Home and Drama: Reflections by Award-Winning Author Lori Rader-Day

By Lori Rader-Day

Home Is Where the Drama Is

My third novel, The Day I Died, is getting published soon and maybe it will surprise no one that it’s set in Indiana. Well, half of it is. Here’s how the book begins:

_______________

On the day I died, I took the new oars down to the lake. They were heavy, but I was saving myself the second trip. The blades rode flat along the ground, flattening two tracks through the wet grass.

It was morning. The air was cool, but down on the dock, the slats were already hot. I noted a lone fishing boat out on the water. Inside, two men hunched silently over their tackle, their faces turned out across the lake. Beyond them, mist rose off the water, nearly hiding the far shore.

This moment. This is what I return to.

Later, I will note the long crack in the new oar, just before my head goes under, just before the flume of blood rises off my skin under the water like smoke. I will come back to this moment and think, if I had just gone back up the steps to the house immediately. If I had just stayed up at the house in the first place.

If I had just.

________________

That’s a prologue of sorts. You can read the first full chapter HERE, where you’ll see that the protagonist has survived whatever-this-is to find a home in a small town in Indiana with her son.

I love to write about home. “Home,” though, is a complicated word. Is it where I grew up? Or is where I’ve lived for the last sixteen years? That’s exactly the kind of thing the protagonist of The Day I Died, Anna Winger, thinks about, with one big difference: she can’t go back to hers. Or at least she thinks she won’t. And then there’s the current situation brewing inside her apartment with her son.

 Home makes good stories, because home is where the drama is.

My first novel was set in the surrounds of Chicago; the second back home in Indiana. This one is split between the place Anna lives now and the place she yearns for. I can already tell you that my next next book is set in Michigan; the protagonist is a transplant to Chicago, like me, merely visiting. I had to borrow the Michigan setting, but I was able to bring a Chicagoan’s hard glare to everything she encounters there. That makes the story easier for me to get inside of, the better for me but also the better for my reader.

But with that next work-in-progress drafted, now I have a moment to think: What’s next? The Sisters and Misters of the Speed City Chapter probably feel the same as I do: Ideas are easy. I had three ideas while I was brushing my teeth this morning. But which idea has legs enough to run for four hundred pages? How do I want to spend the next year of my writing life?

It’s really no wonder I so often write about home. Home is where I’d rather be, no matter where I am.

How do you decide the setting of your stories?

--

Lori Rader-Day, author of The Day I Died, The Black Hour, and Little Pretty Things, is the recipient of the 2016 Mary Higgins Clark Award and the 2015 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Lori’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Good Housekeeping, and others. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches mystery writing at StoryStudio Chicago and is the president of the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter and the co-chair of Murder and Mayhem in Chicago.

Lori is also a member of the Speed City Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

The Fine Art of Murder: Excerpt from The Making of a Masterpiece by C.A. Paddock

What happens when a renowned Indiana artist becomes obsessed with his muse while trying to create his masterpiece? Speed City Sisters in Crime chapter member C.A. Paddock explores this question in the short story, The Making of a Masterpiece. It is included among a collection of 18 short stories of murder and suspense in the art world in The Fine Art of Murder. The Fine Art of Murder is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com.

     “She won’t even see it coming,” a hoarse voice echoes in his head. And with that encouragement he raises his Bowie knife and slashes through her mid-section. As the steel blade again cuts through the air and down the side of her porcelain-like face, he howls his disgust at her.

     “You destroyed us. You destroyed our perfect relationship. Now you will pay for what you’ve done to me! I gave you my all for months and months and what do you I get from you? Nothing, nothing that’s what. You lead me on with your beauty and your charms and your teasing perfection. But you betrayed me with all of it!”

     He lifts the knife with even more fervor and slices her over and over, carving out his anger and fear, until he stops suddenly and falls on his knees. His hand, so gnarled and cramped from holding the weapon, gives out and he drops the knife. He stares down at what he has done and knows that she would have screamed out, if she could have, because the pain had to be unbearable. He feels it himself, the small burning sensation that soon engulfs him in a full-fledged roar of flaming agony. He waits and listens, half-expecting to see her rise up and cry out.
    The only sound he hears is the moan that escapes his lips.

The Fine Art of Murder: Excerpt from Street Art

Street Art is a short story by Speed City Chapter member Stephen Terrell. It is a story about a disaffected detective trying to track a serial killer who leaves behind a gruesome graffiti image at each of his kill sites. It is among twenty short murder mysteries and tales of suspense included in The Fine Art of Murder, now available online at Amazon (click here). Barnes and Noble (click here), and Walmart (click here).   

Here are the opening paragraphs of Street Art.

Street Art

by  Stephen Terrell

The first body was found on one of those warm days of early spring. The kind of day that makes you glad to be alive.

I got the call at my desk just after my first cup of coffee. I headed to the scene near the old Muncie Central Trade School in my city-issued, six-year-old p.o.s. Chevy that I still had to drive due to budget cuts. At forty-nine, I was the second most senior detective in the Muncie Police Department, but I still was stuck with a car that was best described as two-tone, sun-faded blue over rust.

Alexis James, a petite patrolwoman in her early thirties, met me at the scene just off 8th Street. She seemed swallowed up by all the gear attached to her utility belt, but if the weight was a burden, it didn't show in her manner. She worked the midnight to eight swing shift where we crossed paths occasionally on domestics, bar fights, and periodic homicides.  She was ex­ military and still carried herself with military precision.  She didn't bother with pleasantries. Joe Friday would have liked her.

The Fine Art of Murder: Excerpt from Ceilings, a Short Story by N.W. Campbell

Ceilings is a short story by Speed City Chapter member Norman Campbell. It is among twenty short murder mysteries and tales of suspense included in The Fine Art of Murder, now available online for pre-order at Amazon (click here). Barnes and Noble (click here), and Walmart (click here).   

Ceilings

by N.W. Campbell

Anyway, this guy from Ohio—who, according to the evening news, was in the middle of a bad divorce, his girlfriend was pregnant, and the law was after him for embezzling a quarter of a million bucks, apparently to keep his girlfriend set up in the manner to which she was accustomed—headed west and stopped at Castleton. After the scene decontamination crew was done gutting and scrubbing, even to the studs in some places, I could still see flecks on the ceiling where blood and brain matter had stuck. Apparently the guys on clean-up that day didn’t bother to look up, either.

When they heard we got the job to paint it, one or two of the guys on my crew mumbled about the possibility of working on some other project. I get it. There was some minor dry-walling to do, so the bosses were leaving that to us and sending their drywall guys downstate to work on flood restoration. That turned off some of my painters, who prefer to just paint. Then again, some people are squeamish, even people who do what we do. Flood and fire damage doesn’t bother them, but blood and brain matter?

The Fine Art of Murder: Excerpt from The Picasso Caper by S. Ashley Couts

The Picasso Caper is a short story by Speed City Chapter member Ashley Couts. It among twenty short murder mysteries and tales of suspense included in The Fine Art of Murder, now available online for pre-order at Amazon (click here). Barnes and Noble (click here), and Walmart (click here).   

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Picasso Caper.

The Picasso Caper   

by S. Ashley Couts

King's Cross Rail Station, London:

The American teens at the entry, wearing T-shirts and shorts, posed for selfies. In their youthful excitement, they totally missed the two criminals heading for the entrance.

Doggedly trudging toward the entrance were the honeymooners, Mavis and Alex Greenwalt. He pulled a battered, lime green suitcase tied 'round with a bungee cord. Her crossbody shoulder bag contained cosmetics, sundries, and her medical needs. Among other ailments, she was diabetic. Both ached from the trip, her com throbbing and his arthritic knee causing a bit of a limp, but they were dressed for travel in matching white windbreakers and thick rubbersoled shoes. Grandma and grandpa on vacation heading to catch the train out of King's Cross.

The suitcase wobbled as the wheel caught. Alex let out an exasperated sigh. It was heavy, but they'd soon remedy that. In fact, they would not take a train to Bath or Glastonbury nor would they watch the sunrise over Stonehenge. They were not at all what they seemed to be as they walked through the station and headed toward the public restrooms.

Murder We Wrote: Tip a Hat to Murder by Elaine L. Orr

Here is the opening from Tip a Hat to Murder, a mystery in progress by Speed City Sisters in Crime member Elaine L. Orr.  She is the author of more than a dozen cozy mysteries plus a non-fiction book "Writing In Retirement: Putting New Year's Resolutions to Work"  To find out more about Elaine and her works, check out her author page. Just click here.

Here's the excerpt from Tip a Hat to Murder: 

  EARLY OCTOBER WAS USUALLY one of the quietest months in the Bully Pulpit Bar and Diner.
Students at Sweathog Agricultural College were six weeks into their semester, which meant scared they would fail at least one class. The Frisky Heifers had lost at least three football games. That shut up all the drunks. At least during the week.
  This was not a quiet October.
  “What do you mean no one can tip us?” Marti Kerkoff glared at her boss, one foot tapping on the black and white tiled floor. The right side of her mouth started to turn down. “I pay my chiropractor with that money.”
  Nick Hume stepped closer to manager Ben Addison, his five-foot-ten frame rigid. “That’s my beer money.” He looked at Marti. “What the hell do you need a chiropractor for? You sit on your butt half the time.”
  She stood up from the counter stool, faced Nick, and balled her fists. Marti was short, but no less fierce because of it. “I sit down sometimes because I work my ass off bringing water to other people’s customers.”
  Ben stepped between the two of them, which gained his nose some of Nick’s spittle. “The Weed and Feed stopped tips last week. This is how it’s gotta be.”
  Nick’s face reddened. “The potheads who eat there don’t care what they pay. You try to increase prices to,” he raised his fingers in air quotes, “pay us more so no one has to tip,” he stopped air quoting and pointed a finger at Ben’s still-damp nose, “and no one will eat here.”
  “Leave him be, Nick,” Marti said.
  When Nick stood back a few inches, Marti stepped between Nick and Ben. “Everyone knows you’ve been putting cracker meal in the hamburger.”
  Ben reddened. “Only if you told them!”
  “The gluten-free mafia said they have to use the can more.” Nick said.

Murder We Wrote: C.L. Shore's Titania's Suitor

Cheryl Shore writing as C. L. Shore is the author of two novels. Cheryl is a member and past president of Speed City Sisters in Crime.

About Titania’s Suitor: This is my first novel, although it was published after Seeker of Truth. The story develops against a background of phenomena encountered in today’s society including (1) misogyny encountered by women in the sciences (2) cyberstalking,  and (3) the coalitions formed by industry and higher education which can interfere with academic freedom. 

I grew up on mysteries, starting with Nancy Drew in grade school and progressing to Agatha Christie in high school. As a young adult, I read the majority of Andrew Greeley’s mysteries. Today, I enjoy psychological thrillers and historical novels.  My greatest challenge in writing Titania’s Suitor?  Building suspense when the entire novel consists of emails, mostly between two friends/confidantes.

Synopsis: Charlotte Stone never dreamed that her graduate student status would make her the target of a devious psychopath. But she is forced to admit her position of danger when vindictive messages appear in her email Inbox. The sender has obvious research expertise and the possible suspects include her estranged husband as well as several colleagues and acquaintances. Charlotte’s best friend, Veronica, has helped her through the crisis of her husband moving out, but she’s out of her league when it comes to this level of threat. Charlotte begins to feel danger could be lurking anywhere. Unsure of who is friend and who is foe, she realizes a broken marriage is not her biggest problem. Charlotte may be fighting for her life.

For a trailer to the novel, CLICK HERE

Excerpt from Titania's Suitor -- The novel opens with an exchange of emails. 

    

To: Hansen, V
Date: Wednesday, November 26
From: Stone, Charlotte P 
Subject: It’s finally here

Veronica,
Well, the deed is finally done. Pete moved out last night. And even though we both knew it was coming, it was very, very hard. Lauren cried and cried, before and after Pete left. I thought I would cry, too; but I couldn’t. I guess I’ve cried all the tears I’ve got. It will take a while for them to replenish themselves.
To top it all off, Lauren will go with Pete to his parents’ over Thanksgiving weekend. He’ll pick her up early tomorrow morning. It makes sense, since I’ll have her for every week during the school year and every other weekend. We’re determined to keep things amicable, for Lauren’s sake and for ours. It’s crazy, but we both feel like we still love each other. But this break-up seemed inevitable since I started back to school almost two years ago. We seemed to be arguing constantly once that change took place. Things kept going downhill. But somehow, I don’t think dropping out of grad school is right. For one thing, I have the government scholarship. If I quit now, I’d have to pay it back. Besides that, when I took that scholarship, I gave my word that I would try my best to complete this program and learn how to do research. I signed a contract of sorts. And I want to finish. Maybe I’ll put myself on the fast track and try to finish as quickly as possible.
Anyhow, fortunately (?) I do have an invitation to an “adults only” Thanksgiving with some of the other research assistants. They are almost all younger than me by at least seven years. But we know each other well, and there won’t be any kids around to make me miss Lauren. I’ll bring a salad, try to enjoy the company and/or watch football. Beats being alone on the holiday. I don’t have the money to fly home to Chicago, and I don’t want to drive by myself… too much time alone to think.
So here I am working on this set of data, trying to scan it for errors. I’m not in the best frame of mind to do that. I even did this intelligence test that popped up after checking my email. It turned out to be longer than I thought. After investing so much time in it, I wanted to know my score. I had to give my email address in order to get the results. And all it told me is that I did “very well.” I thought I at least deserved to know the items I got right!
Oh well, back to work. The office is almost deserted. Today is a holiday for students, but not staff. Still, very few people are here. You know how it is, everyone wants a jump-start on the holiday.
You are so lucky, you’ll have both of your kids and their kids around you on Thanksgiving! Be grateful!! By the way, thanks for the book on anger in relationships. It has been helpful already.
Have a good Turkey Day – Charlotte

___________

To: Stone, Charlotte P
Date: Wednesday, November 26
From: Hansen, V
Subject: Re: It’s finally here

Charlotte,
I am so proud of you. I’m not taking sides with the breakup – not at all. But I’m proud of you for getting through this event and keeping your head together. I know it is difficult, since I’ve been through it twice, with the same person. But, I didn’t love the guy at the times of the breakups and you do. It has got to be an awful experience.
I’m glad you have somewhere to go for the holiday. I would invite you over, but I will be at Allen’s with his kids. Allen is going to try this new turkey stuffing that he found in an Italian cookbook. He is quite the chef. I guess single fatherhood can force that role on you! Helen is playing the martyred ex-wife right now, but I’m sure she’ll snap out of it when she has the kids on Christmas. She is such a whiner!
Yes, the anger book really helped me out, too. I also started journaling when Stan and I broke up. I also saw a counselor, who really helped me get my life in perspective. You may want to consider it at some point.
You are being true to yourself in this situation. You will not regret it, even though it’s hard for you now. Trust me on this one! I’ll be home late Thursday night, and I only have to work a half-day on Friday (in the morning). So call me if you need me.
Veronica




To order Titania's Suitor on Amazon, click here.
To order Seeker of Truth on Amazon, click here.

EXCERPT: "There Ain't Nothing Wrong With Miss Zelda" by L. Barrett Evans & C.V. Rhodes

This is an excerpt from the published novel "There's Something Wrong With Miss Zelda," by Speed City Sisters in Crime members Lilly Evans and Chrystal Rhodes. This is part of their Grandmother's Incorporated mystery series.

The novel is available on Amazon. Just CLICK HERE.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with Zelda. We’ve known each other for years, and she’s one of the few friends that I’ve got who is still alive. Why are you so set against her?

“Jeff is Luther’s only living relative and she didn’t bother to tell the poor man he was in the hospital.”

Miss Fanny was not convinced. “Maybe she didn’t have time.”

“Miss Fanny, please. She cremated him in record time, how much time does it take to make phone call? He had to drive all the way here to find out his uncle was dead.”

“Hattie, the woman was grieving. She lost her husband.”

“She ought to be used to that. You told me yourself that she’s buried about seven of them.”

“Luther was only her fourth—or maybe her fifth husband.” Miss Fanny started counting on her fingers. “Let’s see. She told me that she was married to some doctor before she came to Indiana, and then there was another one with the first name or last name of Chee…”

“Lord have mercy!” Hattie shrilled. “What kind of name is that?”

“And then there was Jeremiah Stewart. My husband knew him, just like he knew Luther. He died of some kind of stomach ailment, and then she met Chambers. Yes, that’s it. She’s had four husbands; that’s all.”

“That’s all? The woman is the Elizabeth Taylor of the ghetto! ” Hattie pointed at her mother-in-law accusingly. “I’m telling you! That house is not big enough for you, me and her!”