Sep 19, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Westerns |
Award-winning author Robin Somers spent her middle years in the foothills of Tuolumne County in the Sierra Nevada, where she wrote for the daily newspaper, taught high school English, and kept a horse. Today, she lives in Santa Cruz, California. She retired from the University of California, Santa Cruz faculty, where she continues to teach an occasional class and is a volunteer ambassador for the American Wild Horse Campaign. She is a founding member of the Coastal Cruisers chapter of Sisters in Crime and is also a member of Western Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America. She is the author of Beet Fields, a murder mystery, and Backyard Burning, a collection of poems. Her book Eleven Stolen Horses, a Wild Horse Mystery, launches September 17, 2024, with Sibylline Press. She returns frequently to Gold Rush Country, where the Wild Horse Mystery Series is set.
Pitch In Eleven Stolen Horses, a woman disappears without a clue from her home in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and her best friend, a reporter for the town’s daily newspaper (and the story’s protagonist), stops at nothing to find her—dead or alive. Along the way, she discovers secrets about her missing friend while crossing paths with the dark world of kill buyers and the horse slaughter pipeline.
I was thirty-seven when I started to write my first novel. I’d returned to school at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Literature and taking as many creative writing courses as possible. My creative non-fiction writing teacher, Page Stegner, announced he was taking his class on a week-long rafting trip down the San Juan River on the border of the Navajo Nation. I came away from that river with a bad case of hyperthermia, a passion for Indigenous culture, and a lasting belief in the spirit of landscape, which formed the perspective from which I write.
This first attempt brought me to a village of stick huts and tamped earth floors on the eastern slope of the Sierra de San Pedro Martir in Baja, California, where the Kiliwa live. The chief, whose name was Cruz, only spoke Kiliwa, a disappearing language. He believed I was there for the gold; I explained I was writing a novel. I wrote that book on my electronic typewriter and packed it away in a briefcase. Since then, I’ve written four more novels, one stored on a floppy disc, one in a file on my laptop, and another self-published. My most recent book, Eleven Stolen Horses, a Wild Horse Mystery, launches September 16, 2024, by Sibylline Press, an ass-kicking publishing company that specializes in the work of women over fifty. This is my first traditionally published book.
What took so long? As the late author/teacher Jim Houston (Continental Divide) said, “Writing is an evolutionary process.” I’ve taken many forms as a writer since I began forty years ago. I’ve reported and written essays, columns, features, lots of poetry, and fiction, narrowing the fiction to the mystery genre. I wrote freelance for the alternative presses in Santa Cruz and landed a full-time job as a beat reporter for a daily newspaper in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I was briefly an editor for the Forest Service. I taught high school English in that same town before moving back to Santa Cruz to attend San Jose State’s fledgling MFA program in Creative Writing, where I finished my second novel, Tornado, Kansas, which took a decade to write. I began the Olive Post eco-mystery series based on my son’s organic farm, Dirty Girl Produce. I self-published the second book in that series, Beet Fields, a murder mystery, in 2020, the year of Covid. All these parts of my evolution as an author launching her first traditionally published mystery at 75 affirm, “Never give up.”
Are my stories real or imagined? My stories are born of reality until my imagination takes over due to a trained journalistic mind that resists confinement to fact. I’m a pantser, which means I write the story as it comes to me, and sometimes the dang thing won’t come. But I got to the end of Eleven Stolen Horses. The story is about two women, one who goes missing and the other her best friend, who will not give up the search to find her—dead or alive. The premise came from the tragic disappearance of my friend Patty Kelly Tolhurst, who disappeared in the Sierra Nevada ten years ago and has not been found. Patty helped me pick out my first horse, which became a scene in the novel. My fiction is my way of processing experience. Eleven Stolen Horses is a prayer for my missing friend.
What kind of research do I do? Eleven Stolen Horses took me to a working horse and cattle ranch in Northeastern Utah, in the nape of the Jarbidge Wilderness, where ranchers bring their truths to the page and the geological hoodoo formations lend their spirit. The story also drew me to the Modoc Forest in Northern California, home of the Devils Garden Wild Horse herd, where I observed the round-up helicopter of these beautiful thriving horses, one of many roundups in one of many government wild horse management areas throughout the western states. Those mustangs not adopted into homes far too often live out their lives in holding facilities or, worse, are sold to kill buyers for slaughter. To keep my Wild Horses Mystery Series informed, I serve as an ambassador for American Wild Horse Conservation volunteer at a local wild horse rescue farm, scooping horse poop, stuffing hay bags, and grooming Sunset, a beautiful sorrel gelding.
Reaching out to an association member: In 2019, some NorCal Sisters in Crime wanted to create a chapter in the Santa Cruz/Santa Clara area. I live in Santa Cruz and jumped on the opportunity to help create the Coastal Cruisers chapter of SinC. I met women for whom publishing books was as natural as buying groceries. I was looking for an agent for my mystery Beet Fields. My SinC sister Alec Peche suggested I query a certain number of agents, say, eleven, and if I didn’t get results, to self-publish. I queried a few, then took the self-publishing leap. Alec, like so many women in SinC, was eager to help. I followed her instructions, put out Beet Fields, and became an author. If you’re starting, I can’t recommend enough joining your local chapter of SinC.
Who’s your favorite author(s): Louise Erdrich. Favorite book: Love Medicine. I’ve read each book in her Ojibwe series and taught Round House to my university students. Now: Everything by Peter Heller. He canoes and flyfishes, knows rivers, loves wolves and writes killer mysteries with an environmental twist. I wallow in Jane Harper’s dry land mysteries and Molly Gloss’ historical fiction about women and horses. When I’m stuck, I read these and other masters until their words open a door, and I can write again.
Yet, how to weave subplots into my working manuscript’s arc baffles me: Book coach Anne Janzer, author of The Writer’s Process, advises: 1) Clarify the problem and 2) form a question. Then, 3) walk away and do something mindless, like making the bed or weeding the walkway. Meanwhile, your deeper mind works out the solution. I’m writing the draft of Three Marys, the second book in the Wild Horses Mystery Series. My subplots don’t cohere, and this is problematic. The question I articulated was, “What do arson and homicide have to do with rescuing wild horses, and how do I weave these disparate and geographically distant subplots into the novel’s arc?” My mind came up with this: The solution is the arc. While a homicidal arsonist pulls a shroud of darkness over a community, the protagonist restores the light by returning a pair of endangered wild horses to freedom.
Are my settings real or fictional locations? Real until they must don a disguise. That said, the very real spirit of landscape has remained the lens from which I tell a story ever since that San Juan River trip with my first creative writing teacher, where I was lucky enough to experience the transformational power of landscape and live through it. That spirit entered me; I hope it will always reside in my work and, with any luck, touch my reader.
Here’s the link to preorder Eleven Stolen Horses
Website: https://www.robinsomers.com/
My new email: info@robinsomers.com
Facebook: RobinSomers
Insta: r_somers
TikTok: Horseygrandma
Sep 12, 2024 | Historical, Non-Fiction, Uncategorized |
Doctor Jenn Prosser is an emergency medicine physician and toxicologist passionate about poisons. She’s the creator and host of the Pick Your Poison Podcast. She’s published on topics including cocaine, meth, bath salts, fentanyl, sports supplements, and body packing of drugs for internal concealment. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally.
Pick Your Poison is a fast-paced, interactive podcast about poisons, toxins, mayhem, and murder, spanning time from ancient history to pop culture. Make the wrong choice, and your patient won’t survive the podcast!
What inspired you to start a podcast? Poisons!! I love telling the stories of poisons and sharing everything I’ve learned, from medicine to murder, ancient history to cutting-edge science, and everything in between. I love solving the mystery of what poisoned a patient and sharing the excitement with listeners.
Where do you write? Anywhere. I write a script for each show. I want to cram in as many fascinating facts as possible, but I also want to keep episodes short and concise. The script provides balance, so I don’t ramble on forever. Locations include the desk in my office, hotels, cafes, trains, planes, beaches, hair salons, and waiting rooms, to name a few. My favorite? On a quiet redeye flight with noise-canceling headphones. It feels like a silent cocoon with no distractions. As for distractions…
Do you allow distractions when writing? Yes! I’d love to be more disciplined, i.e., faster, but I’m continuously sucked into rabbit holes and pulled down meandering paths during research. Like Alice in Wonderland, sometimes. It yields many fascinating facts, but sadly, it wastes lots of valuable time. I’ve discovered things like which celebrity has drug-inspired artwork in their home, what moonshine has to do with NASCAR, what medicine comes from a bean used in African witchcraft trials, and which plant, now used as a drug, might’ve been used by Medea to kill her children in ancient Greece.
What is your writing/research process? I always follow the same framework. First, the topic is something I feel inspired to share and discuss. I try to vary episodes between natural toxins, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, etc. Second, the invention of a fictional patient with symptoms and presentation representative of the poison. Then, research using medical resources like toxicology textbooks or journal articles to review scientific details like mechanisms of action, treatment, etc. (Want to hear more about my research methods? I’m giving a talk on this topic for SinC Central Virginia on October 10, 7 pm EST – RSVP). Then it’s time for my favorite part, the rabbit holes and meandering paths. I scour the internet for interesting historical facts, mythological stories, pop culture references, crazy criminals, and other random facts.
What settings do you use for the podcast? Generally, the Emergency Department. I start each case as a mystery, allowing the listener to solve the case as a toxicologist or ER doctor would. Every case is fictional but based in real life. I love learning this way myself. I can remember patients and cases much more easily than long recitations of facts. I mix up the settings. For example, I’ve included tropical destinations with vacations gone wrong thanks to culinary misadventures or encounters with local wildlife.
What obstacles do you encounter? One challenging element is balancing content. I have highly knowledgeable medical professionals listening and those with no medical background, because who doesn’t love hearing about poisons? I try to walk a fine line straight down the middle with something for everyone without losing anyone in the weeds. Another issue is medicine, and toxicology especially, doesn’t always have all the answers. I wish we had an antidote for every poison, but that’s not the case. We aren’t allowed to conduct randomized, controlled clinical trials by poisoning half of the patients to see what treatment works best. Instead of glossing over these issues, I try to involve listeners in these real medical dilemmas.
What’s the most challenging part? Time!! I balance the podcast with family and a real job. For each episode, I research the topic, write the script, record the podcast, edit it, publish it, and try – emphasis on try- to promote via social media. Most days, I could use more than 24 hours!
Want to find out more? Check out the podcast!
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pick-your-poison/id1686838151
https://open.spotify.com/show/2saYRMCoQEMneVKxJ94pjf?si=bfa792e2c30a4149
Social Media and Contact Info:
Website: Pickpoison.com
X: @pickpoison1
Instagram: @pickpoison1
Email: pickpoison1@gmail.com
Writers Clubs:
Sisters in Crime (Main, Guppies, NorCal)
Sep 5, 2024 | Uncategorized |
With her Nut Cracker Investigations series, Dr. Katherine Ramsland applies her forensic psychology and criminology expertise to her fiction. She consults for coroners, teaches homicide investigators, and has appeared as an expert on more than 250 crime documentaries. She was an executive producer on Murder House Flip and A&E’s four-part Confession of a Serial Killer: BTK. The author of more than 1,800 articles and 73 books, including The Serial Killer’s Apprentice and How to Catch a Killer, she also pens a Substack column and a regular blog for Psychology Today. Dead-Handed is her third book in the series.
What do Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, Scottish lore, and a purloined corpse have in common? Cursed land near Concord, Massachusetts, linked to Annie Hunter’s family. When Annie arrives in Concord for her wealthy grandfather’s funeral, she’s stalked by those who want her gone. The more she learns about her crooked kin, the more she wants to be anywhere else. While her PI team investigates murders linked to a cyber game, Annie races to locate a deadly relic. If she fails, people will die, and she’ll lose her only link to her missing father. To stop the impending threats, Annie turns to three brothers whose family her ancestors ruined. In this third Nut Cracker investigation, the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been.
Annie Hunter must expose her family’s sinister work to foil a genius killer’s deadly game.
Years ago, I came across a description of a place in New England called Dudleytown. According to records, it’s an abandoned settlement in the Dark Entry Forest, so named for its location in the shadows of a mountain range. Once a thriving community, all that remains are some overgrown ruins and spooky stories. When I decided to set my third crime fiction novel in Concord, MA, to use its Hawthornean themes, I “moved” Dudleytown closer to Concord and called it Dacretown. My novel’s title, Dead-Handed, is a term related to land ownership that also worked perfectly with a family taint and a Scottish legend. But it seems that I was messing with the spirits.
I had my plot figured out. I wrote an outline and believed it would all fall nicely into place. But then things began to happen. Unexpected characters appeared, and the plot twisted along its own path as if I’d stirred up ghosts with a tale to tell. I’d discover things when characters said them. I’d “hear” a twist I hadn’t crafted. Like a medium, I dutifully (and anxiously) wrote them down, though I couldn’t foresee how it would all work out. I decided to trust my creative brain. Day by day, that trust was tested.
The most daunting challenge was to work the Dacretown tale into a parallel story I’d set in motion at the end of the preceding novel, In the Damage Path. I’d left a cliffhanger about a murder. Both narratives were complex. They seemed entirely unrelated. I was halfway through the first draft when a character from story #1 reacted to something a character from story #2 said, and just like that, the tales were linked. I didn’t see it coming.
That’s what I love about the subconscious. If you prepare with sufficiently deep and diverse research, you place the ingredients you’ll need into the brain’s processor. It will mix and match to produce something unique. You need to trust it. Since I’ve studied how our brain performs for flash insights (Snap! Seizing Your Aha! Moments), I was able to make myself wait and see. Yes, there were times when I thought I’d traveled straight into a dead end, but then the road would open up to a breathtaking landscape. Had I stuck close to the outline my conscious mind had contrived, I’d have missed the most exciting part of the creative experience.
For me, the ingredients for this mixing and matching derive largely from my forensic affiliations. Through conferences, journals, and teamwork, I get ideas for plots and characters. My protagonist, Annie Hunter, is a forensic psychologist who runs a PI agency and works with a network of professionals. She’s also a suicidologist, a rare specialty. I’ve long been a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Association of Suicidology. I’ve met people who inspired characters—such as a forensic meteorologist, a cadaver dog handler, and a forensic artist—and I’ve heard about shocking cases I’d never otherwise know.
I start each novel with an actual case I’ve worked on or studied that will call on my characters’ unique skills. I research the crimes, especially in legal documents, and often interview key personnel (including offenders). An additional dimension comes from travel: I use actual settings. I visit them, take photos, use maps, and talk with local officials. For example, the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, featuring the graves of multiple Concord-based authors, turned out to be a pivotal setting. A caretaker told me a little-known fact that gave me a surprise twist.
Ultimately, my seemingly loose threads wove well together, and the tale looked nothing like what I’d planned. My advice for writers: Fill your brain with a variety of experiences and information. Then, trust the subconscious to mix it up. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by what your hidden cognition can offer.
How can our readers contact you? Readers can find me on Facebook, where I have three pages, and my website has an email address.
Group Membership:
Sisters in Crime
Writers Police Academy
Mystery Writers of America
American Academy of Forensic Sciences
American Association of Suicidology
Website: https://www.katherineramsland.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.ramsland
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatRamsland
Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing
ISBN: 978-1-68512-700-8
Buy Link: https://tinyurl.com/2uvcfa9m
I’m reading Eleven Stolen Horses right now and completely enjoying it. Your line “a lasting belief in the spirit of landscape” is seen in every chapter of your book. Good job. Keep writing.
Thank you, Glenda! For the compliment and for reading 11SH! See you November 2 at Orinda Books!
Such passion in what you write! Lovely! Best of luck with ELEVEN STOLEN HORSES from a fellow horse-lover and Sister at SinC ( ;
I love talking horse, especially to a SinC sis, Pamela. I always learn something while I’m at it. Which chapter, if you don’t mine?
Oh my God, do we have similar tastes. I’ve read all of Jane Harper, one of my very favorite crime fiction writers. Loved Love Medicine. And a big yes to Peter Heller’s The River, although I didn’t like The Guide nearly as much.
Also, my husband and I gorge on dry-farmed tomatoes from Dirty Girl!
l look forward to riding to the Fall Showcase with you and learning more about you.
OMG is right, Vinnie. I’ll bring Joe’s tomatoes on our trip to Orinda!
Your evolution as a writer sounds like an adventure novel itself. God bless you for looking out for the wild horses and may you have much success with your new novel. Stay strong
Thank you, Michael. That’s exactly how I feel about and so kind of you to say that. The wild one break my heart and make it sing. I think it was Rumi who wrote ‘break my heart, break my heart, break my heart so I can love again. That’s the kind of emotion they elicit. Thank you, again!