Peg Herring, Mystery Author

 Aunt Marge has been one of my longest thought-to-production books ever. Life kept interrupting, for one thing, a broken leg and a local situation that makes me leave my writer hat off for days while I work to protect the community I love. Add to that a complicated plot. As my editor said, there's a lot going on in this book, and I had to be sure it all made sense and led to a believable ending. As the story begins, Gwen finds herself in crisis. She's overdosed on prescription painkillers, partly because she fears her husband Jeff is cheating. When her aunt offers to take her to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to recuperate, it seems perfect. She'll get back her strength and kick the drug habit. And with her gone, Jeff will realize what he's missing.  The problem is that Marge's place, called Giiwe , is full of secrets. Marge shares nothing of herself, and her ward/farmhand Charlie seems nice until Gwen learns about his violent past. When she finds out the wo

  I got interested in Shepherd.com, Ben Shepherd's attempt to help readers connect with authors through recommendations, over a year ago. Authors get their books on the site by telling readers about stories with similar themes. I compared my book, Sister Saint, Sister Sinner, to others with sisters as the main characters and sisterhood as a theme. You can see the complete post HERE. The cool thing about this site is you search by the kinds of books you like to read, so you don't need titles or author names to locate books you might enjoy. Today is my day to be featured on a new endeavor as Ben lets authors list their 3 favorite books read in the last year.  It was difficult to choose 3 books, since I read a lot, but I tried for a variety. I copied the image above, but you can also see it at Shepherd.com. https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023/f/peg-herring  You can see the overall results at Shepherd's Best Books of 2023 page  

    At the urging of a fellow author, I joined a site for writers a month or so back. Though it’s interesting, I don’t feel that it fits my style—not for writing, not for publishing, and not for promoting. The idea is writing books “to market” or “for market,” which means an author writes what will sell, not what she wants to write. Early on in my career I had an agent who tried to get me to do that. Her push was that I should write Amish romances, because they were big at that moment in time. Later, I had a publisher who wanted me to continue the Loser Mysteries, though I felt they'd reached a logical conclusion. At a conference once, I heard an editor for a big publishing company say that anyone who had anything… anything with vampires in it should send it to her. The market. The market. The market. Book industry people look for books that will "sell through," meaning they earn more than it cost to make them. If you’ve read my work, you know I do pretty much the

  Here are the answers to the High-brow Proverb quiz in the 10-1-23 newsletter. Did you get your free copy of The Dead Detective Agency ? You will love Seamus! 1. Prudence and sagacity are the worthier condiments of intrepid courage. Discretion is the better part of valor.      2. It is fruitless to become lachrymose because of wasted lacteal fluid. Don't cry over spilled milk. 3. Freedom from guile or fraud constitutes the most excellent principal of procedure. Honesty is the best policy 4. A rotating lithoid fragment never accrues lichen. A rolling stone gathers no moss. 5. It is not proper for mendicants to be indicators of preference. Beggars can't be choosers 6. A strong feeling of affection can cause the universe to rotate on its axis. Love makes the world go 'round. 7. Folks deficient in ordinary judgment scurry into areas in which celestial beings dread to set foot. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 8. Every article which coruscates is not fa

People often ask, "What are you working on?" Currently, I have a book in progress called Aunt Marge (possible cover above). It's women's fiction, focused on Gwen, a Chicago resident who gets herself all messed up due to a series of tragic events. Her aunt, a woman unknown to Gwen until her crises come to a head and she overdoses, offers to take her to her farm in Michigan's U.P. to recover. Gwen is grateful, but she soon figures out that Aunt Marge is no kindly soul, and there's lots going on up there that isn't exactly normal. I got the first draft back from the editor recently. She liked it but had many suggestions for improvement, and I saw that she was right in almost every instance. So that's my current goal: getting Aunt Marge in shape. While the editor was working on that book, I started another one I'm calling Fake. I love the concept, and I managed to get a rough rough draft done before Aunt Marge came home. That one's probably a ye

 I was at an event yesterday where I saw lots of people I hadn't seen for a long time. The question that often comes up is "Are you still writing?" My answer, of course, is "Yes," but I sense that some wonder why. In twenty years, I haven't become a famous writer, and I probably never will. (FYI, I haven't become rich, either.) Why put in the hours and hours (et cetera, et cetera) it takes to write a book, edit a book, and publish a book? I write for the same reasons anyone does what they love: crafters, bakers, amateur athletes, bird-watchers, whoever. It isn't for money or recognition; it's something they call self-fulfillment--the enjoyment of putting effort into something to get the best result you can manage. There are some side perks to writing for publication, though, and a message I got this morning told me I'm not as crafty as I imagined. A reader who knows me well pointed out that the "bad" characters in one of my books ar

 I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that reading has at times saved my sanity (such as it is). I admit that's not true for everyone, but readers know. I thought I'd list some reasons for championing a pastime that isn't always healthy (It's sedentary, and isolating, since we remove ourselves from the real world when we read. Cue my dad's voice: "Get your nose out of that book and do those dishes!") But look what I get that's positive. I learn stuff. From the time I was a kid, I found books that taught me things. The library at school had biographies of famous people, and I discovered they were mostly just people. The encyclopedias my mom bought at the grocery store (with stamps or something similar) were filled with articles about animals, exotic places, and historical events. I recall that when my brother was born, my parents apparently thought I was too young to understand why he didn't come home from the hospital and why the