A Done Deal

by Jenna Bennett

Doesn't look like anyone else is posting today, so I'll just share that I published the fifth and last - at least so far - Cutthroat Business mystery this week. A Done Deal is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords, for any eReader you might have.

Here's the blurb:

Silver bells, silver bells...
It's Christmas time in Nashville, and all Savannah wants to unwrap on Christmas morning is Rafe. Unfortunately, things don't look so good. He's back in town, but not alone: on his arm is a stunning brunette, just the kind of woman Savannah always suspected was his type.

When Alexandra Puckett asks her help in figuring out a way to stop Maybelle Driscoll from marrying Alex's father Steven, Savannah jumps on the chance. It'll give her something to think about other than Rafe and the mysterious Carmen, and anyway, she doesn't like Maybelle much herself.

Between investigating Maybelle's past, helping her clients Aislynn and Kylie buy a house, and stalking Carmen and Rafe, she soon has her hands full. And that's before someone starts gunning for her. Suddenly it's not a question of unwrapping anything on Christmas morning anymore; it's a question of whether she'll even survive to see another Christmas.

And here's a taste of Chapter 1, a few pages in:

Todd looked coy.“What would you like Santa to bring you, Savannah?”

Rafe, I though, and immediately chastised myself. He was gone, he wasn’t coming back, he didn’t want me. I smiled. “Nothing. I have everything I need.”

“Diamonds?” Todd suggested.

“God, no.” That brought to mind engagement rings, and I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to turn down another proposal in front of my entire family on Christmas Eve.

“A puppy?”

From his expression, it was almost as if he thought a puppy would make up for the baby I’d lost. My baby had been barely bigger than a blueberry when I miscarried, but after all the agonizing I’d done over whether or not to keep it, it had become very real to me. And as much as I like puppies, it wasn’t the same.

“I live in an apartment,”I said. “With a no-pets policy.”

“I guess a kitten is out of the question too, then.”

“You could get me a goldfish. I’m allowed to have those.”

Todd’s expression lightened. “Do you want a goldfish?”

“Not really,” I said apologetically. “I was joking. I don’t really need a Christmas present.”There was nothing anyone could give me that I wanted. Especially Todd.

I wondered if I ought to ask him what he wanted for Christmas, but I was afraid of what the answer would be. And I’d bought him a sweater in any case.

I speared a mushroom with my fork and lifted it to my mouth.

“Isn’t that Collier?” Todd said, looking over my shoulder.

For a second, my heart skipped a beat and I almost choked. Then I realized two things: 1) he’d probably only said it to get a reaction from me—Todd was suspicious of my feelings for Rafe long before there were any feelings to speak of—and 2) there was no way he could be right.

I swallowed the mushroom and made sure my voice was steady. “I doubt it. If he were back in town, I’m sure someone would have told me.”

And it probably wouldn’t have been Rafe himself. If he hadn’t stuck around when I lost the baby, and he didn’t get in touch after I was shot, he wouldn’t bother to call to tell me he was back in Nashville, either.

I had, however, become friendly with Tamara Grimaldi, homicide detective with the Nashville PD, and she knew Rafe too, and kept tabs on him through her contact in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. I trusted her to let me know if anything important happened. Like, if he died. Or if he’d been shot or hospitalized.

Or if he’d come back to Nashville.

Todd nodded, reassured by my lack of interest, and forked up another piece of veal.

I continued my internal monologue while I chased mushrooms around my plate. Even if Rafe was back in town and nobody had bothered to tell me, he wouldn’t be here at Fidelio’s. He despises the place. I’ve had dinner with him here twice, and both times he treated the fancy cuisine and snobbish waiters with irreverent amusement. He wouldn’t choose to come here unless it was with me. And since we were over and done, he had no business being here. It was probably just someone with a passing resemblance to Rafe. Todd was a little bit paranoid on the subject; he was probably just seeing things.

“Are you sure he’s not back in Nashville?”Todd said. “Because that really looks like him. Just the kind of woman I’d expect him to be with, too.”

Woman?

I twisted on my chair. “Where? I really don’t think...”

And then my breath went when I saw that yes, it was indeed Rafael Collier on the other side of the restaurant, just sitting down at a romantic table for two. A table I had once shared with him, as it happened. Behind a pygmy date palm. And the woman he was with was exactly the kind of woman I would expect him to be with, too.

A woman very much not like me, I might add.

Like Rafe, she looked like she might be of mixed race. Long, dark hair fell straight like a waterfall down her back, and she had exotic almond-shaped eyes in a stunning face with flawless caramel skin and red lacquered lips. She was shorter than me, and even in four inch heels she barely came up to his shoulder. Granted, he’s tall—six three, give or take—but she was still on the petite side. And she was poured into a short, tight, Christmas-red dress that clung to every curve she had, and his hand was right there, on the exposed skin of her back. That, more than anything else, hurt. He was touching her. In a sort of intimate way. Skin to skin. The same way he’d touched me.

I own a red dress too. I’d bought it to coax a proposal from Todd, back when I thought being engaged to Todd would make me less likely to indulge in my feelings for Rafe. Instead, it had been Rafe who peeled it off me at the end of the night.

My dress isn’t as short or as tight—hers looked like lycra; mine’s satin—but it’s also backless, and I could remember disconcertingly well the feeling of his hands on my back, warm and hard and a little rough. I could remember what happened afterwards too, and the thought that they’d be leaving Fidelio’s and going home to make love in his bed—the bed where he’d made love to me—was enough to turn the Chicken Marsala to sawdust in my mouth.

# # #

 

 

Merry Christmas, all!

Start spreading the news...

by Jenna Bennett

Yes, it’s me. I have a new name. And to go with it, I have... well, not a new book, exactly. Just a new edition of an old book.

It’s a long story, but the short version is that the publisher who published A Cutthroat Business last year, decided not to publish the sequel, Hot Property, this summer. They gave those rights back to me, and for a couple of different reasons, none of which matter to this blog post, they threw in the subsidiary rights for A Cutthroat Business as well. Subsidiary rights meaning audio, electronic, foreign, movie and serial rights. Anything except print.

What that means is that I can now self-publish A Cutthroat Business in electronic format, along with all the other books in the Savannah Martin mystery series.

So that’s what I’m doing. What you’re looking at is the new cover for A Cutthroat Business, which is available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords.com, and maybe a couple of other sites, for the low, low price of only $3.99.

(Yeah, I know there are people out there who sell their books for $.99. But this is 88,000 glorious, beautiful words that I spent a year of my life crafting, and believe me, they’re well worth $3.99. Library Journal said so. “Will delight fans of chick-lit mysteries and romantic suspense.” And if Library Journal says it, you know it’s gotta be true. Besides, $3.99 is only half of what the DIY e-books sell for, and I have it on good authority – I did a poll – that my readers would pay more.)

In another month, I’ll be publishing Hot Property, and the month after that – that’ll make it July – I’ll be throwing book 3, Contract Pending, out there. Book 4, Close to Home, is written but not yet edited, so I don’t know if I can get it ready by August – I’m a third of the way through writing DIY-6, and that’s the priority right now – but I’ll be able to get Close to Home out sometime this fall. If I’m super-focused and really, really lucky, I might have book 5, which has the tentative title of A Done Deal, written by Christmas, although that’s probably pushing it.

Anyway, for the next couple of months, my posts will most likely be focused around this brand new adventure I’m trying on for size. If you’re not interested in e-publishing and the skinny on my journey through the twisted maze of doing it myself, feel free to tune out the first Friday of every month.

If, on the other hand, you find the new frontier to be as exciting as I do, stick around and answer a few of the following questions for me:

1. Do you buy/read e-books?

2. Does it matter to you whether an e-book is self-published (by the author) or traditionally published (by a publisher)? Do you even know whether it is or not when you buy it?

3. Do you think the e-book revolution means the end of the printed word as we know it? How does that make you feel, one way or the other?

4. Does it piss you off when people show almost malicious glee at the thought that print books are on their way out and traditional publishing may go the way of the dodo? (You can probably tell where my feelings are on this subject.)

5. If you’re into e-books and I offered you a free download of A Cutthroat Business, would you read it and do me the favor of posting a review somewhere?

Thanks, y’all! I’ll see you next month with an update.

Realtors® Writing

by Jennie Bentley

Welcome to the Stiffs on this lovely Wednesday morning, when I’ve booted Annette out of the desk chair and taken over. I’m here with my fellow Realtor® and writer Nancy Lynn Jarvis, a real estate practitioner in California, to talk a little about her books, THE DEATH CONTINGENCY and BACKYARD BONES.

Here’s Nancy’s bio:

Twenty year veteran of the real estate industry, Nancy Lynn Jarvis, is writing murder mysteries instead of selling houses. Real estate is an interesting business, the stress level involved in buying or selling a home ranks right after death and divorce. People reveal a lot about themselves during the process. The business attracts its share of colorful practitioners, too. Their stories and Nancy’s experiences provide the settings where her Realtor and part-time sleuth, Regan McHenry, works while she unravels mysteries.

Nancy, would you give us the elevator pitch for the series, please?

The characters in my books have secrets. Protagonist Regan McHenry is good at unraveling them. She has been compared to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple because she solves crimes by observing and seeing connections and asking questions the police overlooked. You’ll have fun figuring things out right along with her as you read. As the San Francisco Examiner says, the books are “smart, funny mysteries.”

Doesn’t that sound interesting, fellow Working Stiffs?

I’ve got a real estate mystery of my own coming out in June, by the way. Y’all know about the Do-It-Yourself home renovation mystery series, featuring designer turned renovator Avery Baker, and her boyfriend, hot handyman Derek Ellis. This is something different. The book is called A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS, and stars Savannah Martin, new-minted Realtor® and Southern Belle in Nashville, Tennessee, who stumbles over a dead body in a house she’s showing to a potential client. I’ll give you three guesses as to cause of death.

But enough about me. Nancy, tell us a little about how you came to write BACKYARD BONES and THE DEATH CONTINGENCY. Were these your first books, or have you written others? Have you always been writing, or is this a more recent dream?

I never had aspirations to be a writer. Starting The Death Contingency was almost accidental, really. My husband and I decided to experiment with being retired for a while when the real estate market tanked. To beat being bored, he built a spectacular greenhouse and a 16’X22’ foot office from the ground up — I decided it would be an interesting puzzle solving game to see if I could write a mystery. I had a beginning and ending in mind and a stockpile of real estate related experiences ranging from the humorous to the bizarre to use as background material and not a clue what to do to weave them into a book.

To get started, I read Tony Hillerman and reread my favorite Agatha Christies for structure, made the protagonists me and my husband and other characters people I knew, and began acting out the day’s scenes and dialogue alone in my office each morning. Over time the characters developed personalities separate from the people who inspired them. The Death Contingency was a learning experience; large portions of it had to be rewritten several times.

By the time I started Backyard Bones I had discovered the importance of outlines, at least loose outlines, and time-lines of who-knew-what-when which are critical for mysteries, so the first draft was much easier.

The books are different, though. Pacing for The Death Contingency is slower and the book more introspective since the amateur sleuth thing is new to Regan, the protagonist. She can’t quite believe what’s going on, she keeps hoping she’s mistaken, and she’s reluctant to trust her instincts. Backyard Bones begins with a Regan who, while she may change her mind as to who she thinks the murderer is, is much more surefooted in her sleuthing.

Those sound great! And way to go developing the main character over the course of the series!

So tell us a little more about Regan. You said she’s based on you, but that she developed a personality of her own as you wrote about her. Share a few things that you and she have in common, and a few ways in which you're absolutely different.

She’s curious, impatient, and determined. She’s a bit of a crusader. She cares a great deal about her family, friends, and clients. Those aspects of her are like me. But she’s much more daring, younger and thinner, and more obsessive than I am. She’s also a lot better at thinking on her feet than I am, especially in stressful situations.

Yeah, Savannah is younger and thinner than I am, too. What’d be the point otherwise, right?

So does Regan get up to any trouble in the books that you've been in yourself? Does she do things you wouldn't do in a million years?

The murder story lines in my books are made up, but other than that, the things that happen to Regan have happened to me. Occasionally I’ll get an email from a reader saying, while they liked the book, they thought a particular event wasn’t believable. I love responding to those emails, although one man emailed back that he still didn’t believe me.

I’ll bluff like Regan sometimes does, but I wouldn’t pursue a criminal like she does. I’d be afraid I might be right and that the murderer would realize I was on to them and come after me.

Definitely. Although Savannah tends to fall into trouble more than she seeks it out. Some poeple are just like that, you know? She causes things to happen, but not on purpose.

So what was the hardest part of writing the books for you? Was it the same thing for each book, or did it vary? What did you do to overcome it? Do you have a favorite part?

The hardest part of writing for me is creating an unpleasant scene like finding a body or being in a tight situation with the bad guy. When I write, I’m really in the moment and sharing what’s happening to Regan. I get upset. I’ve been known to cry while I’m writing.
I haven’t figured out a way to overcome that problem, but I may not ever want to.

My favorite parts of writing are coming up with the Dave character’s terrible jokes and puns and creating the characters I completely make up like Jerry in BACKYARD BONES and Mrs. Rosemont in THE DEATH CONTINGENCY. As I was writing about her, I ran into Mrs. Rosemont, a very unusual looking and completely made-up elderly woman, in the grocery store. I was afraid to talk to her because I had her voice perfectly imagined and I didn’t want to risk ruining it, but I did silently follow her to watch how she moved. Evidently I wasn’t a very good stalker, though. She finally got so troubled by my staring at her that she abandoned her grocery cart and hurried out of the store.

That’s funny! I amuse myself by following people around sometimes, too, just to get the feel for what tailing someone must be like. Just in case I ever want to write a PI novel.

So what has most surprised you about being a writer?

Two things have surprised me about writing. The first is how much fun it is. I love all aspects of it: writing, publicizing, and especially talking to people at book signings. I’ve met many interesting people I would never have known if I hadn’t written the books.

The other thing that’s even more of a surprise to me is that even though I have an outline and have created a life history for all the characters so I understand them, sometimes the characters tell me things about themselves I didn’t know. In BACKYARD BONES I had intended to have a different character be the murderer, but when it came time to write the unveiling, as it were, I knew I had been wrong about the killer’s identity. I thought I could go back and change a few things and add a few clues to make the new killer work since the book presents many suspects, but when I went back to make the changes I discovered the clues were already in place. Evidently the killer had been telling me about his guilt all along and I missed it until then.

That’s happened to me, too! And isn’t it fun when the characters correct you that way?

If you could give one piece of advice to the prepublished writers reading this, what would it be, and why?

Edit, edit, edit. When you think your book is ready for prime-time, edit it again and get a good copy editor to go over it, too. Even if your story is wonderful, your reader won’t think it is if they get distracted by mistakes.

This is very true. As someone said—I have no idea who—editing is where the real writing begins. And as it happens, it’s my least favorite part of the process, but a very necessary one. I'd also recommend making sure other people get some input into the process, as it's soooo easy to become too close to our own work, and to not see it clearly.

So there you have it, fellow Stiffs: my friendly chat with Nancy Lynn Jarvis about the Regan McHenry books. We’ll both be hanging around the blog today, if you have anything you want to ask us. And big thanks to Annette for relinquishing her Wednesday!

See you next time!