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Fathers in My Books

Sunday is Father’s Day in which we celebrate those who have taken a fatherly role in our lives. And as I did in a post for Mother’s Day, I will acknowledge the fathers who are characters in my books. Several have important roles in the situations I created. A couple are definitely not good people and likely don’t deserve a holiday named for them. They are simply characters who add to the story. Here’s a rundown.

ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES

Isabel Long has run into a number of fathers while investigating her eight cases, thus far. There’s Andrew Snow, the first to pay Isabel to solve his missing daughter’s case in Chasing the Case. Isabel had decided to investigate the cold case on her own, but Andrew, a quiet man, felt she deserved to be paid for her efforts.

Another father linked to a case is Ben Pierce, one of the Old Farts, that group of gossipy men who meet in the backroom of the above-mentioned general store. The secret nickname Isabel gave him is the Bald Old Fart. In Following the Lead, Isabel investigates what happened to Ben’s daughter, who was abducted from the family’s front yard when she was a baby. Ben doesn’t hire her, but his son does.

In my latest, Finding the Source, Stephen McKenzie is the father of the homeless man who asks Isabel to solve his mother’s murder. He and his son, Tom, have an estranged relationship —both say they have disappointed the other. Stephen is on the serious side, no surprise given he owns a funeral home. He and Tom’s mother were divorced.

My favorite father from this series is one who’s dead — Chet Waters from Redneck’s Revenge. His feisty daughter, Annette Waters, hires Isabel. Chet was allegedly too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire in his junkyard. He was a “mean son of a gun” who cheated playing poker and was a hotshot pool player. As it turns out, Chet had another side to him, but I will let you read the book and find out.

THE TWIN JINN SERIES

The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine, published this spring, is the second in my middle grade series about a family of magical beings, genies, who live among humans. Elwin Jinn is the father of the above mentioned twins, Jute and Fina. A twin himself, Elwin is patient about teaching his children how to use the magical powers they have while not drawing attention to themselves. After all, Elwin helped the family escape an evil master.

THE SWEET SPOT

Edie St. Claire, a young widow, lives with her daughter on one side of duplex owned by her father, who runs the town dump. Well, somebody has to do that job. He’s one of those scratchy kind of guys and a bit of a drinker, but also a caring father . Edie says this about him: Pop may be a crusty so-and-so, but there was something true about him.

NORTHERN COMFORT

Four fathers are in Willi Miller’s life in this dark tale of haves and have nots in a small town following the accidental death of a child.

Junior Miller abandoned Willi and their young son, Cody, who was born brain-damaged. He doesn’t spend any time with his child or even pay child support. But without spoiling the story, he undergoes a change.

Pete Merritt is the kindly grandfather who takes in Willi and Cody after Junior became a deadbeat. After Pete, who Willi calls Pa, heard about her situation, he just showed up at her place and moved her and Cody right then and there. Here, a character, Dave, describes a time Pete played old-time country music at Town Hall. Willi walked her grandfather up the center aisle. The old man wore a cowboy hat and a bolo tie. She treated her grandfather like he was king of the Grand Ole Opry.” He shook his head. “Old Pete was so damned proud to be beside her.”

Her own father, a sad, sensitive man, died when he was too drunk to drive. I will let Willi share a time she remembers. After she and her sister went to bed, their father started plucking a lonely country ballad on his guitar.

She crept from her room and positioned herself behind an easy chair to spy on her father. A bottle and shot glass were on the end table, and between each tune, he’d take a sip. One night, Willi ran to Daddy, begging him to sing something happy for her. She squeezed between him and his guitar, so he set the instrument on the floor. He pulled her onto his lap and kissed the top of her head.

“Oh, sweetheart,” was all he said as he held her in his arms, but then after a long time, he whispered, “Now get down so I can play.”

Daddy started singing “I’m in the Jailhouse Now,” exaggerating his voice to make the tune sound funny. She stayed close, smiling so hard at Daddy he had to do the same with her.

Unfortunately, Joe, the man Willi’s mother married, was a horrible person who abused her. But there’s a reckoning.

THE SACRED DOG

Frank Hooker is a thoughtful man who assumes fatherhood of his wife’s daughter. (There’s a story there.) But he shows great love and attention to the little girl even when her mother moves to Florida. He would make the long trip there and is thrilled when she returns.

On the not so nice side of fatherhood, there is Al Kitchen’s grandfather who helped raise him after his own father died in an accident. Pops was a mean man who made the lives of his wife and Al miserable. How much so? When he was a boy, Al used to keep a blanket in one of the junked cars in their backyard where he hid when his grandfather went on a rage. The best thing he ever did for them was to die among the junks. That sounds harsh, but if you knew Pops you would agree.

That gives you a quick summary of many of the fathers in my books . Here’s the link to my books on Amazon. By the way, the flowering mountain laurel in the photo above grows in our yard along with others planted by the house’s previous owners a long time ago.

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CanvasRebel

My Writing Story

This week, CanvasRebel online magazine published my interview — Meet Joan Livingston. The editorial team supplied the questions, and I gave the answers, which I believe provides a picture of my ongoing journey as an author and how I have tried to tackle the business end of writing. Here are the questions: 

How did you learn to do what you do?
Can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Sarah Holbrook took the photos for this piece. The one above was shot outside the entrance to the old jail that was in the village of Shelburne Falls. It was Sarah’s idea, and the setting is certainly fitting for someone who writes mysteries and literary fiction about the dark side of rural life.

Thanks CanvasRebel for the opportunity. Here’s the link to the interview: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-joan-livingston

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Round Up the Unusual Suspects

Naturally, a mystery has to have suspects. And given Finding the Source is Isabel Long’s eighth case, I wanted to give her a challenge.

For the first time, the case involves an outright murder. Others have been so-called accidental deaths, a supposed failed suicide attempt, and missing people, including an abducted baby. And, yes, she solved each one. So, Isabel has a streak going.

Her eighth case starts when she is approached on a city street by a homeless man, Tom McKenzie, who says his mother was murdered in a small town forty-three years ago and her case was never solved. His mother, Abby McKenzie, was a well-liked book seller who had a shop. She was found strangled and beaten in her home by Tom when he was 12.

So, here are the obstacles I threw in Isabel’s way. First, forty-three years is a long time ago. Isabel wasn’t living in the hilltowns then. Then she finds many of the people connected to the case, including suspects the police questioned, have been long dead.

But that doesn’t deter Isabel, who uses the skills she learned as a nosy reporter covering small towns to find people aka sources who were connected to Abby and even her case. From those conversations, Isabel develops a list of suspects. And I thoroughly enjoyed creating each one.

Was her murder linked to the valuable books she sold on the side to collectors? Then Rudolph Fisher is definitely on the list of suspects. Too bad he’s dead, but his twin brother Randolph, also a collector, is worth interviewing.

Or was it something more personal? One source, a waitress who was a friend, claims a town official stalked Abby after she rejected him. He’s dead.

Fred Perry was allegedly the last person to see Isabel after he and his wife attended a book reading that night. He brought his wife home first since she allegedly wasn’t feeling well. Yes, they’re both dead.

What about the man who was working on Abby’s house and was known for cheating on his wife? He now has dementia. Hmm, what about the wife?

Abby’s ex-husband is alive but unwell. He has an alibi, but his second wife, jealous of Abby, doesn’t. Interesting that she wasn’t interviewed by the police after the crime happened.

Tom lends Isabel a notebook he created about his mother’s murder, which includes a page called Suspects. Here’s an excerpt from the scene in which she takes Tom out for breakfast.

I am especially interested in the page: MY SUSPECTS. So, I return to that one. Tom wrote his father’s name, but that one is crossed out. The other two names are George Perry and Rudolph Fischer.

“What made you change your mind about your father?” I ask.

“I was pissed at him. That’s why. I was staying at his house that night anyways. We came back real late from going to Boston to see the Red Sox.”

Depending on when they returned from Boston, his father could have snuck out after Tom went to bed. Having Tom sleeping over could be an alibi. Stephen McKenzie’s name is uncrossed in my mind.

“Okay. What can you tell me about George Perry and Rudolph Fischer?”

“George lived in our town. He and his wife Elizabeth went out with Mom that night. They went to dinner and an author reading. I heard he took his wife home first, and then he dropped off my mother.”

“And you suspect him, why?”

“’Cause he was one of the last to see her. Anyway, he’s dead. So’s his wife.”

Ugh, this case has too many dead people.

“And Rudolph Fischer?”

“He was a book collector in New York City, but I think he had a summer home somewhere around here. Kind of a jerk, but Mom worked with him a lot. He only bought rare books worth a lot of money. Mom had a knack for finding them. I remember her telling me she had a first edition of The Great Gatsby with the original dust jacket. She could tell because there was a typo on it that said, ‘jay Gatsby.’ The J wasn’t capitalized. And it was signed.” He shakes his head. “Don’t ask me how I remember that, but I do. It came in a box of books she bought at a rummage sale earlier that month. She didn’t know it was in there until she brought it home. Mom told me the book was worth a lot of money. She called Rudolph Fischer. She knew he’d be interested. Mom didn’t keep those books in her store. She had them in that bookcase in her office at home. The one with the broken glass.”

You can solve the case along with Isabel by reading Finding the Source in Kindle or paperback. Thank you if you do. And if you enjoy it, please leave a rating or review on Amazon.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Next Victim: Abby McKenzie in Finding the Source

When I began writing Finding the Source, the eighth book in my mystery series, the only thing I knew for certain is that Isabel Long would be randomly approached by a homeless man who tells her his mother was murdered a long time ago and the case was never solved. Okay. That’s a start.

In the previous seven books, the victims have included a woman who walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again — Isabel’s first case. Others have been the poetry-writing half-brother of two drug dealers, an SOB of a guy who supposedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire, the owner/editor of a small town newspaper etc.

But the mother of a homeless man?

My brain got to work.

I wanted this case to be very cold. Forty-three years was what I decided, just a random number really. Tom McKenzie was just a kid, only 12, when he came home to find his mother dead. So, he is now 55 and still struggling with this tragedy.

Isabel didn’t know Tom’s mother — I chose the name Abigail “Abby” McKenzie. She wasn’t even living in the hilltowns when the woman was killed. So, Isabel has to use the skills she acquired as a journalist to interview those who knew Abby well. And that’s how readers get to know her as well.

In an interview, Tom showed Isabel two photos of his mother. This is what Isabel observes. Abby is a thin woman, blonde, with an attractive face I’ve seen in classic paintings. In the second, she stands on a snowy sidewalk beside Tom, long before circumstances took its toll on his life and looks. His mother is a decade older but still an attractive woman. A holiday corsage of bells and holly is pinned to her plaid winter coat. Both are dressed for the cold. They smile in that one, too.

Tom told her: “She was a great mother. She really loved me.”

Her sister, Lucinda said she “was the life of the party.” Abby went to college but had to drop out after their father died and her mother needed help with the family’s little store, Parker’s, in Dillard’s small downtown. It was the kind of store where you could get penny candy, greeting cards, school and art supplies, and magazines. It had a soda fountain where people sat on stools and ate ice cream or drank milk shakes. Kids would walk there because it was close enough to the elementary school.

Later, Abby bought the store from her mother and turned it into a secondhand book store, Parker’s Book Emporium. Here’s more from Lucinda.

“Books were her thing. She was a big reader as a kid and always asked for books as gifts. When she had her store, she searched for books where people didn’t see their true value. I went with her a few times.” Lucinda smiles while she reminisces. “Abby would hunt yard sales for books. People would sell her books they found in their attics or when they were cleaning out a house after somebody died. Abby knew their value. She so enjoyed finding rare first editions. My sister was clever at keeping her excitement in check though. She didn’t want to tip off the sellers. My sister would have been a great poker player. She tried to be fair, but it was strictly business for her.”

Lucinda talks about her sister and the finds she made like the signed first edition hard cover of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. All I have at home is the dog-eared paperback from my college years. I am fascinated a bookstore like that would exist in a town like Dillard. Maybe it was different when the train, which now whizzes through with freight cars, actually had passengers and stopped there.

(By the way, I used my experiences book hunting for this story although, alas, not for a signed first edition of Catcher in the Rye.)

Abby made her serious money selling to collectors, including one who is a chief suspect. Unfortunately, Rudolph Fischer died a few years ago. Ah, but he does have a twin brother, Randolph, also an avid collector. Both are rich as dirt.

As for love interests, Abby had one marriage with Stephen McKenzie, who moved to Dillard when he bought the funeral store in town. Tom was the result of that marriage. Stephen was just too serious for Abby, not surprising given his line of business, but she came to regret it. Actually, they both did, but Stephen had found another wife rather soon. They had two kids. Tom said his stepmother resented his intrusion into their lives.

Is the second wife a suspect? You bet she is.

Here’s the link to buy Finding the Source in Kindle or paperback. Thank you if you do, and please, if you enjoy it, leave a rating.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Connecting One Book to the Others

I love many of my characters, including the so-called bad ones, too much to have them appear in only one book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series.

There are, of course, those close to Isabel Long, the series’ protagonist, like her 93-year-old mother, Maria, her advisor and confidante, and her family. Then there is her love interest Jack, owner of the Rooster, where Isabel works part-time as a bartender. 

They could be a reliable source, say, the Old Farts, those gossipy men who meet in the backroom of the general store and know everybody’s business in town — or at least they think they do. Actually, one of them is directly involved in a case.

Then there are those characters who have a certain role in one book but that changes in subsequent books. Take Annette Waters, one tough local who runs a junkyard and garage. In Redneck’s Revenge, she asks Isabel to investigate the death of her SOB of a father, who was supposedly too drunk to get out of his burning house. (She pays Isabel with free mechanical service for life.)  Annette, who Isabel secretly calls the Tough Cookie, becomes a confidante and an unlikely friend. She is also a great source of amusement via her band the Junkyard Dogs that play frequently at the Rooster. 

Then there are the Beaumont brothers, feral drug dealers who were once suspects. One of them hires Isabel to investigate a case. The other has saves Isabel from dangerous situations.

Lin Pierce, who hired Isabel for his P.I. firm, pays her to investigate a kidnapping in Following the Lead after he closes his business.

Cyrus Nilsson, a noted poet, is a suspect in the third book, Checking the Traps. (Snarky Isabel gave him the nickname Big Shot Poet.) In the seventh, Missing the Deadline, he pays her to probe the shooting of his first literary agent.

So, now I have just published Finding the Source, no. eight. It begins when Isabel and her mother have been invited to a luncheon at Luella’s a swanky restaurant, likely the only one, in the town of Mayfield. Their host is Anna Robbins, the subject of the seventh case in Following the Lead. When she was a baby, she was stolen from her carriage in her family’s front yard after her brother, Lin, was lured away. (The Bald Old Fart is her father.) Anyway, a grateful and wealthy Anna wants to personally thank Isabel.

And because Anna has lured Isabel to Mayfield, a city she rarely visits, it sets her next case in motion when she and her mother have a chance encounter with a homeless man, who has a crime worth solving — he was 12 when he discovered his mother’s body and the murder was never solved. But how could a homeless man hire Isabel?

Here’s a bit from that scene at Luella’s.

“So, Isabel, I imagine you are wondering why I invited you to lunch,” Anna says. “Lin told me what a curious person you are, how that makes you a great private investigator.”

I feel myself smile.

“Yes, I inherited the curiosity gene from my mother,” I say. “But you’re correct. Is there something more I can do for you?”

Anna shakes her head.

“I wanted to give you a gift,” she says, as she reaches inside her Luis Vuitton purse on the seat beside her. “I know how much Lin paid you. I don’t believe it was enough, so I wanted to make my own contribution.” She holds an envelope for me to take, which I do. “Please accept this gift. Go ahead. Open it.”

I lift the envelope’s flap and peek inside. I read the amount on the check twice. Wow, it is five times the amount Lin paid me, and he was very generous.

“Uh, Anna, this is too much.”

“No, it isn’t.” She puts those distinctive eyes on me. “I can easily afford it. I am a very wealthy woman, thanks to family money. My other family.”

“I appreciate the offer….”

“This is not an offer, but a gift I want you to have,” she says. “Lin told me you are a person of high moral standards. We don’t have enough people like that these days. Spend the money anyway you see fit. Go on a trip. Buy something. Or perhaps, help somebody else.” She smiles. “Please.”

I nod. 

“Thank you. I will put the money to good use.”

“I bet you will,” Anna says.

And I bet you can guess what Isabel will do with some of that money. 

Here’s the link to Finding the Source for Kindle and paperback. And if you enjoy it, please leave a rating or even a review on Amazon. Thank you if you do.

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