Nov 28, 2025 | Historical, Uncategorized |
Michele Drier is a fifth generation Californian. During her career in journalism at daily newspapers in California, she won awards for investigative series. She is the past president of Capitol Crimes, a Sisters in Crime chapter; the Guppies chapter of Sisters in Crime; current president of NorCal Sisters in Crime, and co-chaired Bouchercon 2020, the world’s oldest and largest convention for mystery fans and authors. Her Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries are Edited for Death, (called “Riveting and much recommended” by the Midwest Book Review), Labeled for Death and Delta for Death. A stand-alone, Ashes of Memories was published May 2017.
Her paranormal romance series, SNAP: The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, named the best paranormal vampire series of 2014 by PRG are” . SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, PLAGUE: A Love Story, DANUBE: A Tale of Murder, SNAP: Love for Blood, (Best paranormal book 2013, PRG reviewers); SNAP: Happily Ever After?, SNAP: White Nights, SNAP; All That Jazz ( best paranormal vampire book of 2014, PRG reviewers), SNAP: I, Vampire, SNAP: Red Bear Rising and SNAP: Pandemic Games. I am currently writing book 12, SNAP: The Defenders
Her new series is the Stained Glass Mysteries, Stain on the Soul, Tapestry of Tear, and Resurrection of the Roses.
She lives in Sacramento with her cat, Malley.
I’ve always considered setting as a character, both in my reading and my writing.
Although I don’t write much detail about my characters—leaving it up to the readers to draw a picture for themselves—I do include details about where the story and action take place. I want readers to be able to orient themselves both in the real world and in their imagined space, so I add details about what the characters are seeing and feeling around them.
All my life I’ve tried to imagine what went before in any place I’ve visited—or made up. As a child, going to Yosemite, I’d look at the grooves in the granite and dream of the Native Americans who ground acorns or the immigrants who dragged their wagons up the steep mountain passes.
So when I began my novel-writing career, as opposed to my news-writing and editing career, I made a conscious effort to bring setting into the story as both an understanding and a foil for the characters and action.
My first novel, Edited for Death, is set in the San Joaquin Valley, in a place that may or may not be Lodi, and quickly moves to the protagonist sweltering in the summer heat. “…the pollution trapped in this valley like a bug in a jar. The haze and smog will cook into a dangerous-to-breathe soup as the day heats up.” This heat becomes an element that the characters deal with.
My paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, is set in Eastern Europe, primarily Hungary and Ukraine, and covers 500 centuries of war, trade, and change. The physical setting, major rivers of the area, including the Danube and the Dnieper, are the routes the early members of the Kandesky family used to build their trading empire, which, in the 21st century, has led them to be one of the richest families in the world.
The settings here are both LA, where the Kandeskys’ major industry, SNAP, the world’s largest and best celebrity gossip media is headquartered, and Kyiv and Budapest, where they maintain their homes. As the series progresses (now writing the 12th book) the setting becomes a danger as the Russians move west to invade. The Kandeskys moved over this landscape with knowledge amassed over the centuries, and this became both their protection and their offensive weapon.
With my most recent series, The Stained Glass Mysteries, setting became such a strong character that readers have said, “Reading this makes me feel as though I’m there with the characters. I can feel the ocean,” or in the case of the latest, Resurrection of the Roses, “I feel as though I’m eating with them at that Parisian cafe. How do you do it?”
I met a woman a year or so ago who retired in a small town on the Oregon Coast and, when she read, Stain on the Soul, the first Stained Glass book, she said, “How long did you live there? You’ve described it perfectly, and I can feel the fog on the beach.” I had to admit I’d never lived there but had visited, and the memories of the scents of the ocean and the feel of the air immediately took me back to that place.
I don’t intend my novels to be travelogues, but I use settings to put the reader in the place with the characters: to taste the pumpkin soup at the restaurant in Beaune or watch the tide come up in the small Kentish village, bringing a reminiscence of the Oregon coast.
Even though fans have told me my novels made them want to travel—maybe my work here is done!—I do want to give readers as full an experience as I can.
They may not know how tall Roz is or the color of Maxie’s hair, but they do know how the protagonists relate to the world around them: “As the dark, soft Ukrainian night smoothed out across the miles of fields to the east, an easy road for centuries of conquests.”
My 20th book, the fourth in the Stained Glass Mysteries series, will take the reader across Europe as the main characters help track down international art thieves. I can’t wait to get back to Switzerland!
Visit her webpage, www.MicheleDrier.me
Or her Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/AuthorMicheleDrier
Or find her on her author page at http://www.amazon.com/Michele-Drier/e/B005D2YC8G/
For a look inside Resurrection of the Roses, my latest in the Stained Glass Mysteries, I’ve included part of a scene and the setting:
The University of Paris, established in 1150, was divided into separate colleges in 1970. However, the original buildings were still used for classes, lectures, and seminars, and stained-glass workshops took up several of the medieval and later spaces. She looked up from her map, found a lecture auditorium where she was scheduled to give her keynote presentation later that day, and crossed the soaring atria at the top of the grand staircase.
The vast auditorium could hold upwards of 1,000 people, and she hoped it wouldn’t be full. Speaking before groups didn’t much bother her, she’d learned to focus on people on the first few rows, but here the tiers went up into darkness. She took a breath, moved to the side of the stage and climbed to the speaker’s dais set up in the center.
The overhead lights weren’t on but a spot lit the dais and caught a flash of red near the backdrop curtain. Roz looked out at the auditorium, getting a feel for the space and how she’d shape her talk. She had slides so needed to talk to some of the audiovisual staff.
She turned around to check out the curtain behind the dais, caught the flash of red again and walked back. As she neared the curtain, the flash resolved itself into a two-foot long shard of glass, poking up from a pile of rags. No, it wasn’t a pile of rags, there was a shape there—and something wet looking. Closer, she saw it was a body, a man, who was curled around the shard as though embracing it.
It wasn’t an embrace though, it was a fatal wound, the shard protruding through his chest and spilling his life, the same color as the glass, out on the stage.
She stifled a scream, backed away, spun around and took the steps to the auditorium floor so fast she almost lost her balance.
Buy at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7R1QR8G
Nov 20, 2025 | Uncategorized |
Jeff Zolfarelli began his career in public safety when he joined the San Leandro Police Department as a patrol officer. He spent time as a K-9 officer and a SWAT member. After ten years, Jeff transferred to the San Leandro Fire Department, where he attained the rank of Captain.
He ended his twenty-five years in fire service as the Deputy Fire Chief of Operations for the Livermore Pleasant Fire Department.
Jeff teaches in the fire technology program within the Chabot-Las Positas College District. \
Jeff holds an Associate’s degree in Administration of Justice, a Bachelor’s degree in Business, and a Master’s degree in Emergency Operations and Planning. He is also a United States Air Force Reserve veteran, serving from 1970 to 1977.
He enjoys long-distance motorcycle rides (especially with George Cramer), gardening, and model trains. A native of California, he resides in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife.
Two years ago, he and his associate, Al Rager, updated and revised Fire Behavior and Combustion Process used widely in fire education and for their course. This book had been out of print for a long time.
In all my life, the idea of writing, writing about anything for school projects, tests, reports, has been an often put-off subject. Now, mind you, I am not an illiterate individual; I hold three degrees. Yet I never saw myself as a good writer.
Currently employed by a community college district, I have taught a tech fire science course on the combustion and behavior process of fire for 35 years. I found a need to have a more current book on the subject. During the span of my teaching this course, I had changed the text three times, and I very much preferred the current book.
Well, the textbook I used for my community college course was well overdue for a second edition, and the author had passed on to the great library in the sky. The family, having sold the rights to another publishing company, had no interest in continuing the existing publication. The impact on my course eventually led to the option to scan books and add them to the course. Thus saving the student the expense of purchasing a copy.
However, this did not satisfy the desire to have an updated second edition of a book now 25 years in print. Contact with the publishing company that held the rights to the book was drawn out, and to save time, let me say that my fellow professor and I, with the assistance of our program director, were able to persuade the publishing company to publish a second edition. The catch was that we needed to find someone willing to take on this challenge.
Well, always being one to try new ideas and realizing that often we are drawn to that which we fear most, I accepted this challenge and began an 18-month process to complete a second edition of the book. This was accepted with the help of another professor who taught the course with me. He would write the odd chapters, and I would write the even chapters.
The process starts with a meeting with an executive editor and associate members. Now, in the 21st century, and with them on the East Coast and us on the West Coast, this was accomplished via the now well-worn online video meeting process. Mind you, this process was begun in 2015, a period well after the great lockdown, when all courses were held online for 24 months. I had mastered this process and was able to present, share, and copy whatever was necessary.
The first vetting meeting was cordial and well-received by both sides. They were invited to allow a second meeting for us to show them the course we teach and how the book is an integral part. A date was set, and the meeting occurred. With the explanation that we felt the other book on the same subject was what we termed a ‘four-year book,’ designed for those seeking a four-year degree, such as engineers, investigators, and inspectors. We wanted a two-year book for those entering the fire service at the firefighter level. Showing them how we weaved the chapters into the course and how entry-level firefighters best benefited from this text, they agreed to let us rewrite the book.
The following process included signing contracts and setting up a schedule for completion. A 24-month deadline to production was agreed upon, and we began the process. What I thought was going to be a writing session, followed by submission and printing, was far from what was in store. We were assigned a managing editor who would set the schedule and then another editor who would read what we had written and submit back corrections, additions, or changes they felt needed. This includes the explanation of what we were writing as the subject matter was not clear to you. Meetings were often held online, which led to a great relationship-building process that was educational for both sides and at times quite humorous.
As an avid Mac user, I was told the work needed to be in MS Word, which meant I needed to add that to my laptop. I immediately went on a steep learning curve to accomplish this and adjust to WORD terms and processes. The most humorous request was that the book be written at a reading level of eight. Now, keep in mind I am not from the academic world. I worked in operations, boots on the ground management. So another steep climb was conquered. The course is at a community college level, and the book was written at a reading level of thirteen. We had a few rounds and rounds of sessions over what level we would write the book. It was agreed that, as subject matter experts, we would determine when the book had a reading level of thirteen and when we could lower it to a reading level of eight.
Following that, the adventure grew ever more rewarding. I always believed that when you begin studying for a higher position, you improve your level of knowledge and ability to deliver a better product. The time spent researching and updating the information in the first edition, plus the addition of current and new equipment, policies, procedures, and apparatus, led to an increased understanding for me in the classroom.
During the 18-month process, we reached out to fellow firefighters and subject matter experts to put together a book that held on to the heart of what the original author wrote and brought meaning and understanding to the student who would be using it for the time to come.
We also learned a great deal from other subject matter experts who were asked to review our work from around the country. This gave us the broad five-thousand-foot and ground-level views of what the industry was experiencing and how to best address the subject at hand.
It was at times a very stressful experience, learning new formats, understanding a new writing language, and at times desperately holding on to what I truly believed was best for the book, despite consideration for alterations from our editors.
I would do this again, perhaps. I can say that I have been asked to review other books from the publisher and have done so, drawing on the insight I have gained from my writing experience.
Fire Behavior and Combustion Process – Can be purchased on Amazon or at JB Learning.com
You may contact Jeff at: jeffzolfarelli@gmail.com
Nov 13, 2025 | Crime, Mystery |
Francelia Belton writes crime stories because committing a real one would disappoint her family. As a kid, she got hooked on shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Inspired by what amazing tales could be told in half an hour, she was naturally drawn to short fiction. Now, she’s on a mission to write 1,001 stories before she dies—an audacious goal for a notoriously slow writer. She published a collection titled Crime & Passion: Three Short Stories, and her work has appeared in various anthologies.
I was in a writing rut.
The last short story I finished writing was one year ago. It was for my Sisters in Crime chapter’s inaugural anthology, Colorado Mystery Merge. Then, a few months later, I could only eke out a 100-word micro fiction for Punk Noir’s My Bloody Valentine special. After that, zilch, nada, nothing—in the frying pan or baking in the oven. A few stories started but never finished.
And being unable to finish anything, I thought I’d lost it. I believed I would be unable to write another story again.
That scared me more than anything. I had wanted to be a writer ever since I was a little girl in elementary school. I used to take homework assignments like turning vocabulary words into ordinary sentences, but instead turned the assignment into a full-blown short story.
Like the protagonist in my story, “Knife Girl,” I asked myself, Who am I if I’m not a writer? I had been pursuing this writing dream for so long, I didn’t know what I would do with my life instead.
So, I decided to take a couple of writing classes to break me out of my paralysis. And it worked. In one of the classes, I came away from it learning I needed to treat my writing as a practice. Stop trying to achieve perfection in the first draft. If I approached the page with the idea of practicing, it would take away the pressure of having to be “good.”
The second class I signed up for turned out to be serendipity at its best. This class emphasized working on a writing exercise every time you sat down to write. You needed to trust a story would appear. And to my astonishment, that worked! I worked on one of the writing exercises, and out of nowhere, interesting characters appeared. A story idea would start to develop.
Hallelujah! I felt like I was finding myself in the world again.
But as fate would have it, the universe was not finished with me yet. As this second class was finishing up, an email arrived in my inbox about a 90-day writing challenge. In it, all we had to do was write a minimum of 400 words a day, and our names would be entered in a drawing to win a free writing class. So, I told myself, all I needed to do was work on a writing exercise every day. I could get to those 400 words, no problem. Bonus if I did more than that.
But the real prize from this experience is that I came up with an idea for a flash fiction series. I started it on Substack and called it, A Character Picks Up a Gun. Since I would work on a writing exercise every day, I figured, why not have each writing practice centered on a recurring theme? By focusing on different writing elements through the various exercises, I would get many ideas that I could turn into stories. Potentially 90 ideas, which is great for a short story writer like myself.
So, long story short, it all worked out. I was no longer in a writing rut. I have been writing every day. By the time this post is published, I will have written for 43 days straight; about halfway to my goal of 90 days. What’s more, I will not stop there. I will keep practicing my writing, and I will keep my writing dream alive.
Francelia’s work often explores the tangled motives behind love, loss, and betrayal. Her story, “Knife Girl,” is one such story and you can download a free copy here: https://FreeStory.link/Knife-Girl
Find her free Substack series, A Character Picks Up a Gun — a collection of quick, gripping stories (each under 1000 words) that all start with the same spark: someone picks up a gun. From there, every world, character, and consequence shifts, revealing how one simple action can lead to infinite, unexpected outcomes.
Discover more of her work at: https://Francel.Be/Writing-Stories
Memberships:
Sisters in Crime – Colorado
Sisters in Crime: National and Guppies
Mysteries Writers of America: National and Rocky Mountain
Crime Writers of Color
Short Mystery Fiction Society
Nov 6, 2025 | Uncategorized |
M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, came out from Shotgun Honey. Catch Me on a Blue Day is the next installment in the series. She’s the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly, among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer short story nominee.
Catch Me on a Blue Day
“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.”
It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war that retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide.
A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut, to help him with research. He looked forward to Declan’s visit: “See you at cocktail time, a fine whiskey’s waiting.” They talked on the phone a few hours before the man put a bullet in his brain.
Now Declan stands in the office of the local police chief. The cop would prefer to see him fly back to Houston. He’s never dealt with a private detective, but everybody knows they are trouble. If only there weren’t so many unanswered questions around Marsh’s death … the haunting first three chapters of his book, and that dedication to Ella, a girl whose murder thirty years ago brought the town to its knees.
In Catch Me on a Blue Day, Declan is far from his regular Texas stomping grounds. He’s off balance in more ways than one, and the crimes he uncovers are of a magnitude he could not foresee.
Between the sins of an old New England town and the violence of 1980s El Salvador. And the links between the two.
Book link:
Catch Me on a Blue Day is available in eBook and paperback formats.
On Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Blue-Declan-Shaw-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0FR3DWYGD/
Five years in the making – Catch Me on a Blue Day is the second book in the Declan Shaw PI series and came about in a very different way than its predecessor, Love You Till Tuesday. It is both a book of urgency and careful planning, if these two apparently discordant characteristics can coexist.
I started playing with the plot in the summer of 2020. A few years earlier, I had spent some time in a small town on the Connecticut coast, and it struck me as: 1. Pretty, 2. Traditional, 3. Claustrophobic. The perfect setting for a cozy mystery, but I’m a contrarian, so I knew that if I ever used the place in a story, it would turn dark, very dark.
My PI, Declan Shaw, is based in Houston. I needed to give him a good excuse to leave Texas. Something like an old friend asking him for help with research for his book, but when he gets there, the friend is dead. Suicide. Why would the man commit suicide? I made the friend an investigative journalist and war zone correspondent, and the plot beats started coming together. They required digging into historical events, which I spent most of the summer of 2020 doing, and setting up a tight timeline and character bios. I ended with a pile of documentation (official reports, newspaper articles, pictures) and a twenty-page single-spaced prep document. This isn’t how I normally work. I usually start with an idea and a vague outline that can carry the story for a few chapters, and I research as I go. I’m well aware it isn’t the most efficient process. In this case, I needed to have my ducks in a row before sitting down to write, or I would get lost in too many rabbit holes ever to see the light of day again.
By the time I was ready to type the first line, I was so eager to go that the need was almost physical.
Cue the ‘urgency’. For two months, all I could think of was Catch Me on a Blue Day. The title popped as soon as I wrote these lines of dialogue (text condensed for this post). Declan Shaw is talking:
“In my business, you learn that things are rarely what they seem.”
“Are things rarely what they seem in love too?” Isabel said.
“Catch me on a blue day and I’ll say yes. Love is often not what it seems.”
“And on a non-blue day?”
“There are accommodations.”
I must have been hard to live with while the book took shape—distracted, absent-minded, ruminating, impatient, obsessive. Do you remember the fall of 2020? We were locked up. No travel. No school. Doomsday around us. Echoes from the writing community were bleak. The needle on the mood-meter oscillated between gloom and frenzy—”I can’t write” or “All I can do is write”, and sometimes both at the same time.
I belonged to the latter group. I wrote like a woman possessed.
After typing The End, I wasn’t too sure where I was. I also had doubts about what the trance produced. (Anybody who, like me, rebuild the world in college at three in the morning will be familiar with the feeling. Before daybreak, we’re all geniuses. Then the sun comes up.) It seemed like a sensible decision to set the book aside until the fever abated. It took six months before I dared look at it again. Editing, tweaking, beta readers, more editing, followed by two years in the freezer. Other projects took center stage. Short stories, new book ideas, a collection, and Love You Till Tuesday, scheduled for release, were the first Declan Shaw stories to see the light of day.
Time can be frustrating in the publishing business, but one benefit of letting years tick by between drafts is that the material feels new, even foreign, as if the story had been written by someone else. The biggest obstacle in editing one’s own work is familiarity; it causes blindness. You simply can’t see what’s wrong; objectivity is impossible. After three years, ‘kill your darlings’ isn’t daunting anymore. By then, the darlings have long been pushing the daisies. Trimming, cutting, chopping, and whacking don’t draw blood; they’re just good housekeeping.
Did I change a lot between drafts? Some. The story ended up being tighter and faster. I also balanced the points of view between Declan and the three women who have a major role in the story. The casual reader may not notice, but the dance of POVs lends a rhythm to the narrative, much like a musical progression (three chapters in Declan’s POV, one in Isabel’s, three in Declan’s, one in Jean’s, and so on). I also indulged in my favorite plot break: sticking a flashback smack in the middle. It’s the kind of play with structure that does not come naturally in early drafts.
It is a prequel – Catch Me on a Blue Day is the second Declan Shaw mystery, but chronologically it takes place before Love You Till Tuesday. Something that matters more to the writer (keeping a tight rein on the character’s bio) than to the readers. The books can be read separately. Tone-wise, the stories strike different chords. Tuesday is structured like a classic procedural; it starts with cops at the crime scene and is entirely in the here and now. In Blue Day, a crime is suspected, but the evidence is circumstantial, and the roots of evil go back thirty years. It’s a cold case with aftershocks in the present. Declan is also in unfamiliar territory, far from Texas, among strangers, and dealing with the sequels of a serious injury. He’s definitely less sure-footed and decisive than usual, and it throws the case off kilter.
The cover image – The woods of Connecticut, the jungles of El Salvador, and the Atlantic in a storm. The only blue is in the title, on purpose.
How do our readers contact you:
Twitter: @MEProctor3,
Facebook: Martine Elise Proctor
Website: https://www.shawmystery.com
Substack: https://meproctor.substack.com
Nov 4, 2025 | Thriller, Uncategorized |
Saturday, 11/1/2025, I had the pleasure to join a friendly group of writers and readers listen to an outstanding three-person panel moderated by Elena Taylor. Elena was joined by local authors Claire Booth and James L’Etoile. The event was hosted by the folks at WILD SISTERS BOOK COMPANY of Sacramento.
One of the questions from the audience was the author’s writing process. Plotter or Panser. This led to a lively discussion. I believe the outcome was that Jim was right and Claire was right. Both put forth valid points in the debate.
Hi Michele! I’m late to your interview, but enjoyed it! Thanks George, tyoo. You’vemade me want to put aside the beta read I’m doing (it’s really good , but…) to pull yours from the TBR pile and read it right now! Forget dinner…
xoAna
Hi Michele!
I wholeheartedly agree!
I’ve always treated location/setting as a character. I suspect, and am eager to learn first hand, that you err on the side of suspense with the location setting contributing to that feeling. West Coast to eastern Europe, such diversity! Best of luck!
Best,
Dave
I haven’t read your books yet, Michele, but the Stained Glass Mysteries have now moved to the top of my list!
I’m Australian-born, live in New York City, and my book series, Prague Soul-Steps, is set in – you guessed it – Prague. I have spent many happy visits there, and love the city and the country.
The first of the series, The Skull of Wenceslas, will be released in the spring of 2026. Kat is an American, vlsiting Prague for the first time. She discovers the magic of Prague takes her psychic skills way beyond seeing ghosts, and she can now see through the eyes of ghosts and legends in their own time.
I love writing about Prague, and I’m constantly treading a fine line between suspense and a travelogue. Great blog – thank you!