It’s My Turn

If you have followed my blog over the past year, you are familiar with the Underground Authors. If you are new to my blog, welcome! A couple of years ago a group of writers from around the country and Canada banded together and wrote an anthology of short stories called Beyond The Sea. It turned out to be a ton of fun. So much so, we decided to extend our group writing process to include a series of books all written about a fictional town in the lovely area of the Texas hill country. We called it Magnolia Bluff. Pretty or not, it sure is a deadly town. With each new book, the bodies are piling up, and law enforcement is struggling to keep up with the growing body count.

The latest tale is my book Justice, book eight in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles.

I am especially proud of Justice. I have just learned that it very quickly proved to be an Amazon best-selling book when it launched last week. Yippee! Awards are cool!

Let me tell you about my story. Madison Jackson is a police officer with the Texas State Department of Fish and Wildlife. The title sounds pretty tame. Yes, Madison passes out tickets for no fishing or deer licenses. It was on just such a routine day that a child’s body was found in the tree line next to Burnet Reservoir.

Madison attends the child’s autopsy. The sight of that battered and bruised child on a stainless-steel slab in the morgue deeply moves her. Madison’s professional instincts are battered by memories of a lonely childhood precipitated by the death of her mother at the hands of a violent criminal. Evidence on the child indicates she was a victim of human trafficking south of the border. Madison impulsively drives to Tenancingo, Mexico hoping to locate the parents of Jane Doe lying unclaimed at Schiff’s Funeral Home in Magnolia Bluff.

Madison’s trip quickly catches the attention of the CJNG, the Jalisco New Generation cartel. Madison is kidnapped and subjected to extreme torture Will she ever make it home?

I just wanted to add a review of Justice that I am especially proud of. From Keith Mbuya of Reader’s Favorite. “If you love mystery murder thrillers laced with spicy romantic action, Kelly Marshall’s Justice is a must-read for you. Marshall had me captivated from the start. The narration focuses on love, secrets, unexpected affairs, family, sex trafficking, Mexican cartels, blackmail, espionage, thrills, and suspense. Marshall hatches an intriguing plot, featuring an amazing cast and spectacular twists. Marshall portrays the scenes vividly, capturing them with dramatic effect and a clever sense of humor. She develops the characters boldly, describing their traits and emotions, which made it easy for me to connect with them. Madison is an intelligent and tough woman, but with a big heart. Justice is the eighth installment in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles and a stand-alone book.”

Here’s the Amazon link:https://www.amazon.com/JUSTICE-Magnolia-Bluff-Crime-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0BKYDL3ZH

WARM and COZY

Author Linda Pirtle admits she is an avid fan of Agatha Christie and loves the murder mysteries solved by the unassuming female protagonist that stays on the scent of the criminal like a dog on a bone. Pirtle says it was a natural transition for her to become a writer after years of teaching writing and literature at St. John High School, Lancaster High School, and Ennis High School all in her home state of Texas.

After retiring from teaching, Linda joined her husband Caleb in creating a publishing company called Venture Galleries. Their website calebandlindapirtle.com is devoted to bringing readers and authors together. I personally have benefited from their generosity. They have written a number of articles about me and my books. They have a wide-reaching audience so I have felt blessed by their spreading the word about my work with so many of their followers. Self-published authors are always looking for creative ways to reach new readers. Caleb and Linda clearly understand the difficulty that authors struggle with to reach “the masses.”

Besides working in the publishing business, Linda jumped into the writing arena and penned a series of cozy books called The Games We Play. The first mystery titled the Mah Jongg Murders features her chief protagonist Lillian Prestridge, a strong female investigator. Her husband and two sons try to keep her in check but the lady definitely has a mind of her own. The book garnered a five-star Reader’s Favorite Award. Linda followed her successful first book with three more books in the series. Her second book, Deadly Dominoes, earned Linda a Best Cozy Mystery Award from the Texas Authors Association. Ditto for her third mystery. Tarot Terrors also took the award for Best Cozy in 2019. Her latest in the “Game” series is Scrabbled Secrets in 2020.

A year ago, several authors from around the country and Canada banded together and called themselves the Underground Authors. The purpose of the group was to give each other marketing support. We enjoyed each other’s company so much, we decided to pen a book of short stories. The successful collaboration resulted in Beyond The Sea.

We all decided to take it a step further and write entire novels sharing a Texas location and a whole town full of colorful characters. Linda’s latest book is book seven in the series called the Dewey Decimal Dilemma.

One look at the cover and your heart melts gazing at the sweet puppy that dominates the cover. That warmth and hometown uniqueness permeate Linda’s book. I especially loved her description of the Veteran’s Day Parade. I recall a number of times taking my grandson Dawson dressed in his Boy Scout uniform to our local parade in Buckley, Washington. It was a cacophony of blaring lumber truck horns, fire and police sirens, and high school marching bands.

So Linda’s book is warm and cozy for sure, but it is a mystery which means a dead body or two is going to show up. The police chief gets piqued because the ladies in the town seem to be running his investigation. Give yourself a treat. Buy The Dewey Decimal Dilemma at Amazon.com

THE MASTER

Like many successful people, author Caleb Pirtle III has earned his stripes with hard work and years of pounding the keyboard, writing about the fragility and complexity of human behavior. His characters are unique and unforgettable. One woman easily comes to mind. Eudora Durant from Caleb’s Moon series. We are introduced to her in Backside of a Blue Moon. Here’s what I wrote about Caleb’s character: “Eudora Durant is dying too—not from disease, but from the slow drip, drip of a miserable marriage to a cheating, no-good, alcoholic S.O.B. named Washburn Durant. Her days are filled with back-breaking physical labor and her nights are full of Washburn’s drunken abuse. One night, Washburn hits her one time too many, and he finds himself facing the business end of his own shotgun. He runs, but Eudora and the shotgun are faster.” See what I mean. She’s relatable and morphs from weak and victimized to a powerful woman who decides to take matters into her own hands.

Fast Forward to 2022. In Caleb’s new book, Eulogy in Black and White, we meet another one of Caleb’s unusual and memorable characters. Graham Huston is a veteran of the wars in the Mid-East sandbox. After eight post-injury surgeries, Huston promptly returns the Purple Heart he earned and becomes a vagabond traveling down lonesome highways in America until he lights in Magnolia Bluff, a small town in the hill country of Central Texas. Every day, Huston walks miles to the local cemetery carrying a fistful of flowers, sits down, and has a conversation with PFC Freddy Millstone who died in a sweltering jungle in Vietnam. Huston didn’t know Freddy, but he thinks someone should remember the soldier’s ultimate sacrifice.

Magnolia Bluff town folk are having one massive, hysterical anxiety attack. Every year for the past eight years, someone has been murdered on May 23rd. As the day approaches, some even scedaddle out of town to avoid their own murder. Who will be next? My lips are sealed. You’ll have to buy the book to find out. It’s one of Caleb Pirtle’s finest and here’s how to get your copy.https://www.amazon.com/Eulogy-Black-White-Magnolia-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B09Z9VPJYH

THE UNDERGROUND AUTHORS PRESENT

We couldn’t be more excited! For the last year, eight authors from around the United States and Canada have been planning for this moment–the premier of our first book in The Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles. It’s a joint venture; we all write about a small town in Texas where the growing body count is enough to choke a horse. (No pun intended)

We are publishing a mystery a month beginning April 21st. Out of the gate charges CW Hawes with

DEATH WEARS A CRIMSON HAT

Harry Thurgood is an enigma. Polished, cultured, and relatively new to Magnolia Bluff, Texas, he’s a man with a past, and he keeps his secrets close to his chest. Not only is Harry hiding his sins, but so is a good portion of Magnolia Bluff. The Crimson Hat Society is a group of women in the town who do many charitable works for their community, but beneath the group’s surface bubbles a malignancy of lies and deceit that leads to death. CW Hawes’ characters are colorful and unforgettable—like the Reverend Ember Cole, preacher at the local Methodist Church. She moves around Magnolia Bluff dressed in ministerial black with a Saturno religious hat perched on her head. Despite her dour dress, Ember’s face is as angelic as her personality, and Harry is willing to go to hell and back to win her love. Someone in the town wants to make sure Harry and Ember never consummate their romance.

CW Hawes is an amazingly prolific writer who dances between genres with ease. He writes horror, cozy mysteries, and yes, murder mysteries as well. Here’s his website CWHAWES.COM and a link to our premier book in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XGSSKCW

Divine Intervention

Successful mystery writer James Callan decided early on that writing was not going to feed his family. I think most writers ultimately come to that conclusion sooner or later. Personally, I am still juggling a full-time job with the government and writing murder mysteries when I can wedge time in my busy schedule. After getting a degree in English, Callan went back to graduate school and got a degree in mathematics and taught math and computer science for thirty years. Perhaps, it was divine intervention when someone put a book by mistake in Callan’s car. His interest piqued, Jim dove into the book and didn’t put it down until he finished it at two am. That unique event and the fact that his children were now grown and well-established on their own helped Callan make the decision to shake off academia and return to his first love-writing.

To date, James Callan has written seven novels, and four non-fiction books. He admits that he felt like a novice as a fictional writer after years of technical writing in the math and science arena. But James  Callan has succeeded wonderfully in his new career with several awards including the one he is most proud of, the Reader's Favorite Award. He spends considerable time thinking about a book before he sits down to write. Jim writes daily, but admits life sometimes intrudes and he has to adjust his schedule. A recent illness stalled his writing momentum. He spent months in the hospital and further recovery required bedrest for yet another month after three surgeries. Now fully recovered he's back on track. For more information, check out Jim's website:
https://www.jamesrcallan.com/

Callan’s most recent mystery venture has been the Father Frank Mystery series. His stories are very unique to the genre because the chief protagonist is a priest. Father Frank is a cleric at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Pine Tree, Texas. His astute understanding of human behavior and common sense has been able to help local law enforcement catch the bad guy. But in A Plot For Murder, the case takes a personal turn when Father Frank’s sister Maggie becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a well-known author who was the chief speaker at the Pine Woods Writers Conference. Determined to keep his innocent sister out of jail, Father Frank works with the Texas Rangers to find the real villain. https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Murder-Father-Frank-Mystery-ebook/dp/B08T8QVXV8

I must give considerable credit to fellow author and blogger Rox Burkey who gave me unlimited access to her interview with James Callan. If you'd like to see the whole interview, it's available here. https://roxburkey.com/my-chance-to-speak-to-james-callan/

JUST A TASTE

I love writing, but I must admit the process of writing and traditional publication had become stale for me. I wanted something new and fresh to invigorate my writing. It was at the prompting of several friends that I decided to write my next book by podcast. It’s not quite an audio book, but you get the flavor of one without me reading my book to you. So I invited a fellow radio broadcaster, Larry Hinze, to put on his theatrical mask and become homicide detective Nick Winston. I have become his partner in policing, Pat Strom. If you haven’t had the opportunity to tune into my new book Podcast, Deadly Match, I’d like to give you samples of my episodes. Hopefully, I’ll intrigue you enough that you’ll tune in every other Sunday for a new episode.

Episode One finds Seattle Homicide Detectives Nick Winston and Pat Strom called to a late night murder scene at the Nickerson Street Saloon in Seattle. Pat finds Nick near a dumpster where a homeless person had been dumpster diving and instead of dinner, he found the severed head of a once beautiful woman. If this is your first visit, you can listen to the entire episode here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpQYvDDQiUo&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ

In Episode Two, Nick peruses online dating sites and discovers revealing pictures of a woman who looks suspiciously like the victim he and his partner had discovered the night before. The provocative site is called Meet Your Match and the woman’s user name was Spanish Eyes 69. Listen here for Episode Two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMfHMt1hUQ&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=2

Episode Three finds the two detectives scrambling to discover the identity of the Spanish Eyes 69. Their supervisor, Captain Martin, decides to make a public plea and engages the help of a forensic artist to draw the image of the severed head. A frantic call to the Seattle Police Department leads to success for the department, but marks a tragedy for a family desperately hoping to find their loved one. Here’s the link for Episode Three. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztMfuFeV_CY&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=3

Episode Four: Nick and Strom visit the home of Valentina Colon’s family. The victim’s mother is now the custodian of the dead woman’s three young children. Nick is captivated by three-year-old heartbreaker Mateo Colon. Later, Nick makes Tandy an offer she can’t refuse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVFdVw9u544

Episode Five Nick and Pat learn another body part has been found in trash bin behind a Mexican Restaurant just south of Seattle. Their goal is to find the killer who has murdered and dismembered Valentina Colon. The detectives hope more of her body can be recovered for a more thorough autopsy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag48l-u1iU0&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=6

Episode Six :A shocking new development in the case of the murdered young mother, Valentina Colon. Winston and Pat Strom are stunned by the new information that changes the whole thrust of the investigation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnU2bxt1J3A&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=8

Episode Seven: Our two homicide detectives, Nick Winston and Pat Strom, are increasingly convinced that another serial killer has emerged in the Pacific Northwest. Camila Vasquez, the mother of Valentina Colon, is instrumental in providing invaluable evidence in the hunt for the madman murdering and mutilating area women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0gI0cTqivg&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=9

Episode Eight: Seattle Detectives Nick Winston and Pat Strom have been desperate to find the phone of murder victim Valentina Colon. They believe the cell phone will identify who was the last person to see Valentina alive. The detectives rush to a remote area on Cougar Mountain where her car is finally discovered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqf23RrD_Xg&list=PL1YyuYedCtU79EsXf1SdUQQLoREFI5RBJ&index=4

Episode Nine: is produced and set for publication. At last, Winston and Strom have the name of the man who perhaps was the last person to see their victim alive. The detectives locate Handsome Harry. Join me for the next exciting episode of DEADLY MATCH at KellyMarshallBooks.com/on-the-air.

FOLLOW YOUR DREAM

I have numerous friends who love to write. They’re not on the New York Times Best Seller list yet, but they’re working on it. I’d like to share the story of one of my good friends who plows through an impossibly busy life to find time to follow her passion to write.

Kathy MacKenzie is truly a renaissance woman. She is a real estate broker and owner of Mackenzie Realty in California and Texas. She is a social media marketing specialist, a publicist, a web designer, and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Valley Center California Parks and Recreation Department. She is also a member of the Valley Center Planning Group, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Whew! On top of that she gives piano lessons once a week, and participates in a Kiwanis program called Rolling Readers that assists young children at their elementary school who need help with reading. Oh, yeah, she also plays tennis twice a week. In addition to this crazy, busy schedule, she has written two award-winning novels under the pen name of Bonny Brookes: Linked Lives and Darkest Dawn.

The 2014 winner of the Beverly Hills International Book Award in the relationships category, LINKED LIVES details the story of two women who cement a bond early in their childhood and develop a life-long support system for each other through poverty, unemployment, family struggles, betrayals in love, illness and death. Their linked lives created a rock solid friendship and love that spanned decades.

 

In Darkest Dawn Kathy writes about a woman named Linda who is unemployed, alone and facing an unplanned pregnancy. Abortion or adoption? The woman wonders if she can raise the child by herself after the father abandons her. In addition to this heart-wrenching decision, she is attacked by vicious dogs and stunned by a cruel death that leaves her inconsolable. Loving hands reach out to help her out of the depths of despair into peace and joy.

Like Kathy, my life is busier than I’d like. My dream is to retire from my full-time job and write every day, but someone has to pay the mortgage, and that would be me. I am working on my sixth novel, the fourth one in my Winston and Strom murder mystery series. Seattle homicide detectives, Nick Winston and Pat Strom are called to investigate the murder of Father Michael Dunne who has been tragically stabbed to death in the confessional. Who would want to kill the popular priest? BLESS ME FATHER FOR I HAVE SINNED will be published in the Spring of 2019

 

 

 

 

No More “Happy Ever After”

How many times have you heard people say, “I’m going to write a book one day?” I muttered that phrase to myself many times. I’d sit down with a legal pad in hand and start writing about love gone wrong because as a teenager that’s usually the case. Later in my thirties when I  was a bit more serious about actually finishing a project, I took a seminar sponsored by Harlequin Books and wrote copious notes about “the formula.” All romance books have guidelines about when the lovers meet, how quickly they fall in love, what obstacles they face in their relationship, and how the book should end. I tried. I really did. 

A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

My life is overflowing with busy-ness. I work full time for a government agency and give them forty hours a week. In addition, I am raising my teenage grandson who just started high school. While I admit, my daily duties with him have diminished, I still rise early weekday mornings, roust him out of a deep slumber, get him breakfast, find him an elusive pair of matching socks, and finally get him out the door before the school bus comes rumbling up the street. In my SPARE moments, I write. It’s my favorite thing to do, but as you can see, I have little time to spend on my avocation.

NICE TO NAUGHTY

Whether you are an actor, writer, musician, or another type of creative artist,  you have been confronted with the ubiquitous word branding. Loosely defined, it describes what the public thinks of you when they hear your name or see your image. As a Seattle radio announcer, the public identified me as a soft-spoken host of a love songs dedication show. My public persona was one of a caring D.J. who offered advice on the human condition from lost love to deep sorrow, to unbridled passion. That was the perception. The reality was that I deeply listened, offered compassion, and topped it off with a song that spoke to their condition. It was a successful formula.

 

 

In my last blog, I spoke about my transition from radio announcer to writer. Sensuous, graphic murder mysteries poured out of me. I have no idea where these erotic stories