Author R&R with Margaret Mizushima

 

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the award-winning and internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. Active within the writing community, Margaret serves on the board for the Rocky Mountain chapter of Mystery Writers of America and was elected the 2019-2020 Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She lives in Colorado on a small ranch with her veterinarian husband where they raised two daughters and a host of animals.

Her Timber Creek K-9 mystery series features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner, Robo, and veterinarian, Cole Walker. Her fifth novel in the series, Tracking Game, has two brutal murders, a menacing band of poachers, and a fearsome creature on the loose in the mountains plunging Mattie Cobb and Robo into a sinister vortex. Kirkus Reviews called it "Part family drama, part animal-infused mystery, part ongoing exploration of the troubled heroine’s psyche."

 

Margaret stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the series:

 

Researching the K-9 Mystery

Many folks think that hands-on, in-person learning is the best way to assimilate knowledge. I happen to agree when it comes to digging up information about how working dogs and their handlers interact and partner. After deciding to write a novel featuring a K-9 patrol team, I was fortunate to discover several terrific consultants who were willing to let me shadow them. But there are many ways to gain information about K-9 work, and here is a list of a few that I’ve found particularly helpful.

Consultants. I’ve connected with several K-9 officers and narcotics detection dog handlers, both on active duty and retired, who’ve not only let me shadow them while they trained their dogs but who’ve also been eager to share stories about their dogs’ prowess. One K-9 trainer invited me to observe a group of officers who were training together and afterward we sat around a picnic table and they answered all my questions about rookie K-9 handlers, which was what my protagonist, Deputy Mattie Cobb, was up against when she was paired with her new partner, Robo, in Killing Trail, the first episode in my Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. Consultants are also eager to answer questions when I get stuck in a gray area and am asking, “Can a dog do this?” Most of the time, the answer is yes, and the real life handlers can tell me exactly how the dog can do it.

Hands-on Experience. Some counties have teams that train for search and rescue together. Long before I had the idea to write my series, my husband and I took two of our dogs through search and rescue training with our county group. I learned about nose work, training dogs to scent humans, scent tracking on the ground, and trailing by air-scent. It was an invaluable experience that created a foundation on which to build Robo’s abilities. And the group provided an excellent opportunity to observe a wide variety of doggie behavior and skills.

K-9 Trials. K-9 handlers get together to compete with each other in K-9 trails, drawing officers from around a region to demonstrate their dogs’ skills. They typically compete in categories such as obedience, agility, tracking and apprehension, narcotics or explosives detection, and others. It’s a great way to observe many different breeds, their energy levels, and their responsiveness to their handlers.

Reference Books. I also use several reference books written by experts in training patrol dogs and search and rescue dogs. One of my consultants had written a patrol and protection dog training book that I’m fortunate to be able to use as my handbook, because it’s not widely distributed. I also found a book on narcotics detection training that gave me definitions for many unfamiliar terms and the basics in training and handling narcotics detection dogs. These reference books are particularly useful for terminology.

Observing dogs that share my life is another huge benefit when it comes to writing K-9 stories. After decades of dog observation, it’s handy to be able to put to use those behavioral details that I’ve catalogued in my mind. Nothing beats living with a dog, in more ways than one!

 

To learn more about Margaret Mizushima and her books, head on over to her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Tracking Game and the other books in the Timber Creek K-9 series are available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Patricia Gibney

 

 After Irish native Patricia Gibney's husband died in 2009, she turned to art and writing, self-publishing a children's book entitled Spring Sprong Sally. Gibney then started writing crime fiction and created her first novel in that genre, 2017's The Missing Ones, which eventually led to further novels, an agent, and book contracts with Bookouture (now part of Hachette).

The second of those crime novels, The Stolen Girls features Gibney's series protagonist, Detective Lottie Parker, who begins to believe she's after a serial killer as girl after girl goes missing just to turn up dead. Can Parker and her team find the latest victims before it's too late?

Gibney stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing The Stolen Girls:

 

When I started writing The Stolen Girls, I knew I wanted to include something in relation to the Kosovo war. My late husband Aidan was a sergeant in the Irish Defence Forces and had served two six-month tours of duty in Kosovo under the NATO flag. He was stationed there straight after the conflict ended. His first time was in 1999-2000 and his second time was in 2001. He died in 2009 after a short illness, aged 49 years. His death plunged me into the darkest period of my life and I only escaped the darkness through writing very dark themed stories.

Aidan returned from Kosovo with stories and photographs of the aftermath of the war. Ordinary families with their homes shelled and bombed. Frightened wide-eyed children. Shoeless and broken. Houses without a roof or a door. I had seen the Balkan war unfold on television and was horrified by the acts of genocide. I read further into the conflict, and because Aidan had served in Kosovo, I wanted to include it in some format in The Stolen Girls.

I always loved history as a subject when I was in school and I am an avid reader, so the first place I go to find my sources for research is my local library. It is a fantastic resource for my community. I borrowed a book called, A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power. The section in the book on Kosovo opened my eyes to even more of the horrors which had occurred during the conflict. I was astounded by the human organ trafficking. I read more about it online and it formed the basis for part of the plot of The Stolen Girls.

Ireland has a Direct Provision Service for asylum seekers. The system has come in for a lot of criticism by human right organisations, branding it inhuman and degrading.  There was talk at one time of a Direct Provision Centre being located in my home town. It was to be situated in the Army Barracks that had closed down a number of years previously. However, it did not come to pass, but I used the army barracks as a fictional Direct Provision Centre in The Stolen Girls and this provided me with a link to the Irish Defence Forces time in Kosovo.

I find that researching a subject nowadays can be like falling down the proverbial rabbit hole. You go online to look up one thing, and three hours later you raise your head from the screen following a marathon swim through an ocean-like swathe of information, usually bearing no relation to the subject you started out researching. So it is important to approach research, particularly online research, in an organised and methodical way. Otherwise there is a danger you will have gathered so much new information that you will want to write it all into your novel. Be careful. These are the sections that readers skip. Most readers of crime fiction want to get on with the story, they want it to be pacy and page turning. They want to solve the mystery! So my advice is to be sparing in the amount of historical/research information you include. Use it to advance the plot not to hold it up.

The plight of the young women in The Stolen Girls, is a universal problem. They come to a new country to possibly escape wars or the poverty of their own countries, and because some of them are already vulnerable they become ripe pickings for those who want to take advantage of them. This leads to young men and women, and children, being used and abused, and in turn they become even more vulnerable. They become victims all over again. The research for this part of the story, I found in documentaries on television. Even though they did not deal specifically with asylum seekers and refugees, the programmes I watched provided me with enough information to allow me to get inside the heads of the characters I was creating. For me it is important to feel and see what my characters experience. This can be difficult when I have never been in the situations in which I put my characters.  But by reading books and watching documentary programmes, I can achieve a general sense of the hopelessness of the circumstances they find themselves in.

I think location in my crime novels is very important. I created a fictional town of Ragmullin, loosely based on my home town of Mullingar in the Irish midlands. It is a town stoked in history and legend, surrounded by beautiful and mystical lakes. I find walking the shores of the lakes gives me inspiration and allows my brain to breathe. I use the lakes in a lot of my work, both as a meditative tool and as a location device. They are beautiful and wild, surrounded by old houses and castles. The lakes are inspirational and provide me with a myriad of creative ideas. I find that a walk along the lake shore, or along the canal, very soothing but at the same time, it helps in awakening dark and mysterious themes for my books. Therefore you will find the lakes and canal feature in The Stolen Girls.

I am new to writing. I can only tell you what works for me and with regards to research my advice therefore is to research with diligence and write it with restraint. Only use the information you need in order to enhance the story you want to tell.

 

You can learn about Patricia Gibney and her books via her website and following her on Facebook and Twitter. The Stolen Girls is available via all major online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

Author R&R with Laura Elliot

 

Dublin, Ireland-based author Laura Elliot has worked as a journalist and magazine editor and published books and stories for children and young adults (under the name June Considine), some published in anthologies and broadcast on radio. Her ventures into crime fiction have produced the psychological thrillers, The Wife Before Me, The Thorn Girl, Stolen Child, Fragile Lies, The Betrayal, Sleep Sister and The Prodigal Sister.

In her novel, The Wife Before Me, Elena Langdon is grieving the loss of her mother when she meets Nicholas Madison, who is grieving the loss of his wife whose car slid off a pier, her body never found. Elena moves in with Nicholas, but she doesn't really know him, what he's capable of, or what really happened to Amelia. Until the day she discovers the torn page of a letter, and the words she reads chill her to the bone. Elena must find the person who wrote these letters if she is to save herself.

Laura stops by to take some Author R&R today about writing and researching her book:

 

Herstories That Can Never be Forgotten

Sometimes, when I have finished a book, I struggle to remember what inspired me to write it. The original idea that drew me to the blank page will have been condensed into the writing process, distilled in the struggle with plot, character, time frame, location and the other elements that bring a narrative to its conclusion. Not so with The Wife Before Me. The roots of this novel were planted long ago when I—a young, impressionable teenager with a belief in happy-ever-after love stories—saw the bruises on a woman’s arms, her swollen face. This is my first encounter with violence and it will leave a lasting impression on me.

The year is 1965, and a young mother, on returning from a visit to the local school to collect her two children, discovers that the locks have been changed on her front door. The family house has been sold by her husband, which, under Irish law, he has the power to do. All this will change with the Family Home Protection Act of 1976, but, until then, a man is free to sell the family home without the consent or even the knowledge of his wife.   

Before this latest betrayal by the partner who vowed to love and cherish her, Brenda (not her real name) has been beaten mercilessly by him from the early days of their marriage. She has been made to feel worthless and deserving of his brutality. This final act, selling the home they have made together, is the ultimate expression of his control.

Somehow, finding the courage to defy him, she refuses to leave the house. She knows that if she does so, she and her two children will be made homeless. The new owner, unable to move in, grows increasingly angry at the delay. He has her under surveillance and when she leaves to collect her children, he takes advantage of her absence to seize possession of what is now his property. With the help of his friends, he dumps all her possessions onto the avenue outside and she does not have the means of redressing this terrible wrong.

Fast forward half a century to 2015. Much has changed for women in Ireland, yet some things remain the same. A young woman is returning to her home after a night out with friends. Her ex-partner and the father of their two children waits in the shadows. By the time he has finished punching and kicking her, he has fractured her eye sockets, face and skull, and left her unconscious. Unknown to him, the assault is being recorded on CCTV which she has installed to prevent him breaking a barring order that was granted against him. When he is finally charged for his assault on her, the court decides he will not be tried for attempted murder and he is jailed for only two and a half years.  

These two stories—and others with a heart-breaking similarity—are the inspiration for my novel, The Wife Before Me.

Over the years I lost touch with Brenda, but she is the reason I become involved with a group that specialises in advising women on their legal rights. These are the early days of the feminist struggle in Ireland and much in society needs changing.  I begin to write for their magazine, a decision that leads me on to a career in journalism. I cover many issues over the years that follow, and Brenda comes immediately to mind when I conduct a group interview with women who have fled violent relationships and sought sanctuary in a refuge centre. They all carry the same scars but each person’s story is unique.

Mary’s husband doesn’t lay a hand on her until he is made redundant. Joan’s partner first shows his violent tendencies on their honeymoon when the effort of keeping that side of his personality hidden results in an attack on her that sets the pattern of their marriage. Rita’s husband only uses his fists after their first child is born. Women describe how their partner’s addictions ferments their violence. Other describe psychological abuse that leaves them feeling worthless and deserving of their partner’s brutality. All speak about the conflict of emotions they experience before making the decision to flee their family home.

All their experiences coalesce in my mind when I decide to explore the theme of domestic violence in The Wife Before Me. I read reports, absorb statistics that ground my narrative in the reality of our times. I set my story in Ireland where I’ve lived all my life but the same facts would be comparable, no matter where I locate my story.

The National Crime Council Research (2005) estimate that over 213,000 women in Ireland are experiencing severe domestic violence, and that only 7% of victims ever reach out to a helpline like Women’s Aid (the national domestic violence frontline support organisation) for support. A 2019 survey from Women's Aid state that they were contacted over 19,000 times in 2018 for support and claim that this is just a fraction of the women who are experiencing abuse in their own homes.

In Britain, one incidence of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute. Findings from nearly 80 population-bases studies indicate that between 10% and 60% of women who have ever been partnered have experienced at least one incident of physical violence from a current or former partner. [Ellsberg & Heise, 2005, WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence].

On average in the United States, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, and it is estimated that more than ten million people experience domestic violence each year.

Eventually, I have to stop reading statistics, surveys and studies. I find myself buried under their weight and they are steering me in too many different directions. I take time out to allow my thoughts to settle. I have a book to write and need to merge all those stories and statistics into a work of fiction.

The Wife Before Me is an exploration of physical and psychological abuse but is also about women who find the courage to make their own decisions to pull free from the domination of a controlling partner. It is also about the strength of female friendship. Since writing my book, I have been receiving letters from women who find that my characters Elena and Amelia have touched a nerve with them. They tell their stories to me. I’m shocked but also amazed at their courage to carve for themselves a new life, free from brutality, control, and fear. 

For Brenda, justice is never avenged. She is eventually housed by the local authority and moved into a flat complex. It is located not far from her original address and she can see the residential, tree-lined avenue where she once lived from her fifth story window. This could distress her, but she is free from harm and this is her liberation.

Jessica, the young woman whose CCTV system captured her ex-partner in action as he violently assaults her, now helps other women to leave abusive relationships. She is a survivor, gifted with courage and wisdom, but she could all too easily have been a victim who never lived to tell her story.

 

You can read more about Laura and her books via her website, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook. The Wife Before Me and her other novels are available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Alan Orloff

 

Before turning his hand to writing, Alan Orloff worked on nuclear submarines, supervised assembly workers in factories, had stints at the Washington Post and Arbiton and even started his own newsletter business, educating the public about the benefits of recycling and waste reduction. But then the writing bug bit, and his debut mystery, Diamonds for the Dead, was published in 2010 with Midnight Ink and went on to be nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. He published two more novels with Midnight Ink, Killer Routine in 2011 and Deadly Campaign in 2012, a duology in his Last Laff Mystery Series.

His new novel is a private eye thriller, I Know Where You Sleep from Down & Out Books. A relentless stalker has been terrorizing Jessica Smith, and, out of good options, she finally turns to her last resort—private investigator Anderson West. It seems like everyone is a suspect, Jessica’s ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend, her incredibly creepy boss, and the suspicious reverend at her church who definitely seems to be hiding something. West and his rule-breaking, loose-cannon sister, Carrie, race to find the culprit as the stalker’s notes become increasingly more threatening.

Alan stops by In Reference to Murder today for some Author R&R about writing and researching his novels:

 

Riding the Mean Streets

When I started writing, I wanted to write books similar to those I enjoyed reading, namely crime novels. But having been raised in sheltered suburbia, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with crime, and I knew I needed to do some hands-on research.

So I knocked over a 7-Eleven.

No, not really. I attended a local Citizen’s Police Academy, and it proved to be a great way to see what police departments really do (without actually having to enroll in the real police academy and become an honest-to-goodness cop).

Many local law enforcement jurisdictions hold their own Citizen Academies (or some version of one—make a few calls, you’ll be surprised). Mine was conducted by the Herndon Police Department (in VA), and we gathered one night for 12 weeks to learn about all aspects of the policing business.

Undercover narc cops spoke to us about the seamy underbelly of the drug world, regaling us with some amazing stories and showing us what different drugs looked like, up close and personal (they had a large briefcase where samples were all bagged and tagged). Gang specialists told us about dealing with different gangs and how to spot gang activity. We watched a K9 unit demonstrate “take-down” techniques, and we hit the streets to work the LIDAR gun.

We visited the evidence lab and learned how to expose fingerprints with superglue fumes; we observed the lie detector in use (excuse me, the polygraph); and we got to fire live weapons on the range. A word of warning: Don’t mess with me—I put all eleven rounds in the inner circle, and it was the first time I’d ever even touched a real gun.

Another highlight was our visit to the County Detention Center (aka, the jail). We toured the whole thing—intake, processing, fingerprinting, breathalyzers, the holding cells, regular cells (pods, I think they were called), as well as the “special” cells. Fascinating and mighty depressing. Talk about getting scared straight!

While all those experiences were terrific, the highlight was my ride-along with a police officer.

I’ll take you back to that Saturday night on the mean streets of Herndon...

We’d been cruising for about two hours or so, checking out the normal trouble spots, and we’d gotten the usual calls: excessive noise at a sketchy apartment complex (a party gone wild), some possible gang activity near the convenience store, and a DiP (that’s Drunk In Public, for all you, uh, rookies) outside a local bar. Just your typical shift. Then we got a report on the radio of people—several people—running through the Community Center’s parking lot with rifles.

“Hold on,” the officer beside me said, as she flipped on the siren. We went roaring through town, cars parting to let us through. Screeching into the Community Center parking lot, we pulled up alongside a couple other cruisers, both empty, one with a door still flung open. Someone had left in a big hurry.

The officer barked at me, “Stay here. Don’t get out of the car.”

I forced a nod, too much cotton in my mouth to speak. Of course, she didn’t have to worry. I had no intention of following her into the night with a bunch of armed goons on the loose.

She grabbed her shotgun out of the lockdown and raced off, leaving me all alone.

All alone.

My heart raced. What if the guys with guns doubled back and found me, by myself, a sitting duck in a patrol car right underneath the parking lot lights? Would I become the unfortunate reason future ride-alongs had to be eliminated? I sank in my seat as low as I could go and peered out over the dashboard, hoping for reinforcements. Nope, just me and the empty police cars. I’d realized it before, but it hit home a lot harder in that moment. We didn’t pay law enforcement personnel nearly enough.

Luckily, the situation had a non-violent resolution. It turned out that the people running through the parking lot were teenagers wielding air rifles. No one got hurt. But man, how easily could something have gone terribly, irrevocably wrong? In the dark, those air rifles were indistinguishable from real rifles. Some poor teenager’s head easily could have been blown off.

I’ll say it again; I heartily recommend attending a Citizen’s Police Academy. Just make sure to wear two pairs of underwear on ride-along night.

And what did I do with this experience? I used it for the basis of the opening sequence of a novel, titled (appropriately enough) RIDE-ALONG!

 

To find out more about Alan and his books, head on over to his website or follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. I Know Where You Sleep is available from Down & Out Books and all major online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.

Author R&R with Alex Marwood

 

Since both her grandmothers were successful novelists (Margaret Kennedy and Leonora Starr/Dorothy Rivers), it's only natural that Alex Marwood would eventually turn her hand to the genre after an initial career as a journalist across the British press. Her first novel, The Wicked Girls, was shortlisted for the ITW, Anthony, and Macavity awards, included in Stephen King’s Ten Best Books of the Year list, and won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. The Killer Next Door, her second novel, won the coveted Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and was nominated for the Anthony and Barry. 

Her latest is The Poison Garden, a novel about cults and cult thinking. When divorcee Sarah Byrne agrees to foster a teenage niece and nephew she never knew she had, she quickly finds that the challenges of parenthood are greatly multiplied when the children have grown up in a cult. Eerie, blonde children who finish each other’s sentences and, though fascinated by the outside world have no interest in adopting its values, they politely block her attempts to bond, fail to make friends, and quickly attract the attention of bullies at school. Soon, Sarah is wondering if she has made a terrible mistake.

Meanwhile their adult half-sister Romy is placed in a hard-to-let flat by Heathrow airport, alone and searching for her siblings in a world filled with mysteries and dangers. Romy, pregnant with a child that she believes to be the future savior of humanity, is looking for a way back to what remains of her former community. And the only way she will be allowed back into the fold is to rid the world of pretenders to her baby’s crown. Pretenders who include her own fifteen-year-old sister…

Alex explains more about writing the novel:

When I started writing this book, I fully intended to make it as straightforward as it could be, coming off the back off The Darkest Secret, which was quite a headache to write. But the more research I did, the more complex the whole thing became, because cults, in the end, are all about how we relate to the world, the assumptions we make and our desire to get along, and the fact that all of those elements of the human character are more easily manipulated and exploited than we like to believe. So it’s about power—the taking and seceding of it—about family, about the wish to belong and the wish to do the right thing, and how those drives can be turned against you. It’s about the power of ideas and how becoming too rigid in your beliefs will make you a prisoner. It’s about the human ability to fight literally to the death against ideas that challenge the ones we hold dear.

[The inspiration is] so many things. It’s a subject that’s always interested me. The world as it is at the moment is full of them—they seem to be coming from every side, from anti-vaxxers to flat earthers to Trumpites and Antifa in the States and Corbynites and both sides of the Brexit debate in the UK, Extinction Rebellion everywhere. And, of course, the twisting of belief that led to Al Quaeda and, later, ISIL. Cults are literally everywhere, right down to the microcosmic cultism you see in the eyes of your average narcissist in the full flow of an ego-protecting tantrum. This book’s been a long time coming, honestly.

I’m very slow, because I always think I’m going to plot ahead of time and always lose endless time to going up the blind alleyways before I accept that I’m not that sort of writer.

So once I really start, it’ll be from character. I’ll have the setup—in this case, the mass suicide at Plas Golau and the stories of the ones who survived, and some loose idea—happy or tragic outcome, not much more than that—of where I’m going to go with it, but then I just have to write thousands and thousands of words exploring the people and their world before I finally know them and hit the place where the book itself begins. Things often reshape and reshape as I’m going along. A couple of times I’ve literally not seen a huge twist coming until I was in the middle of writing it, though when I go back I’ll see that I’ve completely set things up to lead to that point, subconsciously.

It’s very wasteful and I’ll never manage to be a book-a-year writer as a result, but it’s the only way I know how to write. I’m also an obsessive editor as I go along. I’ve been writing a TV script of The Darkest Secret with a wonderful, patient American collaborator, and I’ve been driving him half-mad with my “God, can we go back and redraw those last three episodes before we go on please?” ways—but I think he’s actually starting to accept my approach, up to a point. I am really envious of people who can do a vomit draft and then rework it into something readable, but I just can’t. Carrying on writing when I know that something isn’t right yet fills me with a paralyzing existential dread.

You can learn more about Alex Marwood and her books via her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Poison Garden is now available via all major online and brick-and-mortar booksellers.