Oct 10, 2024 | Crime, Mystery, Police Procedural / Crime |
Author Karen A. Phillips lives in northern California and has several short stories published in various anthologies. Her characters are engaging and fearless. She writes the Rocky Nelson Boxing Mystery series . . . and yes, she does take boxing lessons. Visit her at KarenAPhillips.com.
In the second Rocky Nelson Boxing Mystery, A Deadly Match, Raquel (AKA Rocky) investigates family secrets and murder.
I came up with the idea for the series when I started taking boxing lessons. I thought it would be an excellent hobby for an amateur sleuth and thus, Rocky was born.
In A Deadly Match, I go deeper into Rocky’s character. She’s a fifty-five-year-old single woman living with her twin sister, Bridget. As one can imagine, this is not the ideal situation for two adult women. But they make the best of it. They’re living together because of what happened in A Deadly Combo. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you do.
I also explored several subplots in A Deadly Match. One is Rocky’s romantic life. She has feelings for both Detective Thompson and her ex-fiancĂ© Angelo, which makes for some interesting scenes and helps add conflict to the story. Another subplot is Rocky’s boxing coach, Cutter, who has a young son who’s been diagnosed with a rare brain condition and needs treatment right away. Cutter is desperate for money as he can’t afford the surgery. He agrees to throw a boxing match for a guaranteed payment. A third subplot involves Rocky’s estranged aunt and uncle, who are famous actors. When they show up, unannounced, to film a movie, Bridget is excited, but Rocky is wary. She doesn’t like surprises—after all these years, why are they suddenly back in their lives?
And, of course, since it’s a murder mystery, there’s a dead body! Every member of Rocky’s family happens to be present when the victim dies. When Cutter is arrested for murder, Rocky throws herself into the investigation, determined to prove her coach innocent.
A Deadly Combo (Book 1) took me five years to write. I wrote A Deadly Match (Book 2) in one year, and it wasn’t easy, to say the least. I utilized many beta readers before sending the manuscript to the developmental editor, then a proofreader. I feel writing is a lot like taking boxing lessons. My coach always reminds me to keep the weight on my back leg and keep moving. Likewise, as I write, I’m constantly reminding myself about the basic rules of plotting a mystery—include red herrings, drop clues strategically, add conflict, end chapters with a hook, throw obstacles at your protagonist, give your characters an arc, and when the climax is reached and the crime solved, make sure the denouement is satisfying with all threads tied up neatly in a bow!
A Deadly Match will be available to purchase as a preorder on Amazon on October 11th.
Stay tuned by signing up for my newsletter at KarenAPhillips.com.
A DEADLY COMBO – Book One – Amazon
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Jan 25, 2024 | Thriller |
June Gillam writes the Hillary Broome crime fiction series. She is sketching out a new thriller trilogy she’ll fine tune at 2024’s Thrillerfest in New York. A native of California’s Central Valley, June loves the company of writers and readers and was honored with a Jack London Award for service to the writing community. Just out on Audible is Nest of White Crows, book five in the Hillary Broome series.
Legacy of the Wild Vines, book six in the Hillary Broome Crime Fiction series, to be released in spring 2024:
In Legacy of the Wild Vines, a professor on a summer trip to Rome tries to keep her sixteen-year-old gay daughter safe amidst a rash of kidnappings, but when her daughter vanishes, the professor must probe the secrets of a remote Italian village to help find her daughter before it’s too late.
June at the 2023 CA State Fair Authors Booth
Along with Archy the cockroach, “expression is the need of my soul,” as the little poet typed onto paper left in columnist Don Marquis’ typewriter at the Chicago Sun Times office back in the mid-20th century. Archy typed no capital E since he could not operate the shift key with his tiny body flung as he did every night when the journalists went home. For details, see E. B. White’s “From The Best of Archy and Mehitabel.” https://rb.gy/604efi
Like Archy, I started out as a poet and then an academic papers writer until I was hired as a full-time faculty member in English at San Joaquin Delta College in 1990. It was then it hit me that I didn’t know how to write stories even though many of my poems wanted to become stories. Over the next ten years, I studied fiction and had a few short stories published, then took the craft deeper as part of my doctoral work in Transformative Learning and Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. My dissertation was a cooperative inquiry, published in 2009 as a monography: Women Writing Stories Containing Conflict. I was thrilled.
However, Lambert Academic Publishing priced it at well over $100 and I could not get them to reduce the price. That was when I decided I wanted to be in control of my price points. As a result, Gorilla Girl Ink was born as my imprint and has published all my books: poetry, writing, fiction, and just last year, a children’s picture book with my daughter as illustrator.
So, I’ve been an Indie-published writer since 2012 with Gorilla Girl Ink. Thanks to the support of fantastic sister writers and critique groups along the way, I’ve had a bit of success and enjoyed the ride. But Indie publishing is a lot of work beyond the writing. It includes finding, hiring, and supervising editors, cover designers, formatters, etc. Recently, a medium-sized publisher, Bedazzled Ink, has approached me because of the platform I’ve built with Gorilla Girl Ink. They are interested in publishing my next book, a thriller trilogy set in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe.
The pros and cons of Indie vs Trad publishing are presented on websites such as the well-balanced Book Bub and Writers Digest assessments.
https://insights.bookbub.com/indie-vs-traditional-publishing-which-path-right-you/
And https://www.writersdigest.com/getting-published/17-pros-and-cons-of-traditional-publishing-vs-self-publishing#:~:text=Traditional%20Publishing%20Pros&text=Traditional%20publishers%20do%20not%20charge,upfront%20payments%20are%20not%20legitimate.
Although not every point in these comparisons holds true all the time, they are worth the effort to consider. After more than ten years as an Indie, I am now ready to focus my time on my writing rather than the publishing of it. I am eager to turn over the publishing tasks to Bedazzled Ink and concentrate on writing, marketing, and teaching workshops, which I enjoy. https://www.bedazzledink.com
My advice for new writers is to join a writer’s group for support and camaraderie. Take a look to see if the San Joaquin Valley Writers branch of the CA Writers Club could be a good fit for you. Check us out at https://www.sjvalleywriters.orgÂ
Readers may contact me about my books and upcoming workshops starting in February at https://www.junegillam.com/contact
Groups I belong to include
San Joaquin Valley Writers
Capitol Crimes, Sisters in Crime
Mystery Writers of America
Gold Country Writers
Links to buy my work:
Nest of White Crows, Hillary Broome book 5, Audible https://rb.gy/462wuh
June Gillam’s Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/2ZX5OjK
Keep your weight in your back leg and keep moving…that’s good advice for lots of life’s challenges! Really liked Rocky in Deadly Combo and eagerly waiting for the next (but hopefully not the last) in her story!
Hi Michele, I hope you enjoy A Deadly Match as much as you liked A Deadly Combo! And Yes, boxing is a lot like life in many ways.
Boxing! I never would have guessed, Karen. It’s fun getting to know you better.
Hi Vinnie, I agree! I can’t wait to read ONE GUN. 🙂
Loved the first Rocky book and can’t wait to read the new one! Rocky throws some good punches but I think she learned from someone who is great at making readers say, “Oomph, didn’t see THAT coming!”
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Tarra!
Can’t wait to see what Rocky gets up to in A DEADLY MATCH!!
Hello Marie! I had fun writing A DEADLY MATCH. Our friends Dan and Rick were sensitivity readers for a particularly fun scene.
I love your character’s name. Truly a gritty protagonist to identify with and cheer for. Good luck with A DEADLY MATCH.
Thank you, Pamela!
Great blog post. As a beta reader of A DEADLY MATCH, I can highly recommend this mystery. Wonderful character development, suspense and even some humor.
Thank you for being one of my beta readers, Cindy! You gave me a lot of great feedback which helped improve the story.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a mystery series, Karen. Best of luck to you. Keep your guard up and don’t skip your roadwork.
Thank you, Michael!