On Saturday, August 13, nine of us gathered via Zoom for a brief chapter meeting and a lively presentation by Miki Reilly-Howe on Burroway’s Chapter Five from Writing Fiction, followed by a fascinating and informative guest speaker, Judith Turner-Yamamoto, interviewed by Miki.

Judith, an award-winning author, poet, and journalist, spoke to us about her journey to publication for her debut novel, Loving the Dead and Gone, a finalist for the 2020 Petrichor Prize, due out in September from Regal House. You can view the recording of Judith’s talk here: 

Judith Turner Yamamoto

After sharing a riveting excerpt of her beautiful novel, she spoke about how in this past year, she’s devoted herself to publicizing her novel and ensuring its successful launch. This has involved multiple steps, including:

 

 

• Having a professional website (https://turneryamamoto.com/)
• Making a list of everyone in her network
• Securing blurbs from noted authors
• Garnering reviews from major industry publications such as Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly
• “Mastering social media”
• Arranging events with bookstores
• Setting up giveaways on Goodreads

She highly recommended that we take advantage of the many resources offered by Dan Blank on his website, https://wegrowmedia.com/

A key takeaway from Judith’s presentation was that after a writer has typed “The End” and secured publication, the work continues. In today’s publishing world, the vast majority of authors are expected to do the lion’s share of marketing and publicizing their books. She’s a wonderful example of someone who has put the work in to ensure a successful launch. We’re so grateful to Miki for arranging for Judith’s visit with us.

As for what’s coming up, we’re delighted to return to a combined face-to-face/Zoom chapter meeting on September 10 at the Middletown Library. Our very own Carol Preflatish will speak to us about “How to Be an Organized Writer.”

MEMBER NEWS

Carol Preflatish did a super “Meet and Greet the Author” session at the Jeffersonville Indiana Library on August 6.

She talked about the research involved in her latest book, WITCH HUNT, the third book of her Nathan Perry Mystery series.

 

 

Lynda Rees‘ middle-grade mystery, Freckle Face & Blondie, is now in audio. The second book in Lynda Rees’ middle-grade series, The Thinking Tree, Freckle Face & Blondie 2 , just launched in audiobook as well.  Lynda is anxiously awaiting news from a couple of publishers who asked for full MS after reading three chapters of her work in progress, Flip or Flop, Murder House.

 

 

 

 

Lynn Slaughter’s first adult mystery, MISSED CUE, will be published by Melange Books in the summer of 2023. Her recently released YA novel, DEADLY SETUP, received a lovely review in Mystery and Suspense: https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/deadly-setup/

She’s also excited to share that she’ll be a participating author at several upcoming events: Killer Nashville, the Heartland Book Festival, the Louisville Book Festival, the Kentucky Book Festival, and Louisville Literary Arts Book Festival.

Hot Off the Press: Update on our August guest speaker!

We’re delighted to announce that Judith Turner-Yamamoto will be our guest speaker at our August 13 meeting.

Her debut novel, Loving the Dead and Gone, comes out on September 6 from Regal House Publishing, Sour Mash Southern Literature series. Chapter member Miki Reilly-Howe will be interviewing the 2020 Petrichor Prize finalist about the long process from writing to publication, as well as the masterful steps she has taken to ensure her novel’s success.

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Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s work has appeared in StorySOUTH, Mississippi Review, Snake Nation Review, and American Literary Review, among others, and in many anthologies, including Walking the Edge: A Southern Gothic Anthology, Show Us Your Papers, and Gravity Dancers. Her awards include two Virginia Arts Commission fellowships, an Ohio Arts Council fellowship, VCCA and Fundación Valparaiso fellowship residencies, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Washington Prize for Fiction, and the Virginia Screenwriting Award. Her article assignments, which include interviews with such luminaries as Frank Gehry and Annie Leibovitz, have taken her all over the world, and she has published more than a thousand cover stories and features on the arts, design, architecture, interiors and gardens, travel, food, fashion, and books in such publications as The Boston Globe Magazine, Elle, Interiors, Art & Antiques, The Los Angeles Times, and Travel & Leisure.  

In lieu of our monthly meeting, several DRSers attended Imaginarium, a lively  convention for “creatives” (authors, filmmakers, composers, visual artists, gamers, etc.) held annually in Louisville.

Susan Bell, Elaine Munsch, Lynn Slaughter, Carol Preflatish, and Leanne Edelen held down our chapter tables.

 

Elaine Munsch, making the rounds, chatting up an author, looking for speakers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carol Preflatish, selling her her Nathan Perry Mystery series.

 

 

 

 

Susan Bell, getting a little “Air” outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lorena Peter and Lynda Rees also shared a table, and we got to see many friends, including authors Beth Henderson and Pam Turner.

 

 

We managed to sell a few books and talk to several folks interested in our chapter. But as usual, the best part of the conference was meeting and talking with other writers. (Editor’s note: Lynn Slaughter won the Imadjinn Award for LEISHA’S SONG in the young adult category.)

We sat near a delightful Cincinnati crime writer, Trace Conger (I’m currently reading his novel, FIVE WILL DIE- really good!), and our inveterate program chair, Elaine Munsch, wasted no time approaching him about being a speaker at one of our chapter meetings. She also connected with award-winning author and journalist John DeDakis who expressed interest in speaking with our  chapter.

There will be a memorial service for long-time chapter member Debi Huff on:

August 7 from 2-5 PM at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Louisville.

We miss Debi, who was a delight with a terrific sense of humor.

 

 

 

We hope to have a guest speaker for our August 13 meeting via Zoom (last minute speaker cancellation has us scrambling!) but meantime, we’re looking forward to another presentation by Miki Reilly-Howe on a chapter from Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction. And on September 10 at the Middletown Library,  Carol Preflatish will talk with us about “how to be an organized writer.”

Additional Member News

Carol Preflatish will be speaking at the Jeffersonville Indiana Library on August 6 at 1:30 pm. She’ll be discussing her Nathan Perry Mystery series, and specifically the research she did on her latest book, WITCH HUNT. Seating is limited, and registration is on the library’s Calendar of Events page on http://Jeff.library.org

 

 

 

Lynn Slaughter’s DEADLY SETUP came out on July 5. On July 8, her guest essay, “Beyond the External Plot: What’s Your Book Really About?” appeared on Sarah Glenn’s blog:

https://saraheglenn.blogspot.com/2022/07/lynn-slaughter-beyond-external-plot.html 

Lynn was also thrilled to receive the Imadjinn Award for LEISHA’S SONG in the young adult category. LEISHA’S SONG is also a Silver Falchion finalist. Lynn will be one of the participating authors doing a reading at Voice & Vision: Presented by Spalding’s School of Writing, The Louisville Review & 21c Museum Hotel. The in-person reading event will take place 6:00-7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 21, at 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Louisville. 

 

All for now. We hope to see many of you at our August meeting!

For years my friend Rick McMahan, now a retired ATF agent, has been encouraging me to attend the Writers’ Police Academy, a conference conceived by Lee Lofland to help writers get the details correct. This year the stars aligned themselves and my daughter and I journeyed to Wisconsin to attend this year’s get-together.

 

Writers’ Police Academy

The first event was a firsthand exploration of various vehicles used in police/rescue work.

That  evening we listened to Anne E. Schwartz, author of MONSTER, The True Story of the Jeffrey Dahmer Murders. Schwartz was the first reporter, really just a cub, at the home of Jeffrey Dahmer when the story began to break. She followed the story as the horrific details of what the police found in Dahmer’s apartment became public. Through the years she interviewed Dahmer, finally putting all she learned in a book.

The attendees stayed in Appleton and bussed to Green Bay. The first morning, very early, we arrived at NWTC (Northeast Wisconsin Technical College) for a simulation of an auto collision. We watched as the police arrived and arrested the drunk driver. EMS arrived to tend to the injured driver in the other car. The Fire Department had to extract the other passenger (a dummy), so the firemen cut off the car door. Finally, a helicopter circled the parking lot and landed so the severely injured passenger (dummy) could be taken to a nearby hospital.

All the participants stayed around to answer questions.

We then walked to our classrooms, part of the Public Safety Training Center. In registration we selected various classes of interest: Court Process, Arrest and Booking Process, Armed in America, Firearms, Use of Force Virtual Reality Simulator, Vehicle Extrication, and Tactical Operations – Forced Entry/Room Clearing.

My first class was Court Process where Judge Kevin Rathburn moved us through the A-Z’s of presenting courtroom testimony. I felt like I was back in college, furiously taking notes. At the end of the class, the Judge said he would send via email all the notes we would need.

Then onto Arrest and Booking Process, where the jailer provided a step-by-step guide from the intake at the Sally Port* until the suspect was either turned over for prosecution or released on bond. The minutia of each step examined and explained. The safety of the police, the suspect and the jailers is paramount.

*Per Wikipedia: A sally port is a secure, controlled entry way to an enclosure, e.g., a fortification or prison. The entrance is usually protected by some means, such as a fixed wall on the outside, parallel to the door, which must be circumvented to enter and prevents direct enemy fire from a distance. It may include two sets of doors that can be barred independently to further delay enemy penetration.

My final ‘class’ of the day was Armed in America with Rick McMahan. With over four hundred million weapons in the hands of the American population, and the on-going conversation around gun violence, Rick walked us through the history of firearm legislation, as well as educating us on the different types of weapons out there.

My daughter chose more inter-active classes: Firearms and Forced Entry/Room Clearing. She learned the proper way to hold/fire a weapon and realized that holding a gun with arms extended gets harder the longer you have to maintain that position. Now that she knew how to hold a gun, she and another attendee got to experience how to ‘clear a building.’ Wearing protective gear, they peered around corners looking for the ‘bad guys.’ We’ve all watched this on any number of television shows but to do it yourself is another ballgame. “Look in the corners”.

It was an exhausting day for this old bookseller.

Saturday was another early day. I signed up for Body Cameras, K-9 Operations and finally, Defensive and Arrest Tactics.

The class on body cameras was enlightening and fascinating. The instructor explained what the camera can see and what the police officer sees. With adrenaline pumping, the officer will have tunnel vision rather than the wide-angle of the camera. He showed us various clips of events and then we were able to view what other cameras caught, discussing each video.

Everyone’s favorite class was the K-9 unit. After a classroom session discussing breed choices, training and uses for the canines, we went outside to meet the dogs. Turbo is a German Shepherd and Raven is a Belgium Malinois; those two breeds are the most popular because of their prey drive and their defense drive. The dogs showed their seek-and-find talents. Turbo got the final show: how he would control/contain the ‘bad guy.’

In my final class, the instructors demonstrated how an officer approaches a suspect, beginning with a non-aggressive encounter and working up to the very uncooperative person who ends up on the ground and in cuffs.

 

Again, my daughter chose the more interactive class: Emergency Vehicle Operations, in other words, she got to drive a police car in pursuit of a getaway car.

All of the instructors were police officers, now instructors at the college but still on the force.

The day ended with a presentation by Dr. Katherine Ramsland. Her expertise lies in the process of interviewing serial killers. She walked us through her relationship with the B.T.K. (Bind, Torture, Kill) killer.

The conference ended with a dinner and a wonderful speech by Robert Dugoni, best-selling author. He discussed trying to find the secret to writing. He started with Stephen King’s ‘telepathy,’ added that Diane Gabaldon’s telling of the ‘magic’ that helps her, and finally Charles Dickins, a.k.a. the man who created Christmas, talking about how he struggled for inspiration and then one night in walked Ebenezer Scrooge.

This was one of the best conferences I ever attended and I would highly recommend it to all writers whether they have police officers in their stories or not. Not only will you be able to correctly portray your LEO characters, but you will also come away with a better appreciation of the difficulties faced by our LEO’s every day on the streets.

 

Having missed our last chapter meeting due to my grandson’s high school graduation, I was so glad our wonderful webmaster Susan Bell had recorded the talk, and I could watch it on YouTube. Wow! It was terrific.

Lisa Haneberg, author of the Spy Shop Mysteries and co-founder of the Lexington Writer’s Room, discussed what we could learn from the career of Agatha Christie and apply to our own writing. Christie approached her work with a playful attitude and was open to experimentation. Despite being a member of the Detection Club, she regularly broke the rules to write her stories. These rules included admonitions to never have the narrator or detective be the culprit, never allow readers access to the killer’s thoughts, and always give readers the same access to the clues that the detective has. Yet, in Christie’s classic work, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), the narrator/detective/sidekick was in fact the killer, readers learned his thoughts, and while he didn’t lie, he also didn’t fully share all of his clues, for obvious reasons!

Of course, Christie wasn’t perfect and some of her characters expressed negative biases and prejudices which today might make us cringe. Lisa advises challenging ourselves to avoid stereotypes and demonstrating in our writing “what fairness and inclusion look like.” We also need to retire tired tropes, which for Lisa include things like cheating husbands as a motive for murder.

In addition, she suggests looking at how we can fully engage our readers in today’s world which includes so many distractions. We must look at things like our pacing, word choice, chapter length (short is better!), and white space on the page.

Finally, we need to encourage one another as writers!

All in all, it was a stimulating talk with lots of input from participants, and I was so glad to get to watch it. Many thanks to Elaine Munsch, our Program Chair, for arranging for Lisa’s talk.

Member News

A quick reminder that there will be no chapter meeting in July due to several members participating in Imaginarium July 8-10. I hope you’ll attend if you can, as this is an exciting festival with lots of informative panels and presentations.

DRS panelists include: Elaine Munsch, Carol Preflatish, Lynda Rees, Lorena Reith, Jr. (Lorena Peter), Lynn Slaughter, and former DRS President Beth Henderson. Susan Bell will also be on hand to help staff the Derby Rotten Scoundrels table with Elaine and Lynn. The DRS table will have information about our chapter, copies for sale of our very popular anthology, MYSTERY WITH A SPLASH OF BOURBON, co-edited by Susan Bell and Elaine Munsch, as well as Elaine’s comedic mysteries, the Dash Hammond series, and Lynn’s young adult romantic mysteries. Carol will have a table for her books, and Lynda and Lorena will share a table featuring their work.

Sales and responses to MYSTERY WITH A SPLASH OF BOURBON, co-edited by Susan Bell and Elaine Munsch, continue to be excellent.

Heaven Hill just ordered an additional 15 copies! The anthology was also recently placed on the shelves at the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs. Kudos to Elaine Munsch for all the leg work it took to find the right retail representative at these various locales, make the contact, and follow up with  a sale. Currently the book is on the shelves at these gift shop/locales:

• The Frazier Museum
• Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs
• Shaq and Coco bookstore, Bardstown
• Heaven Hill

 

Prolific author Lynda Rees is passionate about ending drug trafficking and building awareness to prevent victimization and help victims recover and heal. On July 1, she’ll release the third of the Reggie Chronicles, Magnolia Blossoms, which follows Hart’s Girls, RC#1 and Heart of the Matter, released on June 1. Early reviews of Magnolia’s Blosssoms have been effusive, calling the book a “page turner” with “complex and interesting characters,” as well as lots of unpredictable “twists and turns.”

In the Reggie Chronicles, quirky, irreverent FBI Special Agent Reggie Casse finally meets her match with U. S. Marshal Shae Montgomery. Reggie has been a favorite character of Lynda’s fans as a player in The Bloodline Series, Bks.1-10, also set in Kentucky. The unlikely pair of lawpersons’ personalities clash, as they struggle to join forces against evil infecting rural Kentucky and the Midwest U.S.A.

 

Links: AMZ: https://amzn.to/3NqasgX
BARNES & NOBLE: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w?ean=2940186749875
KOBO RAKUTEN: https://bit.ly/3NtzoUy
APPLE: http://books.apple.com/us/book/id644294888

 

 

 

Lynda also shared the news that her middle-grade mystery, Freckle Face & Blondie #1, co-written with her then ten-year-old granddaughter, Harley Nelson, will launch on July 1 in audiobook at all audio retailers.

The new release is the first in a series featuring rambunctious girls, Freckle Face and Blondie, who dream of becoming detectives. They open a private investigation company to start solving mysteries so they’ll be experts by the time they’re adults. When their friend Katy disappears suspiciously and her mother is frantic, police search for the girl. They should stay out of it, but Freckles and Blondie follow leads and reveal new clues. Sharing discoveries with authorities, they’re told to stop looking. Timing is critical and could mean the difference between life and death to the missing girl.

Links:
B&N http://bit.ly/2sWqFW4
AMZ http://bit.ly/2sWqFW4
KOBO
AUDIBLE https://adbl.co/3fYLQLh

Lynn Slaughter is also getting excited about an upcoming release. Her young adult novel, Deadly Setup, comes out on July 5 from Fire and Ice/Melange Books. In Deadly Setup, seventeen-year-old Samantha (Sam) has a strained relationship with her mom even before she goes on trial for the murder of her mother’s fiancé. She fights to prove her innocence with the help of her boyfriend’s dad, an ex-homicide cop.

Meantime, Lynn appeared on Big Blend Radio’s June 8 panel of writers: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/big-blend-radio

She also contributed an essay, “Confessions of a Nosy Writer,” on Lois Winston’s June 15 blog: https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2022/06/ya-mystery-author-lynn-slaughter.html

Lynn will be one of the readers in July as part of the literary series, “Voice & Vision: Presented by Spalding’s School of Writing, The Louisville Review & 21c Museum Hotel.” The in-person reading is from 6-7:30 PM Thursday, July 21, at 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Louisville.

All for now. We hope to see many of you at Imaginarium next month!