Retro Rec - June 2017

With a little history, a little mystery and a little romance Kathleen Ernst has successfully penned eight Chloe Ellefson mysteries. She’ll be releasing the highly anticipated eighth book, Mining for Justice, in October. With the next book arriving in a few months, it might be fun to learn a little more about Kathleen and look back at the third Chloe Ellefson mystery, The Light Keeper’s Legacy.

Relax and unwind as we enter Wisconsin’s picturesque Door County, at the historic lighthouse on Rock Island.

Working with historic sites for twelve years, and loving it, inspired Kathleen to write the series, “after moving on, I missed the work, the places, the people involved. Enter Chloe Ellefson, fictional curator.  Every book comes from my heart, and I love having the opportunity to feature different historic places and themes within the series.” And goodness, are they ever popular!

It all begins with Chloe. “She is a curator of collections at Old World Wisconsin, where I once worked. When the series begins she is recovering from a series of personal crises, and starting fresh at the historic site. She meets Roelke McKenna, police officer, while investigating a missing artifact.  They have a complicated relationship, but he’s good for her!” 

Chloe is passionate about preserving historic places and telling the stories of people forgotten. Her knowledge of history is needed to help solve the murders presented in each book. For example, in The Light Keeper’s Legacy, she does research on the lighthouse’s past residents as a dead body washes ashore. Kathleen says, “While she and I have some things in common, she is smarter and braver than I am, and much better at speaking her mind.” Which makes her a protagonist you’ll want to stand behind.

It’s September 1982 and museum curator Chloe Ellefson jumps at the chance to spend time on Wisconsin’s Rock Island, a state park with no electricity or roads. She’s there on temporary assignment from Old World Wisconsin to consult on restoring the island’s historic 1858 lighthouse.

Chloe’s research into the island’s history turns up fascinating, tough-as-nails women from the past. But her tranquility is spoiled when a dead woman washes ashore. She begins research as Chloe does not believe this is an accidental drowning. Local tensions over Lake Michigan commercial fishing regulations have sparked conflict, and Chloe believes this may be the epicenter of what’s going wrong on this little island.  When Chloe discovers a second body, she finds herself trapped alone with a killer on remote Rock Island.

Kirkus Reviews declares The Light Keeper’s Legacy as, “a good mystery,” along with Library Journal stating, “A haunted island makes for fun escape reading. Ernst’s third amateur sleuth cozy is just the ticket for lighthouse fans and genealogy buffs. Deftly flipping back and forth in time in alternating chapters, the author builds up two mystery cases and cleverly weaves them back together.” And Jane Kirkpatrick, New York Times bestselling author, praises the book with, “Once again in The Light Keeper’s Legacy Kathleen Ernst wraps history with mystery in a fresh and compelling read.” Jane, “[Marvels] at Kathleen’s ability to deepen her series characters while deftly introducing us to a new setting and unique people.”

Kathleen started writing short stories when she was about 10, “I wrote my first novel at 15 (the manuscript was awful, but the experience was empowering). Ten or twelve practice manuscripts later, I got my first book contract. That was twenty-five years and thirty-six books ago!”

She’s often inspired by authors, such as Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, Marguerite Henry, and Anya Seton. They showed her, “history is all about stories. I still read a lot of historical fiction, and of course many mysteries. I love mysteries that are character-driven and have a strong sense of place.”

Pick up your copy of The Light Keeper’s Legacy now, or start at the very beginning with Old World Murder!

All are available at Midnight Ink, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound and your local bookstore.

***

Kathleen Ernst is an award-winning and bestselling author, educator, and social historian. She has published over thirty novels and two nonfiction books.  Her books for young readers include the Caroline Abbott series for American Girl.  Honors for her children's mysteries include Edgar and Agatha Award nominations.  Kathleen worked as an Interpreter and Curator of Interpretation and Collections at Old World Wisconsin, and her time at the historic site served as inspiration for the Chloe Ellefson mysteries.  The Heirloom Murders won the Anne Powers Fiction Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and The Light Keeper's Legacy  won the Lovey Award for Best Traditional Mystery from Love Is Murder.  Ernst served as project director/scriptwriter for several instructional television series, one of which earned her an Emmy Award.  She lives in Middleton, Wisconsin.  For more information, visit her online at KathleenErnst.com.

Presenting the audiobook version of A KILLER RETREAT!

By Tracy Weber

July marks the official launch of my second audiobook, A Killer Retreat!  Although the official launch is in July, it's available for purchase on Audible now.   Join me at the Facebook launch party on July 13 at this link! 

If you're interested in receiving a free Audible copy of the work in exchange for an honest review, please e-mail me at Tracy@WholeLifeYoga.com.  In the meantime, Enjoy the excerpt below. In this installment, protagonist and yoga teacher Kate Davidson finds herself on the wrong side of the one-way mirror in the suspect interview room. 

#

 

Sergeant Bill took copious notes, nodding and smiling encouragingly. After fifteen rambling minutes, I completed my spiel.

“Well,” he said, closing his notebook and laying down his pen. “I think we’re about done here.”

“You mean I can go?” It couldn’t possibly be this easy. I never got away with anything.

He shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

Relief washed over me like water in a warm shower. For once, luck and the universe were on my side. I stood up, eased to the door, and rested my hand on the doorknob. Only two more steps and I’d be free. My mind chattered, nervously narrating each action in a silent monologue.

OK, Kate, you’re almost there. Stay calm and don’t blow it. I took a deep breath. Turn the knob to the right. The latch clicked and released. Open the door. The hinges squeaked open; a cool breeze caressed my cheeks. As I glanced through the doorway, the empty hall beckoned me—coaxed me toward freedom.

Step one foot forward, and—

“You know, there’s only one thing I don’t get about your story.”

The melodic lilt in Sergeant Bill’s voice had completely evaporated.

Tension spread from my toes to my scalp. I tried to suppress—or at least camouflage—a mounting sense of panic. I took a deep breath and turned to face him. Sergeant Bill leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers laced together. He didn’t look at all friendly.

I forced my lips into a smile and tried to look innocent.

“What’s that?”

“Why is it that six different witnesses say you threatened to strangle the victim this morning?”

Sergeant Bill wasn’t smiling anymore. Then again, neither was I. We stared at each other in silence.

 “Why don’t you close that door and sit on back down.”

 

#

I hope you give the book (audio or written) a try, and love it!

 

Tracy Weber

All four books in the Downward Dog Mystery Series are available at booksellers everywhere!

Tracy Weber is a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, where she current­ly lives with her husband, Marc, and precocious German shepherd puppy, Ana. She loves sharing her passion for yoga and animals in any form possible. When she’s not writing, she spends her time teaching yoga, trying to corral Ana Tasha, and sip­ping Blackthorn cider at her favorite ale house. Tracy loves connecting with fans.  Find her on her author web page or on Facebook.

Guest Post: Ray Daniel - Hacked

I'm not going to lie, this is one of the most useful guest posts we've ever had. Stolen passwords haunt our lives on the daily. Thankfully, Ray Daniel gives us some tips on how to protect ourselves from those pesky hackers, in correlation with his latest release, Hacked. The fourth book in the Tucker Mysteries, which is available now!

Hackers love passwords. They love to use them, sell them, and trade them with their friends. Once they have passwords they can steal identities, publish secrets, and create a wide variety of mischief and mayhem.  So, how do they get them?  Most importantly, how could they get yours.

It's perhaps comforting to know that they don't get your password because they know your birthday, your dog's name, or the names of your loved ones.  While not using any of that personal information to create a password is good advice, we don't live in a creepy world where hackers are omniscient.

Hackers have two primary ways of getting your password: they can guess it, or they can trick you into giving it to them.  Let's look at both of those approaches and then see what we can do to protect ourselves.

When it comes to guessing passwords, one imagines the hacker going to Amazon.com and trying passwords until one hits.  This, of course, does not work.  Amazon.com and other sites place limits on the number of guesses.

Instead hackers need to steal databases full of email addresses and their associated encrypted password.  Encryption takes your password and turns it into an unintelligible string of letters.  For example, the password 'password' becomes the following:

5E884898DA28047151D0E56F8DC6292773603D0D6AABBDD62A11EF721D1542D8

There's no way to figure out the word 'password' from that.  The very similar password 'Password' looks like this:

E7CF3EF4F17C3999A94F2C6F612E8A888E5B1026878E4E19398B23BD38EC221A

As you can see there's no discernable pattern between them even though they are similar passwords.  However, if I told you that my password was password but I didn't tell you whether the P was capitalized, you could figure out which password was mine by guessing.  You'd encrypt password and then encrypt Password and check to see which one matched the encrypted string.  That's exactly how hackers guess your password except on a huge scale.

Hackers regularly break into insecure servers and steal databases of email addresses and encrypted passwords.  When you heard that hackers broke into Yahoo and stole information for one billion (billion with a B!) accounts these username-password pairs were some of the information stolen.

Once they have the encrypted passwords, hackers use bastardized graphics engines to create hacking machines that can guess a billion passwords in a second.  They take your password and compare it to lists of previously guessed passwords, then they compare it to words in a dictionary, then they replace the 'e' with '3' and add numbers and letters to the end, they use advanced prediction mechanisms to create guesses from a first letter such as 's'.

Using techniques such as these hackers can guess between 60 and 80% of passwords in a typical stolen database.  If you'd like to know whether your password information is in the hands of hackers, follow this link to this New York Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/29/technology/personaltech/what-parts-of-your-information-have-been-exposed-to-hackers-quiz.html

Or to be more precise type your email address into http://haveibeenpwned.com.

Both sites will tell you whether your information may be out there. (But, come on, we almost all have a Yahoo account.)

The other way hackers get your password is by asking for it with a phishing attack.  In this approach hackers send you an email that looks to be from a coworker or, even better, a boss or the IRS.  The message says something like, "You had better read this right now or you're screwed!" The goal is to get you to panic, click on a link, and log in to see the information.  Once you do that, the hackers have your password.  This is how John Podesta of the Hillary Clinton campaign lost his password to Russian hackers.  To be fair to Podesta, he shared the email with his IT department who told him it was legitimate when the person had meant to type illegitimate. (One cannot make this up.)

If you think you're immune to being phished I suggest listening to the Reply All podcast from Gimlet Media named What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?. https://gimletmedia.com/episode/97-what-kind-of-idiot-gets-phished/

There are three things you can do to minimize password-related damage:

1. Use a different password on every site.  I'd worry if I had used my Yahoo password to protect my bank account.

2. Use a password manager to generate unguessable random strings to all sites and save them.  That way you only need to remember one password. (Here is a comparison of password managers: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp)

3. Set up two-factor authentication on all sites that allow it.  John Podesta would have survived losing his password if he had turned this on.  Two-factor authentication requires the hackers to have both your password and your cell phone to get into your account. They probably don't have your cell phone. (Two-factor authentication saves Tucker in Hacked.)

The modern world of hacking and password can seem like a scary place, but it's not difficult to stay safe.  If you use a password manager to generate different random passwords for all your sites and turn on two-factor authentication you won't wind up like John Podesta. 

***

Aloysius Tucker vows vengeance when a hacker terrorizes his ten-year-old cousin online. But the situation goes sideways fast, threatening to take Tucker off-line for good. #TuckerGate

Promising his cousin that he’ll get an apology from an Internet bully, Tucker finds himself in a flame war that goes nuclear after a hacker is murdered. Now more hackers, the whole Twitterverse, and a relentless bounty hunter agree on one thing—Tucker is the killer and he must be stopped.

With death threats filling his inbox, Tucker battles Anonymous, Chinese spies, and his own self-destructive rage while chasing a murderer the online community has named the HackMaster. Can Tucker clear his name and build a case against the killer before the death threats come true?

Ray Daniel (Framingham, MA) writes first-person, wisecracking, Boston-based crime fiction. His story Driving Miss Rachel (published in Blood Moon by Level Best Books) was chosen as a 2013 distinguished short story by Otto Penzler, editor of The Best American Mystery Stories 2013. Daniel's work has been published in the Level Best Books anthologies Thin Ice, Blood Moon, and Stone Cold. Terminated is Ray Daniel's first novel. For more information, visit him online at raydanielmystery.com/.

5 Ways I Improved PATH INTO DARKNESS at the Last Minute

By Lisa Alber

I just finished the final, FINAL nit-piks for PATH INTO DARKNESS, coming out in August. Talk about under the wire! The book is at the printer as I write this post. Yay! I'm so grateful for the chance to provide a detailed final proofread, and then quickly proofread my proofread for a sanity check on my final changes. (And, yes, I found four more wee, itty, bitty, teeny, tiny typos ... It could never end, seriously.)

It's amazing how you can always improve a story. I didn't change big things, and some would argue that small changes like the ones I performed couldn't matter that much to the overall reader experience ...

That might be true, because the book has been out in the world as an advanced reader copy for awhile now -- advanced readers seem to be enjoying the story. But still. I'm a proponent of subtle changes for overall improvement in my storytelling. No one else may care. But I do. (But then, you gotta stop. JUST. STOP. after awhile. Let the beast go. Be free, fledgling novel!) 

So, yeah, I put on my nit-pik hat, and this is what I came up with besides leftover typos and awkward word choices and grammatical bloopers:

1. Murkiness factor. Mysteries work because they are purposefully murky until the end of the story. I deleted and adjusted dialog that was too spot-on, i.e. dialogue in which one character was talking with too much clarity. I thought, Wow, that's certainly shining too much of a light on such-and-such character or event or bit of information. In my own writer self-talk, I call this toning it the hell down. :-)

2. Subtle consistency errors. The consistency errors I fixed had to do with proper setup for events that come toward the end of the novel. True, most readers probably won't catch these things, but there is an overall effect as one scene builds on another and on another, and you get to know the characters. Readers are left with feelings about the characters without knowing why all the time. The point for me is not to come out of left field all of sudden at the end of the novel.

3. Lingo adjustments. My novels are set in Ireland, so I try to be conscience of using the correct vernacular. I'm sure I don't catch everything, but, for example, in my final proofread, I changed "steal" to "pinch," "rent" to "let," and "mom" to "mum."

4. Improve the last chapter. I have my wonderful editor, Nicole, to thank for this one. She had made some edits to the final chapter with a passing comment that made me realize that I'd floated off course with one of my subplots. Just a little, but it was enough to bug me. The last chapter didn't hang right. This was with Danny, my detective, having a heartfelt moment with his kids. The final moment, the final decision he's making in this story. And it's a big decision. So, yeah, I adjusted that chapter, and went back and employed number two above.

5. Simplified backstory aspects from the previous novels. One of my eternal questions as a writer of a series is how much of the previous novels' backstories to include in the current novel. I want my novels to standalone as much as possible. For me, this means NOT dumping all the details in from previous novels. I don't like info dumps. That's just me. I prefer to simply not mention past events or background character details that aren't germaine to the current story. For example, the fact that Danny has a dead daughter from years back didn't need to be mentioned -- mentioning this daughter added more question marks than it clarified Danny's character.

So now, having gone through this process, I can finally say that I've done all that I can possibly do to create the best book I'm capable of at this moment in time. Whew!

How forgiving of typos are you when you read novels? (Me, I'm very forgiving now; before writing novels I used to be a hard ass.)

Guest Post: R. Jean Reid - Perdition

We welcome R. Jean Reid (Jean Redmann) to Midnight Ink's blog today! Jean delves into setting and why she wrote a series set in Mississippi. The second in her gripping Nell McGraw Investigation series, Perdition, was just released yesterday. 

I grew up in a small town on the Mississippi Gulf coast, Ocean Springs. It’s been decades since I lived there, but the past, our memories, the slant of the light, seeing a world new through a growing child’s eyes; keep it tightly in memory. This town and my growing up there had stories to tell. These stories became the Nell McGraw series.

There is no real Pelican Bay and I’ve stretched the Mississippi coast from 3 counties to 4 to add my fictional one. The city is loosely—very loosely—based on Ocean Springs, but mainly because it’s easier to pull something from memory (and a map) than to create it out of whole cloth. There is no town square, so please don’t ask where it is. (Ocean Springs is a lovely, sleepy town, miles of natural beaches and worth a trip if you’re in the area. But missing an expanse of green at its heart.)

The first story I wanted to tell, in Roots of Murder, was to dig back into the hidden—or forgotten—struggles of the civil rights era. When I was a child, those lovely beaches were segregated. As difficult as it is, I wanted to take a hard look at that past, at least as much as a mystery, a fictional world, could do. How do those long ago sins still resonate? The mystery genre, at its heart, is a search for justice. Too often in real life we can’t find it; truth hidden and smudged under everyone’s version of it. But the mystery novel can give it to us.

For this kind of story, the only possible setting seemed to be one based on my childhood home, a small town with secrets.

In my research for the book, I stumbled over a memoir titled Blood, Ballots and Beaches, by Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr., an African-American doctor. It was the story of the desegregation of the beaches in Biloxi, Mississippi, a struggle overshadowed by the more bloody violence going on in other parts of the state.

My parents are long gone. I can’t ask them what it was like, even if I dared (would I find answers I didn’t want to find?) I only had small clues, some only later revealing themselves. In 8^th grade, I was given an assignment to ask my parents to name someone they admired, a historical figure. My mother chose Eleanor Roosevelt. Only later, did I realize what a major statement that was for Mississippi in the late sixties. (The state was still fighting Brown v. Education, finally losing at the Supreme Court in 1969.) Eleanor Roosevelt, who resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution, when it refused to let the African-American singer Marianne Anderson perform in its hall. Who climbed into a bi-plane with one of the Tuskegee Airmen to show her utter confidence that they could fly as well as any white pilot.

In Dr. Mason’s book, he only named those who helped support him in his struggle. I saw the name of my pediatrician, my mother’s cancer doctor, others that were part of my parent’s social circle.

A small kindness, to find that perhaps in that flawed time with its all too flawed men, my parents, had at least been part of those who were willing to hope for a better world. They weren’t fighters for civil rights, not on the front lines. Even in my sealed childhood world, I would have remembered that. I can’t claim any great heroism from my family—only that perhaps they weren’t as flawed—shading into evil—as many in that time and place.

And I had to write a story that helps, in a very, very small way, to atone for the sunny days at the beach that were denied to others. To remind us that, as Faulkner says, ‘The past is never gone; it’s isn’t even past.”

That was the genesis of Nell McGraw and Pelican Bay. (Please note, it’s a large small town and part of the well populated Gulf Coast area, keeping the murder rate well below that of Cabot Cove.)

In Perdition, the second Nell McGraw, I also wanted to draw on secrets, the assumptions we make about others, especially when we think we know them.

Mississippi, and my memories, still have stories to tell. 

***

What happens when a killer who can’t be caught threatens to kill your children next?

A town and a mother are forced to confront their worst fears in this hair-raising suspense novel from the author of Roots of Murder.

Newly widowed mother Nell McGraw struggles with her outsider status as she runs the newspaper founded by her husband’s grandfather. But a paper can’t turn away from the stories that others ignore, like the body of a child found in the Gulf. At first it seems tragic, a child lost because of carelessness.

Then another child goes missing.

Disgusted by the turf war between the sheriff and the police chief, Nell barely manages to keep her journalistic distance . . . until the killer contacts her, telling her that her children could be next. Now Nell must match wits with a psychopath who taunts her, daring her and the police to catch him before he can kill again.

R. Jean Reid lives and works in New Orleans. She grew up on the Mississippi Gulf coast. As J.M. Redmann, she is the author of multi-Lambda Award-winning Micky Knight Mystery series, including The Intersection of Law and Desire, Death of a Dying Man and Ill Will. Her day job is in public health as the director of prevention at NO/AIDS Task Force. You can visit her at www.RJeanReid.com.

New Releases - June 2017

All are available at Midnight Ink, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indiebound 
and your local bookstore. 

Studying 1888 Politics

Edith Maxwell here. Now that Called to Justice is launched to rave reviews ("A grand slam!" "A riveting historical mystery," "A mystery that surprises," and "A real page turner," I'm starting to write the fourth book in the Quaker Midwife Mysteries series. Wait, you say. What about Book Three?

Turning the Tide is already in production, and you can pre-order it (please do!) but the cover isn't up yet.

I loved writing this book. The story takes place during presidential election week of 1888. Here's the cover blurb:

Excitement runs high during Presidential election week in 1888. The Woman Suffrage Association plans a demonstration and movement leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes to town to rally the troops. When Quaker midwife Rose Carroll finds the body of the group's local organizer the next morning, she can't help but wonder who could have committed the murder.

Rose quickly discovers several people who have motives. The victim had planned to leave her controlling husband, and a recent promotion had cost a male colleague his job. She had also recently spurned a fellow suffragist's affections. After Rose's own life is threatened, identifying the killer takes on a personal sense of urgency.

What do you think? Sound like a fun read? The research was even more fun. I learned about election cakes. Women used to make these huge fruitcakes and the political party would give out pieces to men entering the polling place in an attempt to woo their vote.

I learned that the parties had different color ballots, and that the party regulars wore different color top hats while campaigning.

 I also studied up on women's suffrage. At the time they wore sunflower yellow sashes to protests and carried placards with slogans like, “Women Bring All Voters Into The World. Let Women Vote,” “Ballots for Both,” “Equal Suffrage,” and “Votes for Women.” Many of the suffrage leaders were Quakers like my midwife, so it wasn't a stretch to make Rose's mother an activist, too. John Greenleaf Whittier goes into vote in the election morning scene, and then comes to stand in solidarity with the women across the street from the polling place.

It was great fun studying Elizabeth Cady Stanton and bringing her  to Amesbury to support the women. She appears in several scenes in the book, even though I don't know if she actually ever visited my town where the series takes place. She was moving on to essays on personal responsibility, and I extracted bits of one for a talk she gave to a women's salon I portray in the book. 

Incumbent Grover Cleveland didn't win the election, as it turns out, even though Rose was on his side. And her investigation of the activist's murder turns dangerous, too. You'll have to read the book to find out if Rose is defeated or not.

What's your favorite election story, or factoid about either elections or women's suffrage in the past? 

Publishing and Promoting

by Linda O. Johnston

            Last month was a busy one for me.  I spent a lot of it doing what novel writers gotta do: write and promote. 

 

            I once thought that writers just wrote, but thanks to the publication of a nice number of books I learned that part of the requirement--and fun--is to promote.

 

            And so, I did a lot last month to let the world know about the launch of my third Barkery & Biscuits Mystery, Bad to the Bone, published by Midnight Ink. 

 

            I talked about it on my usual blogs, and also went on a Great Escapes blog tour.  I visited libraries.  I visited book stores.  I encouraged reviews.  But none of this sounds new to those of you reading this who also happen to be writers.

 

            I also had a June 1 deadline for turning in the manuscript for Barkery book #4.  Its title isn't established yet, but I did meet the deadline despite some health issues, so I'm glad about that.  And those of you reading this who also happen to be writers also know a lot about deadlines.

 

            One would think that, as with any career, learning what to do to could get stale with time.  But that's one fun thing about being a novelist.  Things may be the same, but they're also different.  We meet lots of people, in person and online.  We're always plotting, so our minds are never inactive. 

 

            And then, when the latest book comes out, we celebrate, in lots of ways--which of course includes those elements of promotion.

 

            So Happy June to all of you.  And may it be productive in your own plotting, promoting, reading, and everything else you do!