A Piece of Cake, a Bowl of Jello

Donis here. What wonderful entries my blog mates have offered lately. I love reading about the little things that make a novel real and relatable, like having animals as characters and keeping the action tight. One thing that has always interested me in any story, even noir-ish thrillers, is food. How a character relates to food tells me a lot about them. It also tells me a lot about the times in which the novel is set.  I had just started writing my very first Alafair Tucker novel when I realized about ten pages in I was going to have to write a whole lot about food. That series is set in farm country in the early 20th century and features a mother of a lot of children. What was her daily life like? It revolved around food – growing or raising it, harvesting, butchering, preserving, planning, cooking. Feeding a dozen people three times a day every day until the end of time. No Safeway, no running water, no electricity. 

I made a cake from scratch recently. I used one of my mother's recipes that really couldn't be done with mix. When I finished, I was hot from having the automatic oven on and tired from beating the batter by hand. What a bunch of wussies we modern cooks have become.

My grandmothers were both expert at American-style scratch cooking, which is what I write about. My mother was no slouch at scratch cooking herself. But when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, scratch cooking was considered oh-so-old-fashioned. The modern Mid-Century American Housewife as encouraged by all the smartest lady's magazines to utilize the latest time-saving canned and packaged foods to save herself needless hours in the kitchen, presumably so she could put on her shirtwaist dress and pearls and meet her man at the door with a dry martini and a delicious meal on the table when he came home from work.

Since my poor young suburban '50s mother wanted nothing more than to be hip to the times, that's the kind of food I was raised with. I shudder to remember what we grew up eating. But even though it wasn't health food, it was delicious.

How I occasionally long for a nice sit dish of Uncle Ben's instant white rice mixed with a can of undiluted Campbell's cream of celery soup to go along with my Hamburger Helper goulash. My aunt was particularly fond of magazine recipes. Every had a mayonnaise cake? How about a Coca-Cola cake? One of my mother's specialties was Ambrosia. Drain a can of fruit cocktail (those little chunks of peach and pear, tine green grapes, unnaturally red cherry) and dump it into a tub of Kool-Whip. Mix it up nice, maybe with some packaged shredded coconut, and scarf it down.

There are so many thing you could do with Jello that I don't have the room to go into them all, so I'll just hit the highlights: Emerald salad (lime jello, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, maybe some grated cucumber), broken glass pie, made with two or three bright colors of Jello, set and cut into jagged pieces, mixed with Kool-Whip and maybe a can of evaporated milk, poured into a graham character christ and chilled. How about an orange Jello salad filled with grated carrot and a served with a glop of mayo? Lemon Jello with crushed pineapple and little marshmallows.

One of our party staples in the 1960s was lime punch. Dump a quart of lime sherbet in a punch bowl and pour quarts of ginger ale or 7-Up over it. When I was old enough to throw my own parties, I went through a stage of making tiny cheese ball appetizers out of grated cheddar mixed with cream cheese and rolled in crushed Doritos.

And now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go rummage around in the cabinet and see if I can find a box of Jello.

Dogs in story

Steve posted last week about creating character in stories and the way character influences behaviour and reactions. No need for a lengthy list of adjectives -- shy, fearful, arrogant -- just show us! He then described the very different behaviour of his two dogs. Being the owner of two dogs, I can relate! Furthermore, how people react to dogs tells a lot about their character, so they are a useful, not to mention heart-warming, addition to a story. 

In all three of my series, my protagonist has a dog. Inspector Green has a large, lumbering rescue of indeterminate lineage who likes to sleep on his feet, and Amanda Doucette has a playful, resourceful Duck Toller who acts as her unofficial therapy dog, making her laugh when she is struggling with PTSD. I've owned five Duck Tollers, and currently have two, so it's easy to imagine them in scenes. Cedric O'Toole had a Border Collie (ish) mutt.

In all three cases, the dog brings out the character of my main character. Green is an obsessive detective who is often so focussed on his goal that he forgets the people around him. His dog, acquired accidentally, forces him to care about someone else. Scenes between Green and his dog Modo reveal Green's softer, nurturing side, and in return, she brings him an unexpected tranquillity when his job feels overwhelming. Their late night walks allow him to think through a case in peace.

How other characters in the story react to a dog also reveals character. Are they fearful? Does an angry teenager light up with joy? Do they exhibit tenderness, patience, dominance?

Many writers I know have a pet or two in their lives, often our closest and most patient companion who doesn't insist on conversation, (except when necessary, but who is usually at our feet as we work (or in my case, on the sofa beside me), reminding us we are not alone. Often they end up in our books and help to engage the reader. But we all know the cardinal rule -- kill as many people as you like, but never kill a cat or dog.

Forest Fairy Surprise

by Catherine Dilts

There is delight in seeing something you didn’t expect. Don’t warn me ahead of time. I want to be surprised.

We visited my husband’s best friend in Boise, Idaho, last month. He took us on walking trails he regularly uses. The trek was a reminder of how we tend to become dulled to our familiar surroundings.

I stopped several times to marvel at the scenery. The bridge over the river. Mushrooms. Colorful fall leaves.

The random fairy village by the side of the trail. 

Our host grasped for the purpose of leaving painted rocks, fairies, animal figurines, and even a tiny Jesus, on a fallen tree beside the trail. I tried to explain my own hobby: painted rocks. You release them into the world, not knowing whether anyone will see them. Hoping to bring a smile to a stranger’s face.

“Love,” I said. “They do this for love.”

Back home again, I’m looking at my surroundings with fresh eyes. Am I appreciating my familiar world? I’m also pondering the amount of energy I put into my fiction writing.

Why do we write? The vast majority of us will never hit significant best-seller lists. Whether we want fame or not, it likely will remain elusive. Forget about fortune. At this stage of publishing, most authors are grasping to not lose money.

The fairy village has multiple purposes, I’m sure. There may be a genuine effort to attract the little winged people, making them feel welcome. It could be an expression of love for the children and adults strolling by. Or that peculiar human trait of wanting to create beauty and art on a blank canvas.

For writers, there is an element of exorcising inner pain. Or expressing joy. Trying to make sense of our life experiences. Wanting to share the meaning we’ve found.

Our audiences can feel as anonymous as the hiker pausing to admire a fairy village in the forest. Somewhere in your brain, you know a reader discovered a nugget in your novel or short story. A crumb of sustenance nourishing them for their own real-life battles.

Have faith that your creative contributions have rippling impacts on the world far more significant than your original act.

How Long Should Your Novel Be?

 by Thomas Kies

I’ve been reading the effusive reviews for a novel called Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski. The critics are ecstatic. The book was just released this month and clocks in at 1,232 pages. 

Let me repeat that.  1, 234 pages.  This isn’t official, but my rough estimate for the word count for Tom’s Crossing is 360,000.  

That’s unusual. 

When I talk with book clubs or when I teach a creative writing class, I’m often asked how long a novel should be?  The correct answer to that is a novel is as long as it needs to be to tell the story.

However, publishing is a business, and most publishers would balk at a book that stretches out over 1200 pages.  So, are there any guidelines that a writer should consider?

In traditional publishing, length is measured by word count, not page count. While pages vary depending on formatting and font, word count provides a universal yardstick.

Here’s a general breakdown for mysteries and thrillers:

• Mystery novels: 70,000–90,000 words

• Thrillers: 80,000–100,000 words

• Cozy mysteries: 65,000–80,000 words

• Police procedurals: 90,000–110,000 words

From everything I’ve read, if you’re writing your first novel, staying in the 75,000–90,000 range seems to be the sweet spot. That’s long enough to develop characters and plot twists, but short enough to keep the tension going.

The true “optimal length” of a mystery or thriller depends less on the number of words and more on the control of pacing.

A mystery builds tension like a slow burn. You want to reveal just enough information to keep readers guessing. Each chapter should add a new clue, deepen character motivation, or raise the stakes. If a scene doesn’t do one of those things, it doesn’t belong—no matter how well-written it is.

Thrillers, however, should feel like a rollercoaster ride, with moments of intense action followed by short pauses that allow readers to catch their breath. The pace dictates how long the novel feels, even more than the actual word count. A 100,000-word thriller can feel taut and fast-paced if it’s tightly constructed, while a 75,000-word story can drag if it meanders.

Readers of mysteries and thrillers have certain expectations. They know the conventions of the genre: somebody's murdered,  the sleuth digs in, the danger grows, and the climax delivers the twist or reveal. Every scene should serve a purpose—reveal character, plant a clue, or move the story forward.

I think publishers recognize this. An overly long manuscript can raise a red flag that the pacing is off or the plot needs trimming. For debut authors, staying within industry norms can make your work more marketable. Once you’re established, you earn the freedom to stretch those boundaries. Like Mark Z Danielewski.

Now, if you’re self-publishing or writing digitally, you have more leeway. Readers of e-books are often open to shorter works—novellas (30,000–50,000 words) or serialized thrillers that come out in installments. These can build a loyal audience hungry for the next episode. Still, even in the indie world, readers expect professional pacing and structure.

So, what’s the right length of a mystery or thriller?

My advice is shoot for 75,000 to 95,000 words. Ultimately, the best measure of your story’s length is whether it feels right. Does every chapter move the reader forward? Does every twist earn its place? Does the ending deliver a payoff worthy of the buildup?

If the answer is yes, then your mystery or thriller is exactly as long as it needs to be.

By the way, the longest novel ever published, according to Google, who wouldn't lie to me, is In Search of Lost Time written by Marcel Proust and printed in seven volumes clocking in at 1.3 million words. 

It's Spooky Season!

 by Sybil Johnson

I don’t remember hearing the term “Spooky Season” much before this year. I suspect I have not been paying attention. I rather like it. According to Google, there are instances of the term being used in newspapers in the early 1900s referring to a season when mysterious events happened. But our current use of it as the time around Halloween dates to the 1990s or so and became more common after 2000. Although, like I said I don’t really remember hearing the term until fairly recently.

I’m seeing a lot of people decorating with skeletons in my neighborhood. Really, really tall figures seem to be quite popular this year. 

I thought this Dead and Breakfast sign quite clever. Nope, not staying there! 

 

And I found this creepy doll in a CVS fairly recently. Not letting that into my house! 

 

I hope you all have a good Spooky Season!

Halloween Antics

    by Charlotte Hinger    

                      

She's gone. She disappeared. She was the central character in my neighbor's elaborate Halloween display last year. Did she and her poor baby find their way to an unmarked grave? All of her cowboy companions have vanished too. 

                                                                  

As October wanes and the evenings close in, the world seems to slip naturally into shadow. Pumpkins grin on porches, ghosts flutter in windows, and the scent of autumn—earthy, smoky, faintly sweet—hangs in the air. It’s Halloween again, that most theatrical of nights, when we flirt with fear and celebrate the things that go bump in the dark.

But before candy bowls and plastic skeletons, Halloween had much older, deeper roots—roots tangled in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced SOW-in), a time when the boundary between the living and the dead was said to blur. Samhain marked the end of harvest and the beginning of winter—the “darker half” of the year. Bonfires blazed on hillsides to ward off wandering spirits, and offerings were left to appease those who crossed over.

When Christianity spread through Europe, the Church rebranded the old pagan festival as All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day. The traditions, however, proved resilient. People continued to carve faces into turnips to frighten away spirits (a practice that would later morph into our familiar jack-o’-lanterns once Irish immigrants found American pumpkins more cooperative). The ancient door-to-door ritual of “souling,” in which the poor prayed for the dead in exchange for food, evolved into trick-or-treating.

And so, what began as a sacred rite of survival and remembrance slowly became a cultural masquerade—equal parts reverence and mischief.

For those of us who write crime and mystery, Halloween feels like the perfect metaphor. It’s about masks and secrets, about the thrill of the unknown, and about how darkness—whether literal or psychological—always finds its way into the light. Beneath every costume, there’s a story; behind every ghost tale, a truth trying to claw its way to the surface.

So this October 31st, as you hand out candy or slip into costume, remember that you’re taking part in something ancient—a night born of fire, fear, and fascination with the thin line between life and death. A night tailor-made for mystery.

Happy Halloween, from all of us at Type M for Murder.

Finding character

 By Steve Pease // Michael Chandos

The protagonist, the Hero of your inspirational story, the solid woman who keeps your literary family together through the events of your novel. Characters, major to minor, are made up of attributes. Brave, honest, sneaky, untrustworthy, beautiful. In a fiction story, all those "things" become important because they determine how the character reacts to the events, obstacles and surprises in the story. There are shades of meaning in everything. There's beauty the character uses to manipulate the other characters, and beauty that interferes. Strength that defines their physical interaction with the story-world, and strength that makes them overreact in a delicate situation. It's behavior, how they fit in, how they succeed or fail.

You've read stories where the author has given the character tons of attributes, a PI who drinks, who is forgetful, who can't manage money, all interesting, but they never matter in the story. Chekhov said if your story has a rifle on the wall, somewhere in the story, that rifle must be used, otherwise it should be removed. 

Need examples of character that DO affect the story? Look no farther than your dogs.

These are my two favorite dogs, ever. Boo, a sable-black, 160 pound Newfoundland, a "superior being" recognized by all. And Belle, the big-hearted but tough natural matron, mother, monitor, guardian angel.

Boo never had trouble with neighborhood dogs. When he sauntered among dogs on a walk with their owners, they would give him room, watching him closely. If he laid down on a shaded hill, some would come over and lay down near him, even though they were all playing around before. 

My rear deck is elevated over the back yard, a long set of stairs leads to the ground. The top of the stairs has always been a favorite vantage point for my dogs, overlooking the 20 acre meadow and the opposing trees. Boo came out once and paused appropriately at the vantage point. As usual, barking dogs could be heard in the distance. He looked around as if he was assessing the situation, like Nero overlooking the gladiators in the Coliseum. He barked a single woof, the Deep, resounding, full-chested boom of a big dog. It echoed from the trees across the meadow. All the barking dogs stopped. He reassessed and, apparently satisfied, went down the stairs to his favorite shady spot in the back yard.

No pretense. The power of his presence. I haven't yet invented a character that deserves that level of personal power, but I hope to.

Belle, the Golden, was quiet and observant. The grandkids, six of them, then young, were playing in the front "yard" (I live in the woods). I think it was Easter, a warm one, and everyone was looking for the three dozen hidden colored eggs. The adults were off to the side in conversation, not directly watching the children. The front slopes up into a grove of young Ponderosa pines. The grasses that wintered over were long and golden brown. The kids were eagerly searching every nook and cranny.

I broke from the human-huddle to count kids, when I noticed Belle up the hill, settled deeply in the grasses, almost invisible.  She was monitoring the kids, 20 feet away. I have no doubt she would have sprung from cover if anything unusual happened. That's more than the routine recess monitor. An overseer. I haven't been able to describe this scene in words yet.

I bet your cat is regal, perhaps snobby, curious, intense if a mouse is sighted. If you have several pets, how have they worked out living together, who gets the best place to sleep, who eats first. How did they work that out?

"Things" your character might find useful.

Falling Leaves and Word Sprints

by Catherine Dilts

Why am I surprised every fall when my schedule suddenly fills? It happens this way year after year.

The leaves turn color. They slip gracefully from branches swiftly going bare. My farmer brain completes the backyard garden harvest in preparation for holing up for the long winter.

Instead, activities clutter the calendar. Holiday events and gatherings.

So many birthdays. What was in the water nine months prior that our kids and grandkids all have fall and winter birthdays? Even my husband is a November baby.

Part of me longs for peace and quiet. Leave me alone so I can hide from the declining sunlight. I just want to read good books and, hopefully, write good stories. Until the sun comes back. (I have a mild propensity for SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder.)

Although part of me wants to hibernate, I am not seriously pursuing that option. My co-author and I have ambitious plans for a brand-new series. Book one will release - God willing and the creek don’t rise – this December. The entire series is outlined. Writing each installment according to plan will be daunting, but possible.

If that were all we were doing, I would not feel stressed. But books three and four of my Rose Creek Mystery series are in the works. Coming soon! Plus a close-to-my-heart standalone that is based on childhood memories of the early seventies, blended with a modern murder mystery. I’m in no hurry to push it to publication, but I need to do revisions, and run it through critique group.

I used to participate in the now-defunct NaNoWriMo writing challenge. 50,000 words written during the month of November. I needed that space, before I was published, to carve out leave-me-alone time. A month devoted to writing! With the interruptions of Thanksgiving and birthdays, which couldn’t be avoided.

There are alternatives to NaNoWriMo. Reedsy is offering their version: Novel Sprint. I don’t know how this operates, but it might be worth checking out. I’ve heard of a few other events out there.

I am motivated enough, and my family understands my need to write, that I don’t need to join a challenge. But maybe I need to do a better job of tracking my writing. I already log my hours and projects. Logging words written is difficult when you’re editing projects.

Word sprints. This writing technique, or trick, encourages the writer to slam down as many words as possible during a set time. Five minutes? Thirty? The object is to silence your inner editor and just get the story onto the paper or screen. You can find groups doing them in a friendly, mildly competitive environment, or go solo.

This might be the season for me to experiment with pushing my output. Once the words are on the page, revising and editing will clean up the mess.

Do you embrace the fast-approaching, busy holiday season? Or do you long for a quiet corner, to read, journal, or write?

Moving Forward Toward Indie

Hello from Portland, Maine. Shelley here, waving, but with hopefully a bit more flesh on my bones than the skeleton in the photo below. 

This was taken on a walk around the arts district in Portland on a glorious fall day. Hubby Craig and I had a marvelous time visiting an artist's studio, breakfast at the Miss Portland Diner, a few hours at the Portland Museum of Art, a drink at Novel Book Bar & Cafe, and dinner with friends. 

My Olivia Lively books are set in and around Portland, so whenever I'm there, I feel as if I'm half in the real world and half in the pages of my stories. I sort of feel like I might run into Liv at the coffee shop or strolling through an art gallery with her new friend, artist Emsley Ballard-Monihan, especially when walking in the Bayside area which has been gentrified from industrial warehouse cluster to industrial warehouse chic. 

I've made progress in my indie-publishing experiment. I made an Amazon KDP account which was a fairly simple process (until they asked me to verify my identity and upload my license info. Anytime there is an online form to fill out, the Guam quasi-status as a US territory comes into play. Is it a country? Is it a state of the USA? It's both. And neither. It doesn't play well with online forms and systems.) 

Next, I decided to invest $149 into the lifetime purchase of Atticus software for book formatting. I followed directions on pre-formatting my book in docx first (using styles), and that did, indeed, turn out well. I'm still learning the Atticus software and what it can do, but it is pretty simple. I like the various pre-formatted design templates. You can see how your book looks on various ebook devices plus print. 

The next step will be to print it out for my proofreader. Then I will need to create the full print cover with front and back and spine, make the corrections, and upload all the files to Amazon. So far, I have to say I think I'd rather learn this all myself than pay a hybrid publisher to handle it for me. I'm pretty confident I can do a good job with the design and files as long as I have these tools. The only thing I'll lack is a "publishing company logo." I'm not ready to create an LLC or an official press. Yet. 

That being said, I have so many ideas for books as well as several finished manuscripts just begging for revisions. It is quite freeing to think I can publish them if and when I want so that my loyal readers can enjoy them. 

I hope you are enjoying your October and are finding all kinds of good books to read. 

Here's what I've read lately:

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Shaw Connolly Live to Tell by Gillian French

That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

Currently Reading:

Granny Dan by Danielle Steel

___

Ciao, friends! 

75 Years of Peanuts

 by Sybil Johnson

My cataract surgeries are done. Sorry I missed my last posting day. My eyes were adjusting to their new reality. Honestly, they’re still adjusting so working on a computer is a little difficult right now. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Today I’m celebrating the Peanuts comic strip. October 2, 2025 marked 75 years since the first strip appeared in newspapers (October 2, 1950). Hard to believe it’s been around that long. The last strip was published on February 13, 2000 after Charles M. Schulz died. That’s a lot of years of writing and drawing strips that ran 7 days a week in the newspaper. I can’t imagine what that was like coming up with that much content.

Peanuts is still going strong. I still see Peanuts merchandise everywhere. Truth be told, I have a lot of it. When I see something new, I think "Do I need that?" The answer is no. "Do I want it?" Most of the time the answer is "Yes, Yes, Yes."

I am a big Peanuts fan. I may be more of a cat person, but Snoopy is my hero. I loved the strip growing up. I used to draw Snoopy and the gang in grade school. The first thing I wanted to be was a cartoonist, largely based on this comic strip. I gave that thought up after grade school when I decided I was better at other more academic pursuits. Still, I have a fondness for the Peanuts gang to this day.

It’s amazing how many things I remember. I had posters on my wall and a Snoopy stuffed animal on my bed. In the past, I have beeped my cat’s nose as a sign of great affection. (Picture a poster with Lucy beeping Snoopy on the nose to show her affection.) I also was influenced in other ways. In grade school, I used to cross my fingers when I went to bed to ward off vampires. It wasn’t until I was an adult and saw Snoopy doing this in a comic strip from the 1960s that I figured out where I got that from. 

Here are ways we all can celebrate the Peanuts gang: 

Watching the old TV Specials: We used to watch the Halloween and Christmas specials every year when they aired on TV. Without DVDs and DVRs and streaming, this was appointment TV. Your one chance to see them that year. “It’s a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is still my favorite with the Christmas special a close second I admit to being mildly disturbed by Woodstock in the Thanksgiving special. He just seems way to eager to eat the turkey (a fellow bird.) Now I have them on DVD so I can watch them anytime I want.

Singing Pumpkin Carols: Yes, Pumpkin Carols. In the 60s or 70s I got a little booklet that was sold as a Hallmark greeting card with the words to pumpkin carols set to the music from popular Christmas carols. There’s “Up In the Pumpkin Patch” and “A Pumpkin Wonderland”. Though a little faded, it’s still one of my prized possessions.

 

Crocheting Snoopy and Woodstock; Awhile back I got a couple Woobles kits so I’ve crocheted both Snoopy and Woodstock. I think they turned out nice.

 

Visit the Charles M. Schulz museum in person in Santa Rosa, CA or online. We went to this museum in 2007. It was sort of a pilgrimage for me. In honor of the 75th they are having a lot of special exhibits. Here I am with my good friend, Charlie Brown.

 

Learn how to draw Charlie Brown and Snoopy: I didn’t have any guidance when I was drawing the Peanuts characters as a kid. Just drew them as best I could. Now, though, there are a number of YouTube tutorials that walk you through the process. 

How to draw Snoopy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ2vZMP3AXg&t=3s 

How to draw Charlie Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anq4qY2XCvk 

 I’m sure there are a lot of other ways to celebrate Peanuts. Any other Peanuts fans out there?

I’m going off now to sing some Pumpkin Carols.

Writing the Difficult Obituary

 

Dr. Quintard Taylor, died September 26, 2025, in Houston, Texas. He was 76 years old.

Johnny D. Boggs, editor-in-chief of Roundup asked me to write a tribute for publication in the magazine. It was hard for me to do because of my admiration of Dr. Taylor. He was simply the finest historian I've ever known.

His friends and colleagues used old familiar words to describe their grief over Taylor’s passing. “It is with heavy heart,” and “with profound sadness we announce the death of this extraordinary man.” Yet, words are not sufficient to describe the impact this one individual had on our knowledge of black history.

The Washington Post described his landmark publication, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West 1528-1990 as “an enthralling work that will be essential reading for years to come.” This ambitious book discussed the largely forgotten role of blacks in the West including their contributions to everything from the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling to the rise of the Black Panther Party"

Another editor stated that “Quintard Taylor fills a major void in American history and reminds us that the African American experience is unlimited by region or social status.”

With the publication of The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District From 1870 Through the Civil Rights Era Taylor asserted that Seattle was a microcosm of the political progress of black communities. Lola Peters, operational coordinator for The Emerald, said, “Not only was this book a master class in history, it was also a master class in storytelling. The Forging of a Black Community was written for ordinary folks. It is the most exquisite example of "show, don't tell." The stories in the book show the interlaced strength and endurance of our local Black communities while exposing the fissures. It's an intellectually rigorous work of love.”

Yet, despite Taylor’s groundbreaking publications, his ultimate contribution to history was the creation of BlackPast.org., the world’s largest on-line encyclopedia. His goal was to create a global website that captured every bit of information about Africans.

In 2023, 6.5 million people visited the website. There are now nearly 1,000 content contributors including academic historians from colleges and universities from across the nation as well as graduate and undergraduate students, and independent historians from six continents. These contributors have written over 7,200 entries with new information being regularly added.

In addition to his academic reputation, his friends and colleagues praised his work ethic and his humility.

Taylor promised that through the creation of BlackPast, black history would never be erased.

He can rest in peace.

A Book Recommendation

By Steve Pease/Michael Chandos 

Does it seem logical to you that writers of Private Eye mysteries should have real-life experience as a PI? But that's not often the case. Famously, Samuel Dashiell Hammett worked the mean streets in San Francisco for Pinkerton before he started to write, and his books are noted for their realism, true human grime and base human motivations, and excellent dialog that sounded tough without using made-up slang and deliberate word misspellings. 

I ran my own single proprietor investigations business for 7 years, Glass Key Investigations. I was trying to write PI stories, and I decided I needed to do more research and a lot more reading. At the time, the State of Colorado had a licensing program that involved a study guide and professional standards for a PI business. I studied key Colorado laws about stalking, privacy and property. And, amazingly, the basic test was open book, so I made a notebook with copies of all the stated references, read them thoroughly, got the prerequisite Errors and Omissions insurance, liability insurance, and took the 55-question test. I think I missed one, perhaps a deliberately convoluted question designed so that no one got 100%. Also, amazingly, some people failed the 60% pass-line.

I took the test, and Shazaam, I was one. I joined the State professional PI association, took all their training, moved into a spare room in a friend's office and started marketing. While many PIs specialize in cases like legal defense, child support and consumer fraud, I accepted a wide variety of cases to maximize my experience, from clients who couldn't pay more than $50 to wealthy people and law firms that retained me for years. I put the biz to bed and I'm now mining my experiences. Writing and selling mystery and PI short stories during those 7 years. Good time spent.

Joe Gores didn't plan on becoming a PI. He needed a job and had an opportunity. He didn't plan on being a PI mystery writer either, but his experience led him to the page. He won three Edgars, two in the same year in different writing categories and one for a Kojak TV script. His mainstream stories (he often wrote beyond the PI paradigm) involve Daniel Kearny Associates, aka DKA, an investigations firm focused on difficult commercial cases, principally car repossession. The third-person written cases always involve more than being the Repo Man. They are like Hammett's stories, based on real experiences and real people.

"31 Cadillacs" was nominated for the Edgar Novel in 1992. It has a humorous tone without trying to be a "funny" story. It involves the death of an old man, an intricate Gypsy funeral rite and the coordinated theft of 32 brand-new Cadillacs from Bay Area dealerships. DKA is contracted to track down and recover the cars. The job takes the men and women of DKA all over the US, even to Hawaii, the ultimate battle of wits between street-smart PIs and a team of Gypsy car thieves trying to stage the Funeral of the Century for the passed King of the Gypsies.

Except, it's more than that.

Calling Dr. Freud, or Novel Writing for Fun and Psychoanalysis

 Over the course of my novel-writing career, it has occurred to me to wonder about the psychology of those of us who create whole worlds on paper and populate them with characters who do more or less what we want them to do. Are we indulging in self-psychoanalysis without being aware of it? I've often noted that what readers say about my books tells me more about them than it does about the books. So I'd better admit that what I write says a lot about what's going on in my unfathomable (to me) brain.

I like to write historical novels. My first series consisted of historical mysteries set in rural Okalahoma at the turn of the twentieth century, featuring Alafair Tucker, a farm wife with a very large family. The historical novel I'm working on now stars a young Irish woman named Katy, who is working her way across America from New York to San Francisco in the 1870s and '80s. How I conjured up these characters I don't really know, for neither is like me in the least. And yet they obviously are me to some extent, since they both live in my head.

Both characters live a life I never could. I couldn't abide it. I don't have the slightest desire to romanticize their lives. It was tough, and so were they, in entirely different ways. I imbue Alafair with virtues I don't have. She's self assured and doesn't second-guess herself. She's kind and tolerant of human weakness. She takes care of everyone and is patient with the follies of others – which Katy is not. Alafair is tethered to her life. Katy is tethered to nothing, not even honesty, virtue, or morality if they don't further her goal – to survive at whatever cost.

I never set out to deliver a message or make a statement when I write. I just want to tell a ripping yarn. However, I do find myself wondering what Dr. Freud would say about my stories. Both Alafair and Katy are more successful at confronting their fears than I am. They're not afraid to fail. They stick themselves out there.

Both Alafair and Katy and all the other characters I create are much more than the sum of their parts. The great British mystery novelist Graham Greene said, "The moment comes when a character says or does something you hand't shout of. At that moment, he's alive and you leave it to him." I put Alafair and Katy on the page, but then they stood up and walked away, and now I just follow where they lead. What that tells me about myself, I do not know. 

Conquering the messy middle

 As you might guess, I am in the middle of my latest Inspector Green novel, at about the halfway mark of the first draft, and I am floundering around. Not for want of story ideas but from too any. After starting off my writing career as a pantser (from the "let's dive in and see where this goes" school) I have gradually, over the course of about twenty books, become a "modified pantser". By that I mean, I dive in and see where the story goes but usually project about three or four scenes ahead. I still don't know what will happen or how it will all end, but I'm no longer flying blind from scene to scene. The reason for this is not that I have fallen in love with outlines, but that I have two or three storylines developing simultaneously, with different POV characters, and to keep this juggling act going, I have to keep track of where those storylines are going next so that timelines match up and plot revelations don't trip over each other. It really does feel like juggling, and at the moment, in this messy middle, I've got way too may balls up in the air and I'm at risk of dropping them or having them land on my head.

My creative muse visits not when I'm sitting in "outline" mode, which is bare bones and plot only, but in the creative process of writing the scene itself. Ideas come from several sources. When I'm deep in that zone, "what if" ideas fly at me from left field, often more brilliant than the one I had planned. Other times, I realize I need something to fill a void in a character's day or a reason to get him from Point A to Point B. Or in order to maintain the balance of the story, I need Character Y to do something for a few pages before we rejoin Character X. Solving these dilemmas often gives me my best ideas ever.  If I were writing entirely from outline, none of these serendipitous, unpredictable ideas would happen and the book would be the poorer for it.

But this brings me back to the surfeit of ideas I mentioned earlier. In order to keep track of these brainwaves, I pause long enough to jot them down so I don't forget them. I sometimes end up with too many possibilities for where the story could go next and what Characters X and Y should be doing. This is the real challenge of my messy middle. Do I go in this direction or that? Which will generate the most surprising, exciting story? Which will ultimately lead me out of this maze and reach the end of the book? Like any maze, there are dead ends and blind alleys, and at times the whole exercise feels overwhelming and insoluble. 

But after twenty books in which I did ultimately find the way out of the maze, I have to trust myself. Stay tune, I will report back.