which can also be found on my website is of Robert Crais handing me my first-ever certificate in a writing contest, Third Place in the mystery/suspense category of the Pikes Peak Writers contest in 2001. I've since had the opportunity to chat with him a couple of other times. I admire his work because he can both create suspenseful plots and create wonderfully three-dimensional and sympathetic characters. Along with Crais, I've been influenced by quite a few western mystery writers, such as Margaret Coel, Christine Goff, C.J. Box, Maggie Sefton, and Kathy Brandt. My favorite mystery author is Sharyn McCrumb.

Q: Alright, one final question. This is my question that I ask everyone on my blog. There is a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. What would be YOUR six-word memoir?

Beth: Networked and persisted until surprise—published!

TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET is available this month from Five Star Publishers. You can learn more about Beth, her blog tour, and her novels at her website. If you comment on Beth Groundwater’s interview here today, or comment on her blog (http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/) anytime during her May blog book tour, you will be entered into a drawing for an autographed set of both books in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series: A REAL BASKET CASE and TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET. Good luck! To see where she's going next on her blog tour, go to: http://bethgroundwater.com/Book_Blog_Tour.html

Thanks so much for stopping by and chatting with us, Beth. See ya on the slopes!

NOTE: Beth just informed me that she received a call for jury duty today. So if you leave a comment and don't receive an immedate reply, don't despair! Beth will respond, but if they keep her most of the day, she may not be able to respond until tomorrow. She WILL be here, though! :)

A Real Basket Case - Beth Groundwater

A Real Basket Case is Beth Groundwater's debut novel. In this Agatha-nominated cozy mystery, Claire Hanover fights to prove her husband Roger is innocent of murdering Claire's fitness instructor, Enrique.

Roger has been spending far more hours with his job than with his wife, so when Claire's friend Ellen buys her a massage with Enrique, she reluctantly agrees. However, when Enrique is shot in the midst of this massage and Ellen looks up to see Roger standing in the doorway with the murder weapon in his hand, the evidence against him is damning. Claire is convinced that someone set Roger up and she's going to prove who that person is and win Roger's trust back.

A Real Basket Case is a light, quick, enjoyable read. But don't try to read it too quickly or you'll miss the creative subtleties woven throughout the plot.

Groundwater has a firm grasp on how to use the English language to create effect. At the onset of the novel, Claire is talking on the phone and watching a group of rock climbers. When one of the climbers falls,

"...he swung back and forth until he could scrabble a handhold. He pulled himself to the rock, found footholds, and clung to the cliff like a squashed spider, his chest heaving."

Not only does this passage contain the vivid imagery of the squashed spider and the sharp contrast of that spider to the heaving chest, but it also works with the rest of the rock-climbing event to build up an analogy with Claire, her friends, and the events that will make up the plot of this novel. So we see some foreshadowing happening as well. Just one example of how Groundwater's concise style can pack a powerful punch.

The humor in this book is also very subtle. Numerous times I was reading along, caught up in the plot when I had to halt because I realized, "hey! That was funny." Claire's character plays right into this effect. Her good intentions in preposterous situations just result in humorous outcomes. Her interactions with Leon, the ethical drug kingpin, are prime examples of this. The paradox of his "ethics" and her naivete makes the absurd seem completely natural.

The only qualm I had with Claire was her inability - or unwillingness? - to stand up to her husband. She stands up the cops, to drug pushers, to her friends. But she just let her husband blame her for his entire predicament and she accepted the blame. I was really cheering for her to give him "what for" just once. But, building self-confidence comes in small steps. She built her confidence to fight for her family in this step. I'll be looking forward to see what steps she makes as the "Basket Mysteries" continue.