Mathiya Adams

The Hotdog Detective Mysteries

Archives for October 2015

Things That Interfere with Writing

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Well, I’m home. And I haven’t had a chance to write a single word. (At least on my stories.) When I got home, I discovered that I had left my house key in California, forgot the dog’s leash, and probably left my head lying someplace behind my daughter’s couch. Oh, wait. I found my head.

Upon arriving home, I did locate an emergency key, hidden in a spot where no one would ever thing to look for it. Under the front door mat. After letting myself into the house, I was dismayed to find that I still had piles of laundry to do (the clothes I was supposed to wash before I left on my trip), dishes to do, a huge stack of mail to sort through (how many times does Publisher’s Clearing House have to send me something before they realize I am not interested?), spoiled food in the refrigerator (well, not so spoiled that I didn’t try to eat some of it), my bed still unmade from when I left here, and my office just as messy as when I last looked at it.

Aren’t there supposed to be a bunch of elves who come in and do the work for you when you’re gone? They apparently lost my address.

I am slowly getting the place back into some semblance of order. I think all my bills are up to date; I haven’t been evicted; the water, gas and electricity still work.

Now I can get back to work!

Getting Back To Writing

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For the past month, I’ve been in California, visiting with my brother (who is recovering from cancer), my other brother, and my multitude of sisters. I’ve also been visiting with my daughter and son who live here in California with their children. All in all, it has been a pleasant, if not extremely hot, visit.

But now I am getting ready to head back to Colorado. I expect to get back onto my writing schedule; I might even participate in NaNoWriMo to finish the last 50,000 words of Jaded Jezebel (which has been on hold for the past four weeks). I really need to get back into my normal writing routine. Without it, I feel lost.

I also need to get the second Hot Dog Detective trilogy ready for publication. Yes, that’s right, a second trilogy! It will come out in early December, hopefully along with another promotion on Facebook.

That will give me a month to start working on Kitchen Khemists, which I hope to finish in January. And then finally, the last book of that set, tentatively titled “Lost Lama.” That should be an interesting story!

Resurrecting My Website

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Mathiya Adams, October 21, 2015

As I have spent the past six months trying to figure out how to commercialize my writing business, one of the issues has been having a blog site where people could sign up for my newsletter, get my first book free, and find out about subsequent books in the Hot Dog Detective series. To accomplish that, I tried to set up my site so that it followed some recommended web design principles.

I accomplished part of my objective, but I lost my original blog site and its associated pages. It was lack of foresight on my part. The WordPress hosting program has routines for backing up your web pages, but as usual, I didn’t follow the advice of the web hosts. My loss.

But now I have my blog back, I can archive my old newsletters, and I can list my books that are available for sale. Hooray!

Then someone told me that blogs don’t really matter that much to the typical mystery reader, particularly blogs about how to write mysteries. That set me to wondering, what do blog readers like to read?

Then I was told that I should read other people’s blogs and I might find out in that fashion. What? I have to do work to make this work for me? The sad answer is, yes. Anything worth having or doing requires a certain amount of work. Research. Participation.

So, that is what I intend to do. If any of you have any favorite blogs that you like, let me know what they are. Even better, let me know why you like them.

And if you say that your favorite blog sites are filled with fuzzy warm pictures of cute animals…well, then, here’s my contribution.

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Sources of Inspiration

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Mathiya Adams, October 20, 2015

A lot of people try to help me write my murder mysteries. They offer me suggestions on how a crime should be committed, who the villain should be, and sometimes who the victim should be. While I find many of these contributions interesting, and sometimes of great value, I also find that I do not have a lack of everyday things to inspire me in my pursuit of the perfect crime story.

The starting point for many of my mystery scenarios is the title of the book itself. As an example, one day I was watching a wrecking ball operator demolish a building. I, along with a bunch of kids on their way to school, a couple of homeless people with nothing better to do, and an occasional passer-by, watched with fascination as the operator slammed the ball against the walls of the building, each crash exploding in the morning rush hour traffic. Imagine our surprise when the operator finally finished, and exiting the cab of the crane, turned out to be a woman.

The homeless people gave her a cheer of encouragement, and I must admit I felt a surge of pride in the destructive capabilities of the gentler sex.

And thus was born the story of the Busty Ballbreaker.

Realizing that the scene of the story would be a construction site helped unravel a whole skein of threads to the story: corporate embezzlement, whistle-blowing, conspirators killing off potential witnesses.

All it takes to create a good story is a seed that can germinate and produce a robust plant.

While visiting my daughter and her kids, I watched them playing Minecraft on their computers. My son-in-law jokingly said, “One of your stories should be called ‘The Missing Miner,’ about child who claims that something terrible happened to his friend on Minecraft. The possible plot twists began to grow faster than a Minecraft build.

Most writers I have met have no problems coming up with ideas for plots. It’s what you do when you’re a writer. The challenge is taking those ideas and tying them together, with characters, theme, story structure, and scene into a story people will want to read.

Writing a Mystery within an Over-arching Trilogy

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Mathiya Adams, October 18, 2015

One of the challenges I face when writing my Mark MacFarland Hot Dog Detective mysteries is wrapping two story lines together. In my first trilogy (Avid Angler, Busty Ballbreaker, and Crying Camper) this challenge was not at all difficult, since all three separate murder mysteries were all intertwined with the over-arching story.

However, when I got to my second trilogy (Desperate Druggie, Eager Evangelist, and Freaky Fan), the problem became more difficult, since my goal was to have the over-arching mystery totally independent of the three separate mysteries. As much as I am a plotter for my main mysteries, I confess with some degree of embarrassment to being more of a “pantser” in how I approached the second trilogy over-arching plot.

By the third trilogy, I had learned my lesson. I started preparing a Blake-Snyder plot outline the over-arching plot as well as one for each of the three story mysteries.

Then I discovered a second problem.

Time.

The time required for each separate mystery also had to align with the time requirements for the over-arching mystery. Just as each of my book mysteries had to have a logical time sequence for events to happen, so also did my over-arching story require a logical and believable time sequence.

It’s a lot easier to achieve this if you approach it as a pantser, I must say. I did find that if I put lots of action into the story, the smoke and flames of flamboyancy often covered up timing flaws, but unfortunately, my mysteries are not thrillers. The tone and nature of my books limit the number of high action scenes I have, so I can’t rely too much on smoke and flames.

I am forced to rely on planning.

The third issue is providing a proper interface between the over-arching story and the three book novels. My goal is to have three or four interaction points from the over-arching story in each of the three novels. That gives me nine to twelve scenes, minimum, to tell the over-arching story. If I use many more than that, I start to interfere with the pace and flow of my book’s main story line. I usually use sixty-plus scenes to tell my mystery, and if I use too many of them to handle the over-arching story, I fear my story will be structurally weakened.

It is possible I worry too much, but I would rather be safe than sorry. I think that is the curse of being a plotter.

The solution to all three problems, at least for me, is paying close attention to my Blake-Snyder outlines and extreme attention to a calender. I use the Blake-Snyder outlines to determine what events happen and the calendar to make sure they all happen within a reasonable span of time.

And finally, I try to make sure the interaction points don’t conflict with either the story plot line or the over-arching plot line, yet are still consistent with my calendar and my characters’ development.

The First Hotdog Detective Combo Pack!

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Mathiya Adams, October 17, 2015

Coming soon, very probably within the next couple of weeks, we will release the first combo pack of the Hot Dog Detective mysteries. The Combo Pack will contain the first three mysteries of the series: Avid Angler, Busty Ballbreaker, and Crying Camper.

Hot Dog Detective-First Trillogy-ABC

Here is what’s in store for you…

Mark MacFarland, former Denver Police Detective, lost everything—his job, his home, his hope for the future–after the man who killed MacFarland’s wife was acquitted of the crime. Now, after three years living homeless and drunk on the streets of Denver, he sells hot dogs from a cart located a block from where he used to work.

He’s putting his life back together, until he is asked to solve a murder that pits him against the man who had wronged him years earlier.

In Avid Angler, MacFarland defends a woman wrongly accused of murdering her husband. MacFarland discovers his nemesis, Norris Peterson, may be involved in the murder.

In Busty Ballbreaker, MacFarland suspects that an industrial accident was anything but an accident. Is it just a coincidence that the company he is investigating is one of Norris Petersons?

Finally, in Crying Camper, MacFarland rescues missing and exploited homeless children only to learn that Peterson is involved in the exploitation ring.

In three successive novels, MacFarland’s confrontation with Norris Peterson, a man of wealth, influence, and power, takes him closer and closer to losing all he has regained from his time on the streets.

Each mystery can be read as a standalone novel, but are best enjoyed when read in order.