Tag Archives: fiction

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

Creating the Cover for Finding the Source

The first thing a person notices about a book is its cover. So, it’s my hope the ones created for the books I write fit the story and get readers’ attention.

I so enjoyed the lively and bright covers created by my publisher Bloodhound Books for the first three books in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. They inspired me to be a bit more daring while developing the one for Finding the Source, the eighth book.

As a hybrid author, I self-published Finding the Source. And luckily for me, I have an artist son, Ezra Livingston, who has the skills to create great covers. Perhaps you saw what he created for my books, The Swanson Shuffle and The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine.

When it came to the cover for Finding the Source, I was inspired by an important clue in this latest mystery — a signed, first edition of The Great Gatsby.

Let me back up a little and tell you about Finding the Source. Isabel Long’s next cold case begins when she is randomly approached on a city street by a homeless man, Tom McKenzie, who tells her about the unsolved murder of his mother. It was 43 years ago when he found his mother’s lifeless body. He was only 12 at the time.

Abby McKenzie owned a secondhand bookstore, Parker’s Book Emporium, in the hilltown of Dillard. She also sold the most valuable books to collectors, including one who was a suspect in her murder. 

Here’s what Abby’s sister, Lucinda Greenwood, tells Isabel during an interview.

“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.”

One of Abby’s prized finds is that signed, first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Why did I choose this novel? This was another case an idea that popped inside my head. Yes, I read Fitzgerald’s novel oh so many years ago. And then it turns out this is the book’s 100th anniversary.

I suggested to Ezra that I wanted the cover to hint at the Art Deco-styled one for The Great Gatsby and pay homage to it. Called “Celestial Eyes,” the original cover by Francis Cugat has a female face with distinctive features suspended on a deep blue background. At the bottom is a neon-lit city scene. There it is above.

So, we went with a similar blue background but didn’t use the same font or layout for the wording. There wouldn’t be a woman’s face. For the cover’s bottom, I walked to the downtown of the village where I live and used my phone to shoot two blocks of stores. Those scenes would make sense since Abby’s store was located in a small town’s downtown.

Then Ezra worked his magic on the cover, adding small stars to the blue.

I feel the cover he created is eye-catching and tells its own story. Thanks, Ez.

Interested in reading Finding the Source? Here’s the link to buy it in paperback and Kindle. Thank you if you do.

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mothers

Mothers in My Books

Happy Mother’s Day to moms everywhere. I could say the same to the many mothers who are characters in my books. Certainly, mothers and those mother-like people are important figures in our lives. The same goes for my fictional mothers who have to deal with the situations I cook up for them. Here is a rundown.

ISABEL LONG MYSTERY SERIES

Isabel is a mother of three grown children — one of whom doesn’t approve of her sleuthing — but the major mother in this series is Maria Ferreira, who advises her daughter on her cases. Maria, who came to live with Isabel, turns 93 in the series. But despite her advanced age, Maria often accompanies her daughter to interviews. She could be called her ‘Watson’, a role she so enjoys. She says it’s boring without a case. Maria is a big reader of mysteries and smutty romances. She also has a great sense of humor, especially dealing with living in the sticks and Isabel’s choices in life. Maria is such a popular character, so many readers have begged me not to ever let her die. I promise.

Also in the series, two mothers are victims in the cases Isabel is hired to solve, including Finding the Source, the eighth book, coming out June 4. More soon on that book. Another mother had her infant daughter kidnapped from her front yard in Following the Lead.

THE SWANSON SHUFFLE

In my latest release, Bia Fernandes comes to work at Swanson House, a psychiatric halfway house. Among the former mental hospital patients are two mothers who suffered the tragic loss of their babies. The impact on their mental health was severe.

NORTHERN COMFORT

Willi Miller is a single mother living with her son in a small rural town. She does her best by Cody, who was brain-damaged at birth. Their home is a cabin left by the grandfather who took them in after Willi’s husband deserted them. The book begins with a tragedy: Cody dies when his sled sends him into the path of a pickup truck as Willi chases it down a steep hill. How Willi overcomes this tragedy and confronts a dark piece of her past is the focus of this story.

There is another mother in this book, Willi’s, who unfortunately is cold, selfish, and not a help at all during this difficult time for her daughter.

THE SWEET SPOT

Edie St. Clare is a woman constantly on the go in her small town, pretty and direct. You’ll find her on weekend nights at the Do-Si-Do Bar or behind the counter of her in-law’s general store. But Edie can’t let go of an old sadness — the death of her husband in Vietnam. She and her seven-year-old daughter Amber live next to her father, a crusty guy who runs the town dump, and her wisecracking aunt. Edie’s life changes dramatically when she is caught up in the town’s biggest scandal.

THE SACRED DOG

Verona Hooker is the ex-wife of Frank Hooker, owner of the bar he named The Sacred Dog. Actually, the bar used to be named for her, but he changed it in honor of his dog, Louise, after she left him. Verona is the mother of Crystal, who Frank considers as his own daughter although the actual father is a secret she keeps. Verona fled the town of Holden to get a fresh start but returns in this book. She realizes Crystal would be better off being closer to her father. Too bad things don’t turn out that way. By the way, Verona is a character in the book I am currently writing, The Unforgiving Town, a sequel of sorts.

PEACE, LOVE AND YOU KNOW WHAT

This is the second adult novel I wrote that is not set in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. It is inspired, sort of, by my college experience. On her last weekend in college, Lenora and her hippie friends have a three-day bash where she has a great deal of “fun” with three guys. She’s on her way to Europe after graduation. Fast forward many months to the funeral of a popular professor, and everyone is surprised when Lenora shows up with a baby. She lives in a commune in the country.

THE TWIN JINN SERIES

Mira, like the other members of her family, is a magical being in this series written for middle grade readers. A jinn or genie, she is the mother of twins who are as gifted as she is with magical powers. Elegant and wise, she and Elwin helped the family escape from their evil master. But there are challenges to remaining safe as her children are mischievous and naïve.

MY BOOKS

That gives you a quick summary of mothers in my books . Here’s the link to my books on Amazon. By the way, the flowering bushes in the photo above grow in our yard.

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