Peg Herring, Mystery Author

I'm kind of bad at selling things (which is odd because my dad was a used car salesman. He wasn't the stereotypical one, though, and worked hard to find the best car for the money for each customer.) Anyway, even with years of watching people sell things to other people, I can't make myself tell readers that my books are amazing and will change their lives. Nor can I follow the advice of one writer I met who said, "When people come up to your table at a signing, shove the book at them so they have to take it into their hands. They'll be embarrassed to put it down, so they'll buy it." Really? I'd be embarrassed to be that pushy. So here's the deal. It's the holiday season and people are looking for gifts. If you know a mystery reader, you might consider giving one of my books. I've listed below the first in each series, and I'm giving the Kindle versions away over the next month on Amazon. I won't hide my motive: if a person re

My first release, now in audio: Macbeth's Niece This month I'm answering questions I often get at personal appearances. Today's question is "How long does it take to write a book?" That's a little like "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" It's part practical, part philosophical, and mostly unanswerable. We all know authors who take years to write a book. Some of them are quite self-righteous about it, copping a "you can't rush genius" attitude. I'm no genius, so I can't say if that's true. I've noticed, however, that the rest of us are writing as fast as we can, and while it used to take two years minimum to get a new book out, most publishers are fine these days with more than one a year. That can lead to some loss of quality, and readers with an editor's eye bemoan the modern tendency to rush to get a book out. Still those same readers go on Facebook or Goodreads and wonder when Author X is

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Silence-Loser-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B00A87IAQG I'm on vacation for September, so for the blog I thought I'd address some questions people ask at personal appearances. QUESTION #1 Where do you get the names/inspiration for your characters? Often from real people I know. I need an image in my head to create a character. (Brag here: one site said last week that my characters are people you think about long after you finish the book. YAY!) I start with someone I've known--perhaps a coworker or a former student--and imagine how that person would react to the scenario I'm creating. I always add when I admit this that those people NEVER stay real. As soon as I have a firm picture in mind, the character becomes a whole new person, with his own personality, attitudes, and personal details. For example, Verle in the Loser Mysteries started out as a man who was sort of my second dad, since I practically lived at his house as a kid. Readers

Okay, I made that word up, and I never studied German, so don't criticize! There should be a word for wanting something good to read but not being sure what you want or able to find it. Apparently what I want to read isn't very popular right now. I've been sick of serial killers for years, but that's mainly what Amazon offers when you type in mystery . I'm also sick of protagonists who aren't much better than the criminals they seek. I gave up on two books this week. In one the protag shared his client's cocaine with him and spent waaaaaay too much time describing the physical attributes of the sleazy, slimy women the client surrounded himself with. In the other, every cop was corrupt and every lawyer was shady to the point I was sick of all of them. I've never been much for books where the mystery takes second place to something else, like growing kumquats or shopping. I'm disappointed by books where the killer comes totally out of the blue

Why Do You Write Mysteries? I get asked that question a lot, so I've thought long and hard in order to be able to come up with a good answer. Here it is. I don't really know. Why do you read mysteries? might be a place to start. If we can agree that we read mysteries because we enjoy having a puzzle to solve, like seeing characters tossed into unusual and often dangerous situations, and feel satisfied when everything works out in the end, then I guess the logical extension of that, at least for someone who likes to write, is attempting to create her own  mystery. I like coming up with unique characters: a homeless woman, a dead P.I., a famous princess/queen. I like salting the plot with clues, both false and real. I like filling in details once the main story is in place and adding subplots like the relationships among sisters or the joys of growing up in a small town. I get to know my characters through a series, so my mind stops me if I try to make a woman or even a dog

For some reason I ended up with a bunch of historicals at my last visit to the bookstore. It could be that there are a lot of them out there, and it could also be that I'm drawn to them. Here's what I've got: The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman-I'd read good things about this one, and I did enjoy the gradual narrowing of the distance between the two protagonists. Lots of interesting stuff about the times, when it was perfectly okay to display "freaks" and pretend it was science--although I guess today we do the same thing through television and pretend it's altruism. A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger-This one isn't for the casual reader of historicals. Like Hilary Mantel's work, it's a book that immerses one in the time, with references to real people the reader is expected to recognize and words I wouldn't have known except for good old Dr. Calver's Chaucer class back at U of M many decades ago. I had

Upcoming Release of a Series I Enjoy When authors get together, there's a tendency to disparage cozy mysteries , and many of my friends think of themselves as "just" cozy writers. To be honest, cozies can get pretty silly, with amateur sleuths bumbling through situations that no sane person would put herself into. Often they have only the faintest of reasons to do so, and most of us would have called the police, told them our suspicions, and gone back to canning green beans. So why do zillions of people read zillions of cozies each year? Possibly because we trust them. We trust cozies to provide a few hours of entertainment that won't depress us, scare us, or force us to ponder the darker side of humanity. Cozy villains might be a little papery, but we don't imagine them showing up in our bedrooms with a butcher knife or shadowing us in a dark parking garage as we hurry to our cars. It might be my age, or it might be TV's predilection for long

Last week I posted about the reader's delight: four great books I read all in a short time. Today I'd like to talk about the ones we don't finish. My most recent "I'm not reading any more of this" book started on a weak note, but I stuck with it while the author rehashed the previous installment, figuring maybe I needed to know the stuff to get Book #2. Then the protagonist put himself in a situation where he was locked in without telling anyone or giving himself an emergency escape. I thought that was unwise, but as an author I know that we sometimes ignore what real people would do in order to make a story work. It's a story, after all. The stopping point came in a scene that was clearly included only to shock the reader. The event had nothing to do with historical detail and didn't advance the plot an iota. It was simply degrading to the protagonist and uncomfortable for me to "watch." It was almost as if the author yelled from beh

The big summer holiday is over in our little town, so we go back to doing what we do. In my case that's reading and writing. The writing was in the final phases for several pieces over the last few months and the promotion that's ongoing when a book is newly released. First it was the last Dead Detective mystery, then the fourth Sleuth Sisters (by Maggie Pill, but I'm heavily involved). After that it was finalizing the audio books for MACBETH'S NIECE (after years and years it will finally be on Audible) and the second Dead Detective mystery, DEAD FOR THE MONEY. I had to listen to them to be sure they're correct, which takes hours and hours but made me pretty happy. JoBe Cerny reads Seamus very well, and both he and the narrator for MN, Caitlin O'Connor, are great readers, especially when it comes to presenting characters with different accents, which makes their readings interesting and easy to listen to. While I was doing all that, I was still reading--I

Panel at Printers' Row 6-16  In the preface to Iberia, James Michener explained that he'd conceived the idea for the book decades before, made a bunch of notes about it, and then put it on a shelf because he had too many other things going. I think many authors have the same experience: too many ideas, not enough time . I always tell people I'll die with ideas for more books in my head. It takes time to make an idea into a book, which is why, though we all might have "a book inside us," we don't all write it down. It's a daunting task, and even if/when you do write it down, it needs editing and reworking, over and over. Even books that seem light, like cozies, require multiple draft s. (I know there are authors who claim to write it down only once. A: I don't believe them and B: if it IS true, I'm guessing they work it over many, many times in their heads before they make that one draft. The rest of us can't keep all that stuff inside

A long time ago, there was an area in Chicago where book publishers tended to locate. They started a book festival, and the rest is history. Though the book publishers are mostly gone, every year in June they take to the streets, closing them down to traffic so tents can be set up for blocks and blocks representing book sellers, book publishers, and everyone associated with that. This year it was mid-90s all festival weekend, but since it was Chicago, there was a breeze off the lake that saved us all. I gathered with a group in a tent wrapped in crime scene tape: Midwest Mystery Writers of America and Centuries and Sleuths Bookstore. With me were well-known authors like Sara Paretsky and Marcia Clark as well as lots of writers like me, not so well known but just as hard-working. It's always fun to get together with authors I've known for years and meet authors I've never met. Some I know online and others I've never heard of before. I confess to a desire to read

I'm in the enviable position of having a surfeit of good books. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton: about a third through it. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson: halfway. Sparrow Migrations by Cari Noga: three-quarters done. Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver: just started but already loving it. As you might guess, I have books in different rooms and read them in snatches. All but Sparrow Migrations are historical. Only Murder at the Brightwell is a mystery, though Morton's books have a discovery aspect that adds mystery to them. All are hard-to-put-down types, and it's rare that I have four at once that call to me when I'm not reading. (I also have a book on my phone, but it's only mildly interesting, so that reading progresses in spurts of boredom as I wait for John to take care of things I can't because of this silly foot (which is healing nicely). Sadly, I have an edit to do on my own stuff, so all my reading for fun will have to wai

Not me. My hero, Dorothy Parker I posted on Facebook the other day that each book I write comes to the point where I'd like to tell the reader, "I've brought you this far, now you finish it!" I was surprised to read in the responses I got that it's been done. Can't imagine reading a whole book and being left in the lurch like that. As one respondent pointed out, "As the author, you know the characters better than anyone else. You have to tell us what happens to them." Yes, it's the author's responsibility to sort out the mess she's created. Still: 1) I'm tired of them at that point. Like one's children, an author loves her characters, but there are times when she'd like to love them from a galaxy far, far away. 2) Some readers won't be satisfied. I've heard from some who wanted more romance (okay, sex) between the characters to end the book. One reader complained that a certain character would never have given

I could give a long and not very interesting explanation of why I have an overload of print books in my office, but I won't bore you with that. Let's get to the sale: I'm offering some of my older books at discounted prices. If you're interested in them for yourself or for gifts, this is a great time to get them. No booksellers between you and me, although I do have to charge an extra $5.00 for postage if you want them mailed to you. If you live in northern Lower Michigan, we can arrange to meet somewhere and save you a few bucks. You can find out more about the books here or on Amazon (where they know everything!) If you're interested, email me at pegfish@yahoo.com and we'll get this done. +

It's a question I get quite often, and sadly, the most correct answer is, "I don't know." With my first book, back in 2008, I really had no idea how well it was selling for almost two years, and even then the numbers I was given didn't mean much because I knew so little. Publishers pay an advance on a book when they offer a contract. The author gets "paid" in that way, except then the publisher holds that much money back from royalties as the book sells. If an author gets $100,000 (don't I wish), the book has to earn that much back for the publisher before she gets more money (It's called "selling through"). Add to that the fact that bookstores stock books with the understanding they can return them if they don't sell within a given time. That means a publisher can't count a sale as a sale until they get the returned books and subtract them from what really sold. (Confused yet? That's the current state of publishing.)

Yesterday I got a draft of an article someone plans to publish about me in a collection listing contemporary authors. Of course it's flattering to be included, but other emotions arise as well. First, curiosity. How did they find all this stuff about me? Some of it's correct, some is outdated, some is just plain wrong (when was I ever an editor?). Some I can't figure out: how did they find out that my dad sold used cars and my mom taught school? Second, doubt. How well do the parts balance? The article seems to dwell on my play-writing, which was actually a pretty short part of my career. It did come first, but I soon realized I wanted to write novels and moved in that direction And finally, uncertainty. What does it all add up to? Well, they left out a lot, so I plan to submit some additional information, but it's kind of nice to see it all up there and read what reviewers have said about my work. (I try not to read reviews, being overly critical of myself anyway

I buy myself presents all the time: they're called books. Sometimes they're Kindle books, although I'm often irritated by the inflated cost of books by big-name authors. If mid-list authors' books can be produced for six dollars or less, why can't everyone's? I know, supply and demand, but there isn't the cost in e-books that there is with print: no print cost, no warehousing, no shipping. But I digress. In addition to Kindle books, I also buy print books. Lots of them. No less than three, sometimes more, bookstores exist where the clerks smile when they see me coming. They know I'm buying. Sometimes my purchases result in entertainment for few hours, and that's great. People gripe about "affording" books, but where else do you get eight hours of entertainment for under thirty bucks? The best times are when my purchase results in absolute rapture. I got lucky last week with THE NIGHTINGALE on my Kindle, which was wonderful. On Thursda

I finished Kristen Hannah's The Nightingale on Saturday. It was amazing. I wish I'd never opened to page one. I do this all the time. Someone tells me a book is good, so I get it and read it and hate myself halfway through. You see, it makes me emotionally sick to read how awful people in groups can be to those they decide to hate. I had my fill of reading about it long ago, with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Mila 18 and all those beautifully horrible books that show what happens when a group is targeted for something like their religion. I don't need to be reminded, I tell myself. I learned all that long ago, and I hate getting involved with characters who aren't going to find a happy ending. You can call me overly sensitive (my husband does), but for me it isn't just a story if things like that really happened--still happen. It's a reminder that people can get together and decide one part of society is somehow not deserving of being treated

http://www.amazon.com/Macdeath-Ivy-Meadows-Mys…/…/B00OQJG9NI I love reading, and I especially love mysteries. That doesn't mean all of them, of course. I don't like the ones that are too silly. I can't stand the amateur who should stay out of the way and let the police investigate. I don't like the best friend who gets the protagonist into trouble with her antics. I want some sense of reality in the world an author creates. That's why I like MACDEATH. The main character is real, funny but not silly. http://www.amazon.com/PLAN-Rory-Tate-Thrillers…/…/B00D68H8PI I also shy away from thrillers that have over-the-top heroes (unless they have a sense of humor). I don't want anyone tortured, even the bad guys. I don't care to read three full pages of gun description. That's why I like PLAN X. The hero has things to deal with. The action moves quickly. Nobody gets waterboarded. http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Days-Evil-N-West-eb…/…/B007P