Tag Archives: mystery series

Isabel Long Mystery Series

Back with Isabel Long

Once again, I am back at it, that is, solving a cold case with Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series.

I officially began Finding the Source, the eighth in the series, last Dec. 3, and had hoped to wrap it up in six months or so. But then in mid-March I received the unsettling news my publisher darkstroke books would be closing in six months. My nine books would be released during that period, including Missing the Deadline, which darkstroke had published only weeks before this announcement.

The first thing I decided was no more begging. No more queries to agents (I had two over the years) or indie publishers. I would do it myself. Of course, that meant I had to learn how to format my books for Kindle and paperback. Laurence Patterson, darkstroke’s co-publisher, would supply amended covers, for which I am grateful. He also gave me guidance on formatting and importantly, advised me to get my books back on Amazon after each one was released.

Fortunately, I was approached by Bloodhound Books, a UK-based publisher that was interested in acquiring the first three books in the series — Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge, and Checking the Traps.

After research and emailed conversations with Betsy Reavley, the director, I felt my books would have a good home at Bloodhound. The three books will be released together Nov. 15. My hope is that they do so well, Boodhound will want the rest of the series. Betsy also encouraged me to republish the three books — I just had to take them down in late August.

I will admit it took a great deal of brain power and patience to teach myself how to republish my books. But I also saw it as an opportunity to go through each one carefully yet again, finding words there and there to change. One by one I republished each one, ending just after Sept. 30.

And so, except for Substack posts, I put my writing aside during this time. Finding the Source was only 8,000 short of the usual word count for my mysteries, which is around 75,000. Isabel and I were zeroing on who was the culprit.

The big question was how could I pick up where I left off? I honestly couldn’t just sit down at the computer. Too many months had passed. So, I printed what I had written before and went through it deliberately, so I would be once again immersed in its story. (Of course, I found stuff to change.)

On Monday, I officially began moving forward again. I typically aim for 500 words a day, which is an amount I feel creates meaningful writing and an enjoyable experience. But I also found, delightfully, I might add, myself once again thinking about Isabel’s case and how we can solve it together. That typically happens in the shower, driving, doing yard work, going for a walk. I like having my book be the last thing I’m thinking before I fall asleep.

So. what’s Finding the Source about? I was inspired by an experience that happened in my hometown when I was approached outside the library by a stranger telling me his mother had been murdered 47 years ago and the case was never solved. He even told me her name. When I did online research, the story is true.

In this book, Isabel is approached outside a city library by a man who tells her a similar story about his mother. Unlike the man I met in real life, this one is homeless. In most of her other cases, Isabel was hired to determine whether a person’s death could have been murder. This time, there is no question that’s what happened to the victim. Unfortunately for Isabel, this murder happened 43 years ago, so many of the people close to the case are dead. Plus, the case would bring her back to Dillard, where once again she must deal with a police chief who has made her life extremely difficult. But that doesn’t stop Isabel from trying. 

I am a happy writer being in the thick of it again.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

A Bar in Every Isabel Long Mystery

One constant in my Isabel Long Mystery Series is that each book has a bar. Make that two in Missing the Deadline, the seventh, which has Dec. 21 release.

The fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts are the setting for this series. I am talking about towns that have a thousand people or so. Many are a one-store, one-school, and one-church kind of town. Some might even have one bar, and for those that do, it is often a gathering spot for the locals. That’s certainly true in Conwell, where Isabel Long, the series’ protagonist, lives. 

Jack Smith owns the Rooster Bar and Grille, and Isabel pours beer and the occasional mixed drink or cheap wine from a box on Friday nights when a band plays. She and Jack have a relationship, which makes for some interesting interaction since he’s a local guy and she’s a newcomer.

And the Rooster’s customers, especially those Isabel calls the True Blue Regulars, are often great sources for the cold cases she’s taken on as a private investigator. Keen-eyed Isabel also observes the romances, lasting or not, that happen at the Rooster. My lips are sealed but Missing the Deadline has one of the most unlikely romantic hookups that starts at the Rooster.

Jack Smith runs a friendly bar, but do something stupid and you’re out for six months. Do it again, and you might be banned forever. It took an intervention from Isabel to allow the Beaumont brothers back in, but then again, they did come to her rescue in a couple of her cases.

Baxter’s is another bar in my series. It’s more of a biker bar, and Dave Baxter, the owner, isn’t so particular about who drinks there. In fact, many of the people who got kicked out of the Rooster are customers. Isabel will visit Dave because he knows what’s going on in the town of Caulfield and beyond. Sometimes she meets people of interest there. It’s a little tricky because Dancin’ Dave, his secret nickname, obviously has the hots for Isabel, but the feeling isn’t reciprocal.

One other bar has appeared in my series, Red’s Corner Lounge, in Dillard. This is a seedy little joint that was the setting for a pivotal scene in Killing the Story, the fourth in the series. The way the eighth book is going, I imagine Isabel will be making another visit there.

My hilltown books that are not part of the series have their own bars; The Sweet Spot; The Sacred Dog, which is actually the name of a bar, inspired by the owner’s loyal pet; and Northern Comfort. 

One of the fun parts about writing this series is coming up with the band names. Here’s a sampling: Junkyard Dogs, The Plowboys (all highway workers), and Country Bumpkins. Their genres as you might imagine are country, rock and maybe a little bit of blues.

I’m not a big drinker — one good craft beer will do it for me. But I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent in bars, raising a glass or bottle, and dancing with Hank when there’s a band. And bars are great place to people watch, a definite hobby of mine, and have conversations with people you barely know. 

I actually dedicated one of the books in the series, Working the Beat, to the former owners of a country bar in the hilltown where we once lived that has definitely been an inspiration.

And I feel fortunate our son, Zack, has created Floodwater Brewing in Shelburne Falls, the village where we live in Western Massachusetts. That’s a glass of one of his hand-crafted beers in the photo above.

Here’s a scene from Missing the Deadline. Isabel shows up on a Thursday night. Fred is Jack’s often annoying cousin who Isabel has dubbed ‘el Creepo’ for past misdeeds.

Jack greets me with a “Here’s my gal” as I walk through the front door of the Rooster. I don’t normally come Thursday nights. It’s typically quiet, so my services behind the bar are not needed. Burgers and fries are solely what’s on the menu. The only music comes from the jukebox, currently playing Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar,” which could be a theme song for many of the drinkers here tonight. Although most have another workday tomorrow, they’re getting a jumpstart on the weekend, playing pool or just hanging around drinking and yakking about what’s going on in their lives or somebody else’s. As I’ve mentioned before, gossip is the biggest pastime in this town. The television in that part of the room broadcasts a baseball game with the sound off, but nobody is paying much attention since the Red Sox aren’t playing.

I take a stool opposite Jack, who places a cold draft in front of me. 

“You can put it on my tab,” I joke.

“I believe it’s time to make you pay up, Isabel,” he says, winking.

Jack’s cousin, Fred aka el Creepo, who sits four stools down, groans. He and I are the only ones at the counter. Fred’s got the best seat in the house, the one where you can rest your back against the wall that’s shared by the men’s room. Of course, the sitter is privy to whatever is going on there, which can be entertaining or disgusting. Maybe someday I’ll time how long the men in there take to drain a bladder full of beer and make a score board. I’m only kidding. 

“I don’t know how much of this I can put up with,” Fred says.

I take a drink before I dish back a comment.

“Where’s that gal of yours tonight? She dump you already?”

“Funny, Isabel. Very funny. Nah, she had to do somethin’ with her mother tonight. Things are just fine between us.”

“Glad to hear,” I tell him.

BOOK NEWS: Missing the Deadline has a Dec. 21 release on Kindle. Price? $3.99. Paperback readers will have to be a little patient. 

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Now for Following the Lead

Today’s the day, Nov. 3, for Following the Lead — the next book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. Readers who have been following Isabel for five cases can now join her for the sixth.

I decided to throw Isabel into a really challenging case this time. After all, it’s been almost a year since she started her first in Chasing the Case. That’s when she decided to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared 28 years ago. Both women lived in the same town and the disappearance was Isabel’s first big story as a rookie reporter. Since then she’s investigated the deaths of a junkyard owner, a poetry-writing highway worker, the owner of a small town newspaper, and the beloved grandson of a poor, distraught woman.  

But this case is different. It involves a baby who was abducted 50 years ago and never found. Lin Pierce, Isabel’s former boss, was just a boy when that happened as his mother was giving a music lesson in their home. He believes he might have met his sister. The woman did look a lot like his mother and shared a distinctive family feature — different colored eyes.

Now, Isabel isn’t going to let something like 50 years stop her from taking this case. Besides, she has her mother Maria, who is 93, to help her. 

Of course, I make sure Isabel encounters danger actually from two sources. But I will let you read about that. Does she find Lin’s sister? Mum’s the word.

When I wrote Chasing the Case, I didn’t anticipate I would create a series. But I got easily hooked by the mystery genre. And frankly, the positive feedback I’ve received has been so encouraging — so thank you readers. I love reading a good series. I like even better creating one. This is the second book in the series released this year. And, yes, I’ve begun the next. You’ll be hearing more about it in the future.

Also a series enables me to hold onto my characters, good and bad, who are very real to me. I used to be a big day dreamer. Now I put those skills to use writing.

In writing this series, I was mindful that I wanted each to stand on its own in case it was the first book a reader picked up. So, I don’t do much rehashing from the previous books although I do include hints and coded references. I try to develop each character and their description as if this was on the only book I wrote.

The same goes for those readers who have been following the series. I want these readers to feel like insiders.

I hope you will enjoy reading Following the Lead as much as I did writing it. 

LINK: Following the Lead is now available on Kindle. Soon it will be in paperback. Here’s the link to Amazon: https://mybook.to/followingthelead

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Following the Lead, Isabel Long Series

Following the Lead: How It Begins

This novel was an easy one to get started. Afterall, Following the Lead, No. 6 in my Isabel Long Mystery Series that has a Nov. 3 release, starts minutes after No. 5, Working the Beat. I am not going be a spoilsport and reveal how that one ends. But I will say Isabel and her mother, Maria aka her “Watson” are on their way back home with an envelope filled with papers in the back seat.

I will give you more about that in a bit, but I wanted to talk about beginning a novel or at least, how it works for me. Without sounding like a total nut, they just come to me when I sit down at my desk. Later, while I may change a word here and there, I’ve kept each one.

My aim is to catch up readers (without giving away stuff to those who haven’t read the previous book/books) and get them into the action of the next one. I know what I like to read and hope to provide that experience to readers of this series.

In Chasing the Case, the first, Isabel is in her back yard digging a grave for a beloved pet cat while it is snowing. As she puts that shovel into the ground, she reflects on the past year, which I use to let readers know where she’s at. Isabel’s a recent widow. She lost her job running a newspaper and her 92-year-old mother has come to live with her. But as importantly, we learn that she wants to investigate on her own a 28-year-old mystery in her small town — and her first big story as a rookie reporter. 

(By the way, this book got rejected by a publisher because I was told that I broke a cardinal rule that you don’t kill off pets in books. I wrote back that writers are supposed to break rules.)

In the second, Redneck’s Revenge, Isabel meets Lin Pierce, who will be her boss of sorts. Isabel found out she just can’t investigate crimes on her own. Right away, she takes on her first legitimate case: Annette Waters, a junkyard owner, hires her to investigate the death of her father who supposedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a home when it caught fire.

In Checking the Traps, the third, Isabel is tending bar at the Rooster with one arm after she was hurt when her car was run off the road in the previous case. Lots of questions from the customers, and then she gets a call from Gary Beaumont, a suspect in her last case who wants to hire her. 

In Killing the Story, the fourth, Isabel attends a funeral for the town’s police chief, but the next day she’s at a pig roast at the Pit Stop convenience store when she is approached by the editor/co-owner of a small town newspaper. He believes the death of his mother, who had the position before him, wasn’t accidental. Of course, with her background, it was an easy sell for Isabel.

In Working the Beat, the fifth, Isabel is losing badly at poker with Jack, the owner of the Rooster, during a dead night at the bar. Everybody is at the Titus Country Fair. The next day she’s there with her mother when she is approached by an old woman, whose beloved grandson was found dead after the demolition derby four years ago.

So what about the sixth, Following the Lead? Here is the very beginning.

Lin Pierce said not to open the envelope he gave me until I get home, but since when do I listen to what my old bosses tell me? I bet he said it only as a test, a tease, or knowing Lin, a joke. The manila envelope’s contents have been on my mind since he handed it to me in his office and said, “It’s your next case.” And there it sits on the back seat of my car, bugging the heck out of me to stop and rip it open. Thanks a lot, Lin.

“Do you think it’s another unsolved murder?” my mother asks after she gives the fat envelope another glance.

My mother and I are on our way home after I stopped to see Lin at his office. I shipped her to my brother’s home when things got a little bit scary with the last case, but now she’s back, and it appears ready for the next one.

“No clue,” I answer.

Ha, my mother, who you may know as my partner in crime, that is solving them, is as nosy as I am. When I was a kid, she kept a close eye and ear on the neighborhood where I grew up in the eastern part of this state. In those days, the town would broadcast the location of a fire by a series of loud horns, and my mother would look them up in a booklet she kept on a table beside her comfy chair. She would announce the street and number where the fire was happening, although one summer when the call was for a business several streets away from our home, we walked there in the middle of the night to watch. The only difference between my mother and me, regarding nosiness, is that I turned it into a profession, journalism. As a reporter, then editor, being nosy is a job requirement. Now I use that trait as a private investigator solving cold cases in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts where we live. So far, I’ve solved five, and now it appears I will be moving onto number six sooner than I expected.

“You looked really excited when you left Lin’s office,” my mother says.

“Uh-huh. Lin wouldn’t give me a case that isn’t worth pursuing. He knows better than that.”

Ma checks over her shoulder again.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

Hmm, not soon enough in my mind.

My mother and I have been talking about what could be inside that envelope ever since we left Lin’s empty office in Jefferson. He’s officially out of the private investigation business now that he’s sold it to Bob Montgomery, the retired state cop who’s still interested in solving crimes. Once a cop, always a cop although as a private investigator, he can’t arrest people or shoot them. Lin, who I would rightly describe as a bit of a fuddy-duddy, isn’t what comes to mind when I think of a P.I., certainly not the ones I’ve seen in movies and TV shows or read about in novels. He didn’t solve crimes but took insurance cases, usually on behalf of the company trying to disprove one. It wasn’t until I came on board earlier this year that he ventured into crime. Actually, I did the criminal part. I earned a buck a day and he got a cut of what I made from my client, including the case where I was paid free mechanical service for my vehicles for life. Lin does, too. That was the deal I made with Annette Waters aka the Tough Cookie when I investigated her father’s death in case number two.

From now on, I will get two bucks a day from Bob Montgomery. His stipulation for buying the business was that I come with it. No, I’m not an indentured servant, but Bob likes the zip I added to Lin’s business. Certainly, my solving those mysteries gave Lin’s business some badly needed publicity after my cases were written up in the local newspapers and even covered by a couple of TV stations. As for me, Bob’s offer is likely the best and only one I could get to continue what I love doing. I didn’t bother applying to other private investigation firms since I need an arrangement that doesn’t take me away from my mother, who is ninety-three. Besides, I want to investigate cases that interest me and I sure as heck don’t want to work full time because I plan to keep my part-time gig tending bar at the Rooster on Friday nights.

I tip my head toward the back seat.

“He said it was an old case. Maybe it was before he started doing business with those insurance companies.”

“Could be something personal, Isabel.” 

“Now that would be interesting.”

HOW TO GET FOLLOWING THE LEAD: The official release is Nov. 3 for Kindle on Amazon, but pre-ordering — and thank you if you have done that — is appreciated. Pre-order now and the book will magically appear in your device on that day. I will be frank that selling books that one writes is a numbers game and pre-orders help with rankings. The price is $3.99. (If you have Kindle Unlimited, I will get paid for pages read.) Now about paperbacks … there will be a bit of a wait, per my publisher’s policy, but I will let you know when that happens. Here’s the link: https://mybook.to/followingthelead

Here is the one for all of the Isabel Long Mystery Series: https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Livingston/e/B01E1HKIDG


ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: A great sky from our front porch.

 

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Writing About Small Town Life

One of the themes in my Isabel Long Mystery Series is small town life. I’m talking about really small towns, around a thousand people or fewer, in rural Western Massachusetts. I got to know this part of the U.S. intimately as a reporter for a local daily newspaper and, of course, from living there.

And though the books in my series are fiction, I draw from those experiences to create what I feel are accurate portrayals of how people interact there, including in Working the Beat, number 5, which launches Jan. 27.

First a brief synopsis of Working the Beat: Isabel Long finds her next case at a country fair when she is approached by a woman whose grandson’s body was found there four years ago. Shirley Dawes took in Lucas Page after his mother abandoned him, doing her best after failing to protect her own children from her late husband, a no-good abuser. The official ruling is that he slipped and fell in a ravine behind the demolition derby. On the case, Isabel finds evidence, a bag of jewelry to be specific, that Lucas might have a connection to a string of break-ins in the hilltowns — yet another unsolved mystery. Was Lucas part of the ring of thieves? Or was he trying to do the right thing and died as a result of it?

So small town life isn’t like what you see in postcards, and that’s what makes it an interesting setting for my series.

For the most part, people, at least in New England, are nosy as all heck. We can’t help it. We know who drives what vehicle, who’s getting divorced or hooking up, and what trouble our neighbors are getting themselves into. Actually, Isabel counts on that kind of behavior because these nosy folks offer her clues, especially the Old Farts, a group of gossipy men who hold court in the back room of the local general store.

These towns don’t have a lot of commerce, not even a downtown. They are lucky if they have a general store, even luckier if it has gas pumps. Maybe there’s a bar or a restaurant, a church, typically Protestant, and a school, if the town has enough kids. Worthington, where I lived for 25 years in Massachusetts, used to have one stoplight, but the state removed it last year.

Politics is personal in a small town. How can it not be when you pretty know everyone who lives around you?

Then, there’s the potential conflict between natives and newcomers. These towns have their share of families that have been there for generations, like Isabel’s significant other, Jack, who owns the Rooster Bar and Grille where she works Friday nights, and are pretty proud of it even if they don’t have a lot of money. Then there are those, who move there from the big city. Some, like Isabel, embrace the town for what it is and then there are those whose idea of country living conflicts with what is real.

Isabel Long lives in the town of Conwell. The neighboring towns are: Penfield, Titus, Caulfield, Dillard, Jefferson, Mercy, and a new one with number five, Rossville. Don’t bother looking for them on a map, however. They’re all in my head.

Here’s the link to Working the Beat: mybook.to/workingthebeat

ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: I will be doing a reading Jan. 19 along with other authors from Straw Dog Writers, a group in Western Mass. via Zoom. I get five minutes to read from Working the Beat. I am pleased to have this opportunity. Yup, I’ve been practicing. And you are free to join us.

 

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