Rizzoli, Isles, & Q.C.?

Posted on April 11, 2018April 18, 2018 by admin

The Worried Man (Q.C. Davis Mystery No. 1)

I had another post I planned to write today (about why I didn't use "Girl" when deciding on a title for my new mystery). But I'm deferring that, or calling an audible as one of my football-fan friends would say, to share some news. Audible is a good word because the news I'm sharing has to do with an audiobook. Specifically, Blunder Woman Productions accepted The Worried Man, the first in my new Q.C. Davis mystery series, to publish under its umbrella as a audiobook. Finding Blunder Wom...

Sneak Peek: Chapter 2 of The Worried Man

Posted on April 3, 2018April 8, 2018 by admin

3D Cover of The Worried Man A Q.C. Davis Mystery

Read Chapter 1 of The Worried Man, Q.C. Davis Mystery #1. Chapter 2 The detective sat across from me at the worn kitchen table. His tan suit jacket was large and too boxy for his frame, but his tie was knotted in a perfect half-Windsor. Between that and his silver crew cut he looked ex-military despite the ill-fitting jacket. “What was your relationship with the deceased?” During the time it had taken the police and paramedics to arrive I’d pulled the armchair close to the couch and sat. I...

Sneak Peek: Chapter One of The Worried Man (Q.C. Davis Mystery #1)

Posted on March 28, 2018April 8, 2018 by admin

The Worried Man, the first book in my new Q.C. Davis mystery series will be released May 1, 2018. Here's how it starts: Chapter 1 The first time I met Marco, we talked about death. His. The police asked a lot of questions about that later. We met the night The Harmoniums, the three-person a cappella group I belong to, sang at Kensington Pub in Lincoln Square. I noticed a guy with all his hair–dark, curly, and a little on the long side—walk in during our second set. I guessed him in his...

Values v. Religious Beliefs (a/k/a Why Readers Ask About Cyril)

Posted on March 21, 2018 by admin

Last week in Questions, Abortion, and The Awakening Series I said that this week I'd write about why Cyril was my favorite character in The Awakening (after Tara, the protagonist). And I will talk about that, but first I want to say a few things about my mom and about religion, which will take us back to Cyril. My mother was 42 years older than me. She grew up in a time when questioning church authorities simply wasn’t done. She and my dad memorized doctrine as children. They didn’t talk...

Questions, Abortion, And The Awakening Supernatural Thriller Series

Posted on March 14, 2018March 14, 2018 by admin

One of the first book bloggers who reviewed The Awakening said she couldn't tell what my views as the author were on abortion, and she really liked that. The book begins with an unexpected and supernatural pregnancy. It also takes place in the modern day. At least at the moment, abortion is a legal option the protagonist would have. Because of that, I knew I needed to think about the topic of abortion. It’s Complicated The situation is particularly complicated for Tara, the main char...

The Da Vinci Code, The Divine Feminine, and The Awakening

Posted on March 7, 2018March 22, 2018 by admin

The Awakening by Lisa M. Lilly - book cover

A friend gave me Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code about six months after it came out. I was working long hours as an attorney at a law firm in the Sears Tower. Each morning I did my best to get to Starbucks around 7:15 so I could read for 10 minutes before clients and partners started calling and emailing me. I discovered it was impossible to read The Da Vinci Code for only 10 minutes. While I managed not to be late for anything, I read much more than I really had time for and sped through...

Mean Characters Or Reality?

Posted on February 28, 2018March 6, 2018 by admin

Last week I wrote about the fictional women mentors I created for my protagonist in The Awakening Series. Writing about those women was pretty easy because I had a strong picture of each of them as I began the first book. More challenging for me was the part of Book 1 that was more grounded in real life. Specifically, how Tara’s friends, boyfriend, and family would react to her news that she was pregnant, but had never had sex and didn’t know how it had happened. Being true to those...

Women Mentors, Aging, And The Awakening Series

Posted on February 20, 2018March 7, 2018 by admin

When I graduated law school in 2000 (this relates to fiction, I promise), law school classes had only recently reached the point where roughly half the students were women and half men. For a lot of reasons, though, in actual practice men dominated certain areas. This was true in my area of practice, civil litigation. I’d been a lawyer for about a year when I had a case where the young lawyer on the other side also was a woman. When we went to court, often we were the only two wome...

Facing The Unknown

Posted on February 14, 2018 by admin

Unknowns and gray areas have always raised anxiety for me in real life, yet those places are where everything interesting happens in fiction.In Rosemary’s Baby, which I wrote about last week (and which is one of my favorite books), the antagonists clearly fall into the evil camp from the readers’ perspective, no matter how they try to justify their actions to themselves.In contrast, in the most well known virgin pregnancy story in the western world, that of the Virgin Mary, the reader ...

How Rosemary’s Baby Inspired The Awakening Series

Posted on February 7, 2018March 7, 2018 by admin

Rosemary’s Baby (by Ira Levin) is one of my favorite books, and it’s part of what inspired The Awakening Series. It’s the kind of quiet horror that I love. The story is disturbing because of gradually building suspense and looming evil rather than blood and guts. Other things I love about Rosemary’s Baby and how they fit with The Awakening Series (warning if you’ve never read or seen Rosemary’s Baby, there are SPOILERS below): An Unusual Pregnancy Tara (my protagonist in The Awake...