Peg Herring, Mystery Author

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

Moran Ironworks' Entry in this year's parade Holidays serve many purposes, and IMHO, most of them are essential to humanity. I say most because I'm not a big fan of the "it's a holiday so let's get drunk and do stupid stuff" mentality. Otherwise, I heartily approve of celebrating. Holidays bring remembrance: Independence Day, Veterans' Day, Valentine's Day, Father's Day, whatever the "day," we pause to pay tribute to those who do or did their job well. That's a good thing, reminding us there's good in the world and giving us a chance to express gratitude for it. Holidays bring us together: Yesterday our little town, whose streets are usually empty and whose businesses gasp for sustenance, was deluged with celebrants who come "home" each year, supposedly to watch the parade but really to ask "Who's around this weekend?" As a long-time, long-retired teacher, each year I get introduced to dozens o

Yes, those are sharks! I won't keep you in suspense. It's they-- the little pronoun separates you from others. They means "those not like us." They marry their children off at nine. They don't value human life. They believe they'll go immediately to heaven if they take non-believers with them when they die. Let's turn that around. We go to clubs every night, where we take drugs, drink prodigious amounts of alcohol, and hook up with strangers. We think all women should strive to look like Gigi Hadid, no matter what their body type. We believe the more guns we have in our homes, the safer we are. We anticipate a heaven where we'll walk around on streets of gold, singing hymns and playing the harp. That's not what you believe? But that's the impression those in other cultures have of you, based on songs, cartoons, sermons, media, and speeches. If it isn't you, maybe you aren't a typical American. Or maybe there's no s

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