Jay County Public Library Presentation Sept. 25 Kicks Off Busy Fall for Speed City Members

A visit to the Jay County Public Library in Portland on Monday, September 25 kicks off a busy fall of presentations and book signings for the Speed City Sisters in Crime and its members.

On Monday at 6:30, several members will be at the Jay County Public Library to discuss writing, The Fine Art of Murder short story collection, and their own books. Taking part will be Brenda Stewart, Stephen Terrell, Russ Eberhardt and N. W. Campbell.

Other upcoming events:

➽ Saturday, September 30, 1-4 p.m., Indianapolis Writers Center: Author and member Larry Sweazy will teach a time management class for writers titled “How Much Time Do You Really Think You Have?”

➽Tuesday, October 3, 6 pm: Mystery Roundtable at Coal Yard Coffee Shop,

Irvington. Sponsored by the Indianapolis Public Library Irvington Branch, it will feature author and Speed City member Larry Sweazy as moderator.

➽Saturday, October 7, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m: Porter Books and Bread (Indianapolis), Russ Eberhart will be signing his latest book.

➽Saturday, October 14: Indianapolis Author Fair at Indianapolis Public Library Central Branch;  Greenwood Public Library Author Fair at Greenwood Public Library; and Elwood Chili Cook Off Food Festival. Speed City Chapter members will be meeting readers at each event, signing The Fine Art of Murder as well as their own books.

➽Wednesday, October, 25, 2017, 7:30 p.m.   University of Indianapolis, Schwitzer Student Center, Room 010:   Indiana Writers Spotlight Featuring Anthony and Agatha Award-winning author and Speed City Chapter member Lori Rader-Day.

➽Thursday, October 26: College Park Book Club – Members will be discussing their writing, the inspiration for their short stories, and signing copies of The Fine Art of Murder.

➽Saturday Nov. 11, 1pm – 4 pm at Indianapolis Writers Center: Author and chapter member Larry Sweazy teaches an overview of the art and craft of mysteries, titled “It’s a Mystery.”

➽November 16:  Ivy Tech Day of Writing, IFC Commons at the Fall Creek campus. Members will be meeting with student to discuss and encourage writing.

⇨Mark your calendar:   Indiana Historical Society Book Fair – December 4,  featuring The Fine Art of Murder.

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?

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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.