Meet Spunky Fargo Mystery Author and Environmental Engineer, Karen E. Hall

Karen E. Hall

Karen Hall, environmental engineer and writer, lives with her husband Jeff Nelsen (and their orange tabby, Junior, who really owns the house) in the Black Hills outside Rapid City, SD.  Her first Hannah Morrison mystery, Unreasonable Risk, a thriller about sabotage in an oil refinery, was published in 2006 and the second in the series, Through Dark Spaces, set in South Dakota’s mining industry, followed in 2012.  Karen is currently finishing a novel about infertility and working on the third Hannah Morrison mystery.  She is also a member of the Pennington County Planning Commission and is currently president of the Black Hills Writers Group. Website: http://www.karenehall.com   

And now, here's Karen to share her unusual occupation, as well as her books:

Karen E. Hall

Hi, everybody, 

I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota (pronounced “Nortdakota” if you’re looking for authenticity), and spent almost every Saturday of my youth at the public library.  Fargo was, in those days, a pretty big city, especially by North Dakota standards, but it still felt like the middle of nowhere.  Fargo’s old Carnegie library helped me to compensate for that isolation, and contributed greatly to my lifelong love of books.  I’ve since lived on both coasts and in Texas, but my heart really belongs to those “ota” states:  North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota.  I graduated from both the University of Minnesota (English lit) and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (chemistry and chemical engineering), and worked for many years in Minnesota’s oil industry as an environmental engineer, trying to make sure that the refinery met its environmental obligations under the law. 

Through all of that experience, I learned a lot about working as a woman in a male-dominated field – both in engineering school and, of course, in the refinery, where women were outnumbered by 20 to 1.  I learned to dish it out, suck it up, and swear like a…well, like a refinery worker.  I wore smurf-blue fire-retardant overalls, steel-toed boots and a hardhat, and carried a clipboard much more often than a purse. 

I loved the oil industry.  We refined a lot more than just gasoline; we produced butane, home heating oil, kerosene, asphalt and more, even carbon dioxide that, once a year, was blessed by a rabbi so it could be used in the manufacture of kosher Coke!  It was a fascinating business, and I was dismayed at how little people knew about it.  After all, the oil industry touches everybody’s life in many ways every day.  So about a dozen years ago I turned to writing as a way to introduce people to that business.  And in that process, I found the true love of my life:  writing fiction. 

My first mystery, Unreasonable Risk, is set in a mythical Minnesota refinery where a saboteur causes no end of trouble for my able young protagonist, Hannah Morrison.  

More About Unreasonable Risk

First in the series, Unreasonable Risk introduces Hannah Morrison, a young environmental engineer ensnared in a series of violent events which threaten the refinery. She knows it’s sabotage. Who’s behind the spate of near-catastrophes that plague the plant? Who can she trust? And what will the saboteur try next?  Unreasonable Risk tells the story of a resourceful young woman fighting to save the refinery, the city surrounding it and, ultimately, her life.

Amazon: Unreasonable Risk (e-book) -- http://tinyurl.com/7pz7qbo

The second, Through Dark Spaces, is set in the mining industry of western South Dakota, where I live now.  In this book, Hannah, my environmental engineer, must figure out why her only employee, Dooley Arnold, was clubbed over the head and left to die in an old mine tunnel.  And, she wonders, what does it have to do with water?  A lot.  I hope you’ll read it and see.

 More About Through Dark Spaces

When Hannah Morrison takes an environmental consulting job at a South Dakota surface mine, she doesn’t expect to have to confront her darkest, most personal fears. In the course of her work, as she discovers secret after secret, Hannah realizes that somebody is poisoning the water in the beautiful Black Hills. Who—and why? Driven to solve the problem and find the people responsible, Hannah finds herself deep underground, trapped in the darkest of spaces—with a murderer.

Amazon: Through Dark Spaces (e-book) -- http://tinyurl.com/78dqns3 

Amazon: Through Dark Spaces (paperback) -- http://tinyurl.com/6sm8eyv

Createspace: Through Dark Spaces (paperback)-- https://www.createspace.com/3787163

Water is really important here in western South Dakota because there isn’t very much around.  The Black Hills are like a pine-capped oasis in a high desert.  Part of my life in recent years has been dedicated to keeping our groundwater clean.  I used my environmental background by serving on a county-wide ad hoc committee to draft and implement an ordinance to inspect and repair septic systems. 

Karen E. Hall & Husband, Jeff Nelson

It’s not very glamorous (my husband occasionally calls me “the princess of poop”) but in my opinion is absolutely necessary to protect the integrity of the aquifers that allow us to live in this beautiful place.
So now I’m a member of the county’s planning commission, too.  

Roughlock Burr

I also hike, downhill ski like a crazy woman, and take tons of photographs.

I’ve included a couple from recent hikes in the woods with this post.  

Whitetail buck

Although I used to do a lot of art stuff, including pottery, painting and several crafts, I’ve determined that my media are these:  words, photographs and yarn.  Although I don’t have any photos of my yarn projects, I have five wonderful grandchildren who wear and/or wrap themselves in those projects.  I know I have a lot more books in me, and I’ll never stop doing yarn projects or taking photographs, either.  If I’m still skiing at 80 (I’m nearly 63 now), I’ll be a happy woman. 

Thanks so much, Morgan, for hosting me.  I’d love to hear about your readers’ media of expression – what arts, crafts and activities float your boat?  What keeps all of you other spunky seniors going?

Website:

http://www.karenehall.com

        

Thanks very much, Morgan, for hosting me!

Warm regards,

Karen Hall

Please welcome Karen Hall to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by Leaving a Comment.

Spunky Senior Author, Richard Brawer, Shares Silk Mills and Paterson With Us

Richard Brawer writes mystery, suspense and historical fiction novels. When not writing, he spends his time sailing and growing roses.  He has two married daughters and lives in New Jersey with his wife.

Richard has some fascinating historical details to share about Paterson, the setting for his book, Silk Legacy.

Here's what Richard has to say:

Most of us Spunky Seniors on this list were probably born between the mid 1920s and 1960.  We’ve all heard stories about how our parents and grandparents struggled against the industrial barons to give us a better life.

The auto workers, steel workers and mine workers battles against their boss’ tyranny is prominently written about in the history books, but the battle between Paterson, NJ’s silk mill workers and the silk bosses is relegated to the back pages of history books, if it is mentioned at all.  However, that struggle in 1913 in the “Silk City” led to the formation of the only labor museum in the United States which is still in operation today in Haledon, NJ. 

A brief history of Paterson:

In 1791 Alexander Hamilton stood on the bluffs that overlooked the Passaic River’s great waterfall, and envisioned a mighty industrial city.  He prophesied that the only way his new country could be truly independent from England and Europe was to develop its own resources and industry.

           

Wary that democracy by the masses was not powerful enough to bring about the quick development of a strong industrial economy, Hamilton lobbied Congress to appropriate one million dollars to build a government-owned and operated industrial center.  Congress balked.  However, through the influence of his politically connected friends, Hamilton convinced the New Jersey Legislature to charter a corporation for the sole purpose of creating an industrial city.

The corporation was named “Society for Establishing Useful Manufacturers.”  Its charter gave it extraordinary financial and governmental powers.  S.U.M. had exclusive control over the Passaic River and its great waterfall.  Its property and the corporation were tax exempt.  It had the right to create its own government within the bounds of its territory, and to condemn property bordering its lands for its own use, as well as hold lotteries to raise funds.  Among the original sixty-five stockholders were two Supreme Court justices, four senators, nine congressmen, a former governor of New Jersey, and the present governor, William Paterson—the namesake of the city S.U.M. built.  This obvious conflict of interest set the tone for the operation of Paterson for the next one hundred and twenty-five years.

S.U.M. set out immediately to build its own factories as well as to lease and sell land to other entrepreneurs.  Word spread rapidly.  The city became a Mecca for men with grandiose ideas such as Samuel Colt, whose six-shooter helped tame the west; Thomas Rogers whose Rogers Locomotive factory built not only one of the first locomotives in America, but Union Pacific’s Engine number 119 that bumped cow catchers with its counterpart from the west at Promontory, Utah to unite the country by rail; John Holland, developer of the first practical submarine which he tested in the Passaic River; and John Ryle, who in the eighteen-forties, built a silk mill and started an industry that would dwarf all others.  By 1900 there were three hundred mills in Paterson that were turning raw silk into a fabric of shimmering beauty to luxuriously adorn the bodies and homes of America’s rich.

Enticed by pictures of gold lying in the streets waiting to be scooped up, immigrants flocked to Paterson, carrying with them little more than their dreams for freedom, equality and riches.  A few realized those dreams and joined the ranks of the industrialists, but most soon found out they had traded their past oppression under the aristocrats of Europe for a new form of oppression, fostered on them by the powerful mill owners.  The industrialists ruled Paterson as a private kingdom.  They had no concern for the city or the people that inhabited it, treating Paterson and its immigrant laborers as expendable commodities needed only to create the one product that meant anything to them—money.

Nothing was built for the public without a bitter fight from the directors of S.U.M. and the other industrialists.  A cholera epidemic established an obvious need for sewers, but it took a special act of the state legislature to force S.U.M. to build them.  S.U.M., because of its tax exempt status, refused to pay its fair share for sidewalks, and it was not until 1907, despite numerous typhoid outbreaks, that S.U.M finally was forced to put proper filters on its system that supplied drinking water to the city.

Government became an industry of its own, earning its revenues from the industrialists who owned the politicians, the courts, the press and the ballot box.  The working class was disenfranchised from both politics and the social order of the city.  They became outcasts, treated no better than the products they produced with their labor.  However, there was one factor the autocratic industrialists could not control—the flow of ideas.

During the nineteenth century, the population of Paterson increased by fifty percent every decade.  The immigrants who crowded into the tenements were of the same stock as America’s founding fathers and the industrialists who tried to control them.  Their tongues were equally as sharp, their organizing abilities as keen, and their demands for “certain unalienable rights” as insistent.  With every avenue of legal protest shut to them, they hit out at their oppressors the only way left open to them: they withheld their labor from the mills.

Their first strike came in 1794, the only demand being schooling for their children.  Over the next one hundred and nineteen years, as the dictatorship of the industrialists grew stronger and their refusal to do anything for the welfare of the city became more adamant, Paterson’s laborers struck their bosses an additional one hundred and thirty-six times.

Through their ownership of the politicians and the police, the bosses easily put down every strike, but each defeat taught valuable lessons to the laborers.  The day was fast approaching when the masses would be heard and the power structure would shift.  That day arrived on February 25, 1913.  Twenty-four thousand workers walked out of Paterson’s three hundred silk mills, throwing the city into chaos for five months.

My family had been in the textile business since my grandfather started a silk company in Paterson in 1904, branching out into synthetic yarns by the mid 1930s.  My grandfather had six sons.  As the sons became of working age he set them up in various facets of the textile business―weaving mill, dye house, jobbers, converters, etc. My father’s business was a dye and print factory.

I was born in Paterson but my branch of the family moved to the Jersey Shore when I was twelve. After graduating the University of Florida I joined my father in his business.  The company dyed and printed fabric mostly for the women’s trades―inexpensive dresses and lingerie. I was sent out to solicit the curtain, drapery and linen trades.

Unfortunately my father died of a heart attack in 1968 and the executors sold the business to other family members. (It’s a long drawn out story as to why I didn’t get a chance to take over the business, but that’s for another time.)  I continued to work there for two more years then my uncles and their partners said point blank, “Richard, there’s no future for you here.”  I guess they didn’t like the fact that in the six years I worked there, I had built up my trade to the point where I was doing one third of the company’s business and they would have to keep paying me commission on those sales. (If there is a moral here it’s, don’t ever work for family.)

Since I knew the curtain, drapery and linen trade my wife and I started a retail store.  I was able to get credit for merchandise because I was now buying from the same people I had sold to and they knew me and trusted me. We ran the store successfully for thirty years.  

After I retired, I began writing mystery novels, my favorite genre to read. But I also read a lot of historical fiction.  When I read about an historian giving a lecture on the “Silk City” and a tour of the historic district, since I knew little about Paterson, I thought it would be nice to check out my roots.

As I listened to the lecturer a plot developed in my mind―two brothers, one a silk industrialist the other a union leader, and their wives battling their husbands for voting rights and reproductive freedom. I took a lot of notes, but not enough to truly understand the era.  So I did research by going back to Paterson and reading old newspaper stories.  With that research and my knowledge of the textile industry, I wrote Silk Legacy.

About Silk Legacy:

In early twentieth century Paterson, New Jersey, dashing twenty-nine year old Abraham Bressler charms naïve nineteen year old Sarah Singer into marriage by making her believe he feels the same way she does about the new calling of a modern woman.  He then turns around and gives her little more respect than he would a servant, demanding she stay home to care for “his” house and “his” children.

Feeling betrayed Sarah defies him and joins women's groups, actively participating in rallies for woman suffrage, child welfare and reproductive freedom.  For a while she succeeds in treading delicately between the demands of her husband and her desire to be an independent woman.  Her balancing act falters when a strike shuts down Paterson’s 300 silk mills.  With many friends working in the mills, Sarah is forced to choose sides in the battle between her Capitalist husband and his Socialist brother, a union leader who happens to be her best friend’s husband.

Jealousy, infidelity, arrogance, greed—the characters’ titanic struggles will catapult you into the heights of their euphoria and the depths of their despair.  Who will triumph and who will be humbled is not certain until the last page.

Unfortunately the publisher of Silk Legacy has gone out of business.  But the book is available on Kindle and any e-reader that can access Amazon.com books. The link which will take you directly to the Silk Legacy page in Amazon.com is:

http://www.amazon.com/Silk-Legacy-ebook/dp/B003BVJFJW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1336999883&sr=1-1

Read more about Silk Legacy and Richard’s latest novel, Keiretsu, due out the end of November, and his mystery novels at:  
http://www.silklegacy.com.

Meet Spunky Senior Author J.L. Greger, Scientist and Once Pig Farmer

                                                                

J.L. Greger and Bug

Spunky Women Scientists 

              By J. L. Greger

In my new novel Coming Flu the heroine Sara Almquist is a retired epidemiologist from Michigan State University. She retired early to the Albuquerque area because she was tired of university politics and cold weather. On the positive side, she wanted to explore her artistic side and do pet therapy with her dog Bug.

I guess Sara is like me in some ways. We were both raised on pig farms in the Midwest. I was a professor in biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison for twenty-five years. I retired early to get time to write fiction and to get away from snow. My Japanese Chin named Bug (shown in the picture with me) is the model for Bug in the novel. Together we do pet therapy in two hospitals in Albuquerque. Fortunately, my life is not as traumatic as Sara’s.

One of the reasons I wrote Coming Flu was I wanted to help non-scientists sense the excitement, potential, and limits of modern biology. This medical thriller is an example of a new genre of literature called science in fiction or Lab Lit. Coming Flu is not science fiction because a serious flu epidemic could happen.

A second reason for writing this medical thriller was I wanted to create a realistic image of women in science. No one expected the quiet, six-year-old in this photo to become a scientist. Her favorite activity was playing with her dolls. She was not a tomboy.

Similarly, Sara doesn’t fit the traditional image of a scientist in fiction. Think about it. The scientists in many science fiction novels and movies (Frankenstein and its clones) are aging, un-athletic, males with anti-social tendencies. Comic strips improved the image of scientists, at least visually, to be handsome males, like Batman and Iron Man. Now TV shows, like CSI, Bones, and NCIS, feature attractive, young women as scientists. But few scientists in popular books, movies, or TV shows are mature women.

To a certain extent, the changes in the images of scientists in fiction reflect reality. In 1958, women earned 8% of the doctoral degrees awarded in science and engineering in the US. In 1985 and 2006, women earned 27% and 40%, respectively, of the doctorates awarded in these fields. Don’t get too excited about progress! Look at the figures for women holding professorships in science and engineering. Women held 4.5% of those positions in 1973 and 17.9% of the in 2003.

I was an associate dean at the UW-Madison who helped departments recruit women scientists in the 1990’s. Recruiting women to assistant professorships wasn’t as hard as retaining them and grooming them to become full professors. Part of the problem was the social isolation many felt in largely male science department. Personally, I thought the worst part was faculty parties when women faculty members were relegated to talking to wives of older professors in the kitchen. I’m being unfair, many of the wives were nice.

Things have improved. I hope Coming Flu will whet the appetite of readers for spunky, mature women doing real science in more novels in the future.

About Coming Flu: A flu epidemic breaks out in a walled community near the Rio Grande. More than two hundred die in less than a week. The rest face a bleak future when quarantine is imposed. One resident, Sara Almquist, a medical epidemiologist, pries into every aspect of her neighbor’s lives looking for ways to stop the spread of the flu. She finds promising clues - maybe too many.

Coming Flu was published by Oak Tree Press and is available in paperback and eBook formats from the publisher and Amazon. See http://www.jlgreger.com for more information on J. L. (Janet) Greger, Coming Flu, and the new genre of fiction - science in fiction or Lab Lit.

J.L.'s website is: http://www.jlgreger.com

The buy link to Oak Tree Press is: http://oaktreebooks.com/Shop%20OTP.htm#ComFlu 

The buy link to Amazon is: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Flu-J-L-Greger/dp/1610090985?

Please welcome J.L. Greger to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by Leaving a Comment.

Spunky Marilyn Meredith Is Having Too Much Fun to Retire!

Marilyn Meredith Says:

Having Way Too Much Fun to Retire

Marilyn Meredith as a flower girl

 I’ve retired from other jobs, but I’m certainly not ready to retire from writing and promoting.

Some people think writing is a nice quiet job for a senior—let me tell you it is far from that.

Marilyn Meredith and hubby, Hap, on Wedding Day

I was a grandmother when I went on my first ride-along. I’ve been on two more since then. I’ve flown all over the country to attend writer and mystery cons, sometime with my husband sometimes not.

The “not” was twice when I flew to Alaska. The first time I flew from Anchorage to Bethel in a commuter plane, and was picked up in a suburban and driven on a frozen river to a school in a small village. The second time I hitched a ride from Anchorage with someone I’d just met to go to Wasilla. There I stayed with a friend I made on the first trip. One of my days there I spent at a middle school talking to every class about how to write a mystery.

I’m still the newsletter editor for the California Residential Services Association for administrators of licensed care homes and I continue to do consulting for them.

One of the most satisfying and fun jobs I have, though really time consuming, is planning the yearly writing conference for the Public Safety Writers Association. Through this organization I’ve made friends with people in the FBI and every other sort of law enforcement agency you can think of and lots of mystery writers.

Marilyn with hubby, Hap, in church

At their conference, my hubby of 61 years helps with the book selling and I think he enjoys everyone as much as I do.

We now have 18 grandkids and 13 great-grands. We love spending time with our kids and their offspring. The one thing we have retired from is babysitting.

Marilyn Meredith's current
mystery release

About Raging Water:  Deputy Tempe Crabtree’s  investigation of the murder of two close friends is complicated when relentless rain turns Bear Creek into a raging river. Homes are inundated and a mud slide blocks the only road out of Bear Creek stranding many—including the murderer.

CONTEST: The person who leaves comments on the most blogs will have his/her name used for a character in my next book—can choose if you want it in a Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery or a Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel.

Marilyn Meredith is the author of over thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the latest Raging Water from Mundania Press. Writing as F. M. Meredith, her latest Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel us No Bells, the forth from Oak Tree Press. Marilyn is a member of EPIC, three chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. 

Visit Marilyn Meredith at http://fictionforyou.com and follow her blog at http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com/

Please leave a comment to welcome Marilyn Meredith to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents.

Meet Spunky 81 Year Old Author Charmaine Gordon, Once The Stand-In Leg Model for Geraldine Ferarro

So happy to be visiting with you, Morgan. I’ve enjoyed many of your senior blogs and decided to jump in.

  A bit about my past: Born in the good/bad old days of Chicago when sometimes you saw big Packard’s with hoodlums riding on running boards, tommy guns at the ready. Later Dad prospered and we moved to a better neighborhood. I married my high school sweetheart and became an Air Force bride raising too many children as we moved from base to base. Writing, directing, and performing in skits for the Officer’s Club helped develop a sense of self while my pilot was on temporary duty overseas. As civilians we settled within driving distance to NYC and there I pursued my dream of working professionally as an actor. Daytime drama, commercials, movies and off Broadway kept me busy. I never expected to be a star but it was a sweet time working with Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Anthony Hopkins, and Billy Crystal to mention a few. My very first job was stand in leg model for Geraldine Ferarro in a Pepsi commercial. She was on the Democratic ticket with Michael Dukakis at the time, first female ever to be in that lofty position.

During the run of an Off Broadway play, an idea for a story came to me. I’d read many scripts, knew my way around dialogue and set direction and with no other prep, I began to write. Luck smiled upon me as I wrote queries, shrugged off rejections and before long a publisher offered a contract! An author is born. After two years, her company went out of business BUT another author, Chelle Cordero, bought my book and told her publisher about me. So here I am at 81 with six books to my credit, a few short stories, and more books on the way.



Charmaine's Daughter Jumping



Charmaine's Granddaughter Jumping

When I wrote Reconstructing Charlie I never dreamed another story began after I typed The End. But two minor characters kept bugging me and so I wrote Sin of Omission.

Reconstructing Charlie:

  Charlie Costigan has a secret. Home life gone from bad to the worst when she protects her mother from another vicious attack by her drunken father. Midnight. Clothes thrown into an old suitcase, she races for the bus with a letter to an unknown aunt and uncle. “This is my daughter. Embrace her as if she were your own.”

Determined, Charlie begins again. Alone with her secret.

AMAZON   B&N   OMNILIT PDF

INSTANT DOWNLOAD SPECIAL

KINDLE   SMASHWORDS MULTIFORMAT

http://www.amazon.com/Reconstructing-Charlie-Charmaine-Gordon/dp/1935407910

Sin of Omission:

  Seems easy enough. Jimmy Costigan will deliver supplies to sister Charlie's project Haven, a respite for the needy, and leave.
Instead, Shelley Jackson answers the door, says she needs him and soft-hearted Jimmy stays to protect the family seeking refuge from a sociopath. He didn't count on falling in love.
A twist of fate intervenes when Shelley keeps a secret that threatens to break apart the Costigans and her future. A mysterious client, Deanna Rose, enters Haven, victim of a savage beating under strange circumstances. Using Internet resources, Shelley digs in to find Ms. Rose has an unsavory past.

With the reputation and safety of Haven at stake, Shelley is at risk to lose everything ... and everyone she cares about.

Also Available in Ebook Formats
Amazon KindleSmashwords Multiformat

AllRomance/OmniLit

http://www.amazon.com/Sin-Omission-Charmaine-Gordon/dp/1937227650

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sin-of-omission-charmaine-gordon/1111456\
096

In this tech world that makes me dizzy, if you’d like to chat I can be reached at the following links.

http://authorCharmaineGordon.wordpress.com

http://CharmaineGordonSSS.wordpress.com

http://twitter.com/#!/CharJGordon       

http://www.facebook.com/charmaine.gordon

About writing: Nothing prepared me for the glorious feeling and power of writing. Imagine the thrill, the control over fictional characters. You decide when they meet, how they appear and feel using your senses. And how about the evil someone? Should he/she die of a disease, get stabbed, shot? It’s all in your imagination. There is so much to explore and have fun with if you open your veins and let your emotions out. Yes, it’s messy with all the tears but remember the reward of laughter and sweet memories you can incorporate into a story. I don’t outline because I fly by the seat of my pants with an idea of what lies ahead and how it ends allowing the characters to live and direct me. Maybe I’m not a real writer, trained in school. I’ve come to this amazing craft late in life so all I can do is bring my life experience, leave fear behind and write in a style I call loose. That’s me. Loose.

My advice to a newbie is this: You say you have a story to tell. TELL IT! Maybe begin with Remember When and write a short memoir without censoring yourself. Have a little fun with the blank white page.

The hard work comes after you’ve written a book. Promotion. OMG! No one prepared me for this. On this happy note I say thanks again to Morgan for this lovely opportunity to visit and talk about my books that my publisher, Kimberlee Williams at Vanilla Heart, calls Survive & Thrive stories.

Check out http://authorCharmaineGordon.wordpress.com for more about Charmaine Gordon.

Please welcome Charmaine to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by Leaving a Comment.

Spunky Lesley Cookman Is Quintessentially English

 Lesley started writing almost as soon as she could read, and filled many exercise books with pony stories until she was old enough to go out with boys.

Since she's been grown up, following a varied career as a model, actor, air stewardess and disc jockey, she's written short fiction and features for a variety of magazines, achieved an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales, taught writing for both Kent Adult Education and the WEA and edited the first Sexy Shorts collection of short stories from Accent Press in aid of the Breast Cancer Campaign. 

The Libby Sarjeant series is published by Accent Press, who also publish her book, How to Write a Pantomime, with a foreword by Roy Hudd.   Lesley is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers' Association. 

LESLEY SAYS:
I’m very pleased to be invited to this blog of which, as an English writer, I had never heard! My books, available in print or ebook, are quintessentially English and fall into what is now known as the “cosy” category, but follows the pattern of the Golden Age British Detective story.

They were my favourite reading from the age of nine, when my parents first allowed me to read a book by Carter Dickson. I went on to become a model, an actor, British Airways cabin crew and finally, a free lance journalist and editor. I also wrote short fiction for women’s magazines and pantomimes, that peculiarly British form of Christmas entertainment. The pantomimes are still performed in theatres across Britain every year. 

Murder by Magic is the tenth in the Libby Sarjeant series, and you can buy it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Magic-Sarjeant-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00883BFV4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346933552&sr=8-2&keywords=Murder+By+Magic

Amazon UK Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00883BFV4

You can reach Lesley at:
www.lesleycookman.co.uk
http://lesleycookman.blogspot.com/
Follow Lesley on Twitter @LesleyCookman

Please welcome Lesley Cookman to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by Leaving a Comment.

Almost 86, Spunky Senior Author Jane Toombs Still Does Crossword Puzzles and Writes

  Our guest today will generously give away an ebook of Taken In to one lucky person who comments, so be sure to leave your email address to be notified.


Jane Toombs



Not only that, Jane will also send a CD with read-only excerpts of her recent books to any responders who take the trouble to go to her website at http://www.JaneToombs.com  and click on her email addy there. They would then need to send Jane their snailmail addy so she'll know where to send the CD.

And Now, Here's Jane Toombs, a Spunky Senior With Many Talents -

 



When my first book, a gothic called Tule Witch, was published back in 1973, I never thought I might one day be labeled as a senior, much less a Spunky Senior.  But I certainly am because to survive as an author, old or young, you sure better be spunky. 

Two days after Christmas I’ll be eighty-six and I’m still having  books published.  Why do you suppose that is? 

Here’s my seven takes:

   1. I’ve been lucky enough not to suffer from early senility.

Is that luck?  Maybe partly, because certainly heredity or disease  plays its part in senility at any age. But I do strive to stay active mentally. Who knows, maybe the thousands of crossword puzzles I do plays a part. 

   2.  I’m physically quite healthy despite surviving treatment for cancer ten years ago.  Also my SO has Parkinson’s. I take care of him at home and try to do the same exercises that PT gives him.

   3.  Screaming and kicking, I advanced into the computer age.  While I’ll never be a techie, I do enjoy writing on a computer instead of a typewriter with, ugh, carbon paper. 



Jane Toombs at WisRWA 4 years ago



   4. I’m a charter member of RWA, and belong to my own special interest RWA loops online. If you’re going to write romance, it pays to belong to an organization that promotes it. Not that I don’t find fault with the group at times.

  5. I’m usually up for trying something new, be it writing or clothes, music, shows, etc. Might not like it, but I’d never know that if I didn’t try.  Same goes for writing. 

I recently wrote my first YA, The Turquoise Dragon, not too long ago.  Not on purpose, but that’s how it came out. Mostly I write paranormal suspense romance, which is really what many of the early gothics were.  

  

   6. I write for multiple epubs today.  I do still have an agent if I ever decide to write for NY pubs again, but I enjoy the shorter format of novellas. Do I write about sex?  Sure, if it seems appropriate to the story, which it usually is. I’ve never been a prude.  Also I’m open-minded about most all the usual sexual variations, although I don’t write that kind of sex.

   7.  I keep trying new things. Right now  I'm scanning some of my old written-on-a-typewriter rights-back books for resale.  Making mistakes, but, hey, how else can you learn?  I also am smart enough to know there are some things I will never be good at, so why not let other people do them for me? 

My most recent sale was to Champagne Books, the first book, Taken In, in a trilogy called DAGON HOUSE.

                                    

About Taken In:

Gail flees New York City after witnessing a murder.  Afraid the hit man has seen her, she heads for the Adirondacks.  Jason, a secret agent, reaches her before the hit man, but with the hit man on their tail, Jason swerves onto a narrow mountain road, losing the hit man, but crashing.  Both are forced to take shelter in a old Victorian called Dagon House where a terrible danger awaits…

Jane's Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/Jane-Toombs/e/B004B35EX0

Please welcome Jane Toombs to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by leaving a comment and you'll also be in the drawing for an e-book.