HUNTING SEASON by J.E. Taylor

Now available.


When Kyle Winslow escapes from custody and targets everyone Special Agent Steve Williams cares about, a turn of fate brings Steve face to face with Ty Aris – a criminal mastermind topping the FBI’s most wanted list. Torn between justice and vengeance, Steve must make a decision. Join alliances with Ty, or arrest him and lose his best chance to catch the bastard who destroyed his family.

A brief look into the mind of Special Agent Steve Williams...

The scene from the balcony reminded me of Charlie’s city view and I shudder, sinking into the chaise lounge and studying my new partner. He isn’t actually with the FBI.

Nope, he’s WANTED by the FBI.

Why haven’t I brought him in?

Good goddamn question.

I wonder why I haven’t either.

He’s as dangerous as they get. Even more so than The Slasher, but I need him. His technological genius leaves anything we have at the FBI in the dust, never mind the other talents he brings to the table. You see, he’s the best chance I have of hunting down the bastard that targeted my family.

“What are you looking at?” Chris Ryan asks, turning his steel blue gaze from the city to me.

His sharp-eyed glare catches me by surprise. He was reading my mind again - my contemplations of putting him behind bars when this was all over. Yes, one of his many talents includes reading minds.

Imagine a killer endowed with extra-sensory gifts like mind reading and the ability to control matter and you’ve got Chris Ryan – a.k.a. Ty Aris - a criminal mastermind that reinvented himself and snowed the authorities and inherited billions.

Every fiber of my being wants to lock him up. Except I can’t do that. You see, I made a promise to a dying man and now I’m stuck. Stuck between doing what I know is right and that stupid promise.

“Why did you do it?” I had to ask.

He sighs and takes the chair next to me, his lips pressing together in contemplation as he surveys the city skyline. “I’d like to say I was forced into it, but we both know that’s a lie.”

“An honest criminal. How refreshing.” The sarcasm in my voice palatable.

“Smart ass.” A hint of a smirk appears along with a condescending roll of his eyes.
At least he didn’t drop a litany of excuses. I had to give him that but it still didn’t erase my need to put him in jail.

“I’m not going to jail,” he says and retreats back into the apartment.
The shit thing is - even if I wanted to arrest him, I’m not sure I can.

For more information about J.E. Taylor, please visit her at her website or her blog.

Hunting Season is the follow up to Vengeance – which is on sale for $0.99 for the month of May:

After an undercover bust goes to hell, Special Agent Steve Williams becomes the target of an assassin and his wife’s visions escalate, forecasting a brutal assault on their family. Escaping from the city and armed with scant details from Jennifer’s dreams, Steve trudges through a litany of past connections, searching for the key to stop the course of fate. A brother with a grudge, a serial killer and a mafia assassin are all on his trail and the hunt begins . . .


My Bio:
J.E. Taylor is a writer, an editor, a manuscript formatter, a mother, a wife and a business analyst, not necessarily in that order. She first sat down to seriously write in February of 2007 after her daughter asked:

“Mom, if you could do anything, what would you do?”


From that moment on, she hasn’t looked back and now her writing resume includes six+ published novels along with several short stories on the virtual shelves including a few within eXcessica anthologies.

Ms. Taylor also moonlights as an Assistant Editor of Allegory, an online venue for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and lends a hand in formatting manuscripts for eXcessica as well as offering her services judging writing contests for various RWA chapters.

She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children and during the summer months enjoys her weekends on the shore in southern Maine.

Putting the Crime in Crime Fiction

Often in crime novels, particularly in mysteries, the reader never witnesses the actual crime that is the subject of the story. Of course, there’s often good reason: showing the crime may very well remove most, if not all, of the mystery. Some mystery writers get around this by writing a prologue and keeping the details of the crime just vague enough to keep readers guessing. But there is a trend in crime fiction toward eliminating prologues – many editors prefer their authors to jump into their story by introducing the main character, usually a professional or amateur investigator.

The fact that the criminal act in crime fiction – usually a murder – takes place off screen may lead some aspiring writers to dive into their stories without first giving much thought to the villain and his villainous deeds. In my experience as both a writer and reader of crime fiction, this is a mistake. The crime itself – what James N. Frey, author of How to Write a Damn Good Mystery calls “the plot behind the plot” – is one of the most important events in any mystery. Whether you use an outline or write by the seat of your pants, the subject crime of your story should be vivid in your mind before you draft the first sentence of Chapter One.



I recommend writing the scene in which the crime takes place, even if you don’t intend to use it in your story. Why? Well, for one, it’ll help you play fair with the reader. While creating your mystery, you’ll need to insert clues throughout, evidence clever readers will pick up on, even if they don’t figure out the ending. By writing the crime scene beforehand, you’ll be in a better position to map out your story and insert clues in just the right places. The same goes for the all-important red herrings. Misdirection in mysteries is every bit as important as truth.




The crime in my second novel NIGHT ON FIRE is the murder of a newlywed named Trevor Simms. The prime suspect is his new wife Erin. The killer in my novel attempted to cover his or her tracks by setting the crime scene – the honeymoon suite at a popular Hawaiian beach resort – on fire. The fire spread and left eleven innocents dead. The crime of arson complicated my novel more than I ever expected, because arson investigation is extremely difficult. Arson is a crime that destroys its own clues, and arsonists are rarely caught and convicted. Had I not planned the murder and arson in great detail prior to writing my novel, I’m certain I would have run into insurmountable obstacles midway through.


By conducting research and drafting the murder scene beforehand, I was able to plant invaluable clues throughout my story – the fire’s point of origin, the charcoal starter fluid used as an accelerant, and a dozen coins found in the hotel hallway, to name a few. Remember, the method of the crime is every bit as important as the investigation that follows. Save yourself some time and panic, and plan your crime in detail beforehand. (As an author and former defense attorney, I assure you, that advice works as well for crime writers as it does for criminals).

THE DIVA MUMMY

Earlier this year, I learned about the best-preserved mummy in the world for a talk I was giving. Surprise: it’s not Egyptian, but Chinese. The Lady of Dai, or “Diva” mummy of the Western Han Dynasty was prepared and buried over 2,000 years ago and is so well preserved that type A blood still runs in her veins and physicians can autopsy her body as if she died yesterday.



How did the Chinese undertakers do it? First, they swaddled her body in 20 layers of silk, then they immersed her in a salt solution that was mildly acidic with some magnesium in it, they encased her in four separate coffins. Finally, they sealed her in a cold chamber under many layers of charcoal and coal.

Who was she? Her name was Xin Zhui, and she was the wife of the ruler of Dai near the city of Changsha. Researchers have discovered that the woman was middle-aged and obese, with clogged arteries and a damaged heart. Seems like heart disease is not unique to modern American society—this lady overate the wrong stuff. She also showed evidence of several parasites and probably lower back pain at the time of her death.

The Diva starred in a National Geographic special in 2004. She continues to be a person of fascination for mummy enthusiasts, and I expect to hear more about her at the World Mummy Congress in San Diego in June.

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Pace Robbers

In our rush to write our stories, we focus on getting words on the page. The events in the story unfold. The characters face their challenges and overcome them. We've written a fantastic story, rich with details, humor, sexual tension and sensory details. Yeah!

Then, when we re-read or when beloved crit partners, agents or editors take a look, they flag certain sections and comment "the pace drags here". What to do? Become the pace police and hunt down those sneaky pace robbers. The ones that slow down the pace of your story like rush hour traffic. Let's profile a few of these nasty pace criminals.

Pace Robber #1 – Dilly-dallying Description

Description should have a purpose for the character. If it has a purpose for the character, it will have a purpose for the reader. I’m talking about more than just a line or two of description to set the scene. Pace-robbing description is whole paragraphs of scenery, landscapes, description of the architecture of a building or the décor of a room, or its occupants.

Even if you are using description as a way of slowing the pace, you can’t expect most readers to enjoy long paragraphs of description (even though some do). Many readers skim or skip description, but this doesn’t mean you should leave it in. Keep it trim, give it a purpose, or break it up and present it a little at a time as the characters interact.

Pace Robber #2 – Exhibitionist Exposition

Exposition is information. Usually it’s information you need your reader to know in order to understand the story. The trouble with exposition is that the characters in the book typically already know this information. It’s a bit silly to have your character, Jane, think: “I think I’ll call my Aunt Sally, the only aunt on my mother’s side who lives too far away for me to visit and who always has the best advice for me when I’m in trouble.” Not only is this “telling” rather than “showing” but it can jar the reader right out of the story when what you really want is for the reader to get lost in the story.

Exposition often equals “author intrusion” which means that the reader can sense the presence of the author, rather than the characters. You can treat exposition the same way you treat description by giving the characters a reason for talking about it or giving it a little at a time so the reader doesn’t notice your author intrusion.

Another exposition pace robber is the blow-by-blow form of exposition:

Joe got up and brushed his teeth, then showered. He dressed in his best blue suit. He left the house around eight and got into his silver Hummer. Driving the forty miles along Highway 17, he reached the city in about thirty minutes. He parked in the VIP spot in the Allied United underground lot and got into the elevator, pressing the button for the 9th floor. He stepped out of the elevator and walked the empty hallway to the corner office.

Um…I’m bored. Not only is this uninteresting, most of it is unnecessary. We don’t need to know how he gets ready for his day or how he gets to work unless these things are critical to the plot. Oh, that was just characterization, you say? Right, so um you wanted a cardboard character?

Pace Robber #3 – Dopey Dialogue

A partner to blow-by-blow exposition is bland dialogue. "Whudda you wanna do? Dunno, whudda you wanna do?"

What you wanna do is get to the meat of the conversation. Unless there is some special tension about these words for the characters, just cut to the point of the conversation and leave the rest out. The same goes for people greeting each other, thanking each other, ending a conversation, introducing themselves, and all those other polite social things we do every day. If it’s not crucial to the story, just leave it out.

Pace Robber #4 – Rogue Scenes

Rogue Scenes are scenes in which readers learn nothing new. Suppose your character Sally has just had an encounter at the bank with a handsome stranger who mysteriously gave her roses and kissed her hand. She gets home and repeats the experience to her mother, then phones a friend and tells her all about it. It’s a very realistic scenario, because that’s exactly what someone would probably do.

But this is not reality, this is fiction.

Each scene should have a purpose and the reader should learn something new in each scene. Sure, Sally is going to talk about it to other people, but let most of that happen “off screen”. For example, assuming she’s had her “off screen” conversation with her friend, she could have an “on screen” scene with her friend and say, “I’m going to meet that guy, you know, the one I told you about. The guy who gave me roses at the bank.”

It's fine to do a little recap now and then by giving readers reminders in the form of quick, small details, but don't let a great scene turn into a rogue later on.

Pace Robber #5 – Intrepid Introspection

Introspection happens when a character shares his thinking process. Character introspection is important for the reader to fully understand what your characters are thinking. Beware of overusing introspection to get your point across or simply using it to run through a list of possibilities as your characters think things over. Too many questions quickly throw the scene out of focus and rob you of the pace you set. It’s tempting to put in the questions that your character has and present a number of avenues for them to pursue because this can add to the tension, but don’t give the reader too many things to focus on at once.

There's no point in ranting a character's internal questions at your readers. They don’t know the answers, only you do. Your job is to pose a question and then reveal answers in a way that makes them want to know more.

That's my top 5 Most Wanted list of Pace Robbers. Am I saying you should never slow down the pace? No, you should slow down the pace from time to time and make sure the reader has a chance to breathe. But make the pace work for you by keeping these rotten pace robbers in the clink!

Interested in learning more about pacing? Join me for a year-long novel writing course at Savvy Authors where you can immerse yourself in craft and emerge with a completed, polished novel. Where do you want to be with your writing a year from now? Or stop by my blog for more great craft articles.


Click here to register

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THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY

A wrapped body from antiquity is the ultimate mystery. We don’t know who is inside, how he or she lived or died, what the story is behind it. Unwrapping it, either with a surgical knife or virtually using a computer, is like Christmas for archaeologists and physical anthropologists.


Twenty years ago, we CT scanned an Egyptian mummy from our University of Illinois museum. Using medical imaging is wonderful because it doesn’t harm the artifact—you can obtain a lot of information without cutting the mummy open to look inside the wrappings. In 1990, we used a huge, expensive university supercomputer to do a “virtual autopsy.” Now the software is so accessible that you can download it and “unwrap” the mummy on a personal laptop. Then you can trim the images, change colors and densities, and rotate them in three-dimensions.

The first time around, X-rays and CT scans revealed that our mummy was a child, maybe 8 years old at the time of death. Physical anthropologists can age bodies by looking at growth plates at the end of the long bones and the teeth: our child showed adult teeth coming in right behind baby teeth and open growth plates. Here are some of the early pictures:

My husband calls this little mummy Lazarus because it keeps coming back. After our real-life adventure 20 years ago, I wrote my first mystery, Bound for Eternity, based on the mummy investigation. It will take us weeks of work to go through the hundreds of images and actually understand the new data. Since I am crazy about mummies and love computer toys, I am in heaven.

Here are some pictures of the trip to the hospital:

Hospital

--
Sarah U. Wisseman, Ph.D
Web Site


Archaeological mysteries:
author email: suwissem@gmail.com

Aztec mythology and Mexican Catholicism meet in VIPER

 
When Latina insurance agent Selena De La Cruz walked onto the stage of my first mystery, BLEEDER, wearing those red heels and driving that fast car, I knew she had a story of her own. In fact, when she played a much larger role in BLEEDER than I’d anticipated, I began to feel that the sequel should feature her as the protagonist.
 
Then, when I learned about the Catholic custom of placing a “Book of the Dead” in the church sanctuary on All Souls’ Day to commemorate the parish’s dearly departed, I knew for certain the next book would be Selena’s story. She’d have such a Book in her parish, I thought, and even if she wasn’t exactly a consistently practicing Catholic, she’d know the custom. And what if her name was in it?
 
I quickly discovered that Mexicans celebrate a holiday nearly concurrent with the Catholic All Souls’ Day, called “The Day of the Dead” (El Dia de los Muertos). It is a family fiesta where women bake special breads and weave flower garlands to decorate a family altar meant to remember and respect dead relatives, who are believed to return in spirit for a visit and enjoy their favorite foods and drinks once again. Families decorate the house with colorfully dressed skeleton figures, give candy skulls to children, and have picnics in cemeteries where they call out playful insults to a female ‘grim reaper’ figure (similar to the old Aztec goddess of death) known as “Lady Death” – “Hey, you old baldy, you missed me this year!” It’s all light-hearted and it reflects a subtle blending of Aztec rituals, Catholic beliefs and folk superstitions. Many Mexican-Americans, seeking to acculturate to America and yet affirm their national tradiciones, are at ease with attending Mass and maintaining the home altar, as Selena does.
 
 
Having decided that the “Book of the Dead” had Selena’s name in it, I imagined that her name appeared last in a longer list of 8 or 9 names of men, and that the men listed before her were drug dealers she’d known in her former DEA career, who were being systematically killed in order, presumably by a dangerous drug lord called “The Snake” who Selena had helped imprison years ago but was now out, and seeking revenge on his enemies and competition. It was important that the villain be called “La Serpiente” for a few reasons related to the religious themes of the story.
 
First, I decided that the killer would be a devotee of Aztec deities and would be motivated, in part, by a desire to appease certain goddesses in particular by human sacrifices – cleaning up the community of drug dealer ‘vermin’ at the same time. My research into serial killers suggested that these were legit (and stronger) motives, beyond the simple ‘revenge’ idea. Because of their regenerative skin-shedding powers, snakes were important in Aztec religion, with several snake deities (The Feathered Serpent, for example) and others like the ‘mother of gods,’ Coatlicue, who is depicted wearing a skirt of rattlers. I decided the killer would be a snake-keeper (since they were sacred and regarded as ‘children’ of the deities) and one of the motives would be restoring ‘proper’ reverence for Aztec gods and goddesses among Mexicans, who – as my killer believed – had been misled by the Spanish conquerors into accepting a fake substitute, The Virgin Mary, “Our Lady of Guadalupe”, whose star-spangled blue mantle is remarkably similar to an Aztec goddess of life and death named Xochiquetzal (many Mexican girls are still named “Xochi”).
 
Picking up on this idea, I included a girl visionary in the story who would claim to be visited by a mysterious “Blue Lady” announcing the next killing. While some in the Mexican community would believe it is “Lady Death” and others believe it is perhaps Xochiquetzal or another Aztec goddess of death, the girl would describe the apparition exactly as Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego, looking like a pregnant Aztec princess, a form recognizable to all Mexicans since She is the Patroness of Mexico.  Her miraculous image, imprinted on Juan’s tilma (cape), is still preserved in the glorious Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. It is hardly a coincidence that She is named “Guadalupe,” for it derives from an Aztec phrase, coatl-lupe, meaning ‘She who crushes the snake.” This can be understood in a couple of ways: First, Her appearance prompted the conversion of the Aztecs by the millions, whereby they abandoned their practice of human sacrifice (which took tens of thousands of lives per year, including children). In this symbolic way, then, Mary ‘crushed’ the Aztec “snake" deities who were appeased by the slaughtering. Secondly, it points to a passage in Genesis chapter 3, where in Eden – after the ‘fall’ – God tells Eve that the snake, now on its belly, will snap at women’s heels but a woman shall crush its head. This is why many statues and paintings of Mary show Her with a foot on a snake, since She is the “New Eve” who brings the Savior into the world, thus defeating the devil, ‘that old serpent.’ Third, it prefigures the confrontation of my protagonist with the killer’s most dangerous snake, the Barba, known to Mexicans as – what else – El Diablo, The Devil.
 
VIPER is an action-packed thriller that moves at a fast pace, richly informed by Aztec culture and Mexican Catholic customs. It’s all meant to be in the background, part of making Selena completely authentic as a character coming to terms with her bi-cultural identity, and showingrespeto for her community and her heritage.



 
Amazon links – USA paper, Kindle, and UK paper, Kindle:
 
http://www.amazon.com/Bleeder-Mystery-John-J-Desjarlais/dp/1933184566/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297207709&sr=1-1
 

http://www.amazon.com/Bleeder-A-Mystery-ebook/dp/B004L62D4K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1297207753&sr=1-1
 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bleeder-Mystery-John-J-Desjarlais/dp/1933184566/ref=sr_tc_2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297207898&sr=1-2-ent
 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bleeder-A-Mystery/dp/B004L62D4K/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=A3TVV12T0I6NSM&qid=1297207898&sr=1-2-ent
 

http://www.amazon.com/Relics-John-Desjarlais/dp/0840767358/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298297119&sr=1-3
 

http://www.amazon.com/Throne-Tara-John-Desjarlais/dp/0595155979/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298297119&sr=1-4
 
 
 
 
 

The Joys of Historical Research

My new book, a historical mystery set in Prohibition era central Illinois, is taking me in many new directions. Since my protagonist, Dr. Earl Snyder Junker, is a physician, I need to know about medical practice in the 1920s. Could my character be a medical examiner as well as a family doctor? What kinds of diseases would he encounter, and what could he offer as treatments before antibiotics?

Fortunately, I have a physician husband (a retired pathologist) who can steer me to the right sort of medical information. Even better, I just signed up for an online course of the history of forensics with Dr. D. P. Lyle, a physician/author who frequently teaches mystery writers:

Dr. D.P. Lyle

Dr. Junker is also an amateur archaeologist during a time when it was still okay for private individuals to dig up burial mounds, before archaeology became an academic discipline. Early arrowhead hunters in Illinois sometimes operated like cowboys, laying claim to sites illegally and shooting at anyone who tried to stop them. Here I have plenty of help from Illinois archaeologists who know the colorful characters and history of digging in the Midwest.

Junker’s wife, Martha, is a German immigrant, so that means investigating anti-immigrant feelings that were rampant between the World Wars. And their nineteen-year-old daughter, Anna, is a nursing student by day and a fun-loving flapper by night. The 1920s was an exciting time for women who had just gained the right to vote and were breaking social taboos left and right: they drank booze and smoked cigarettes in public, wore revealing dresses and short skirts and bobbed their hair short.


But the most fascinating subject is Prohibition and the myriad ways for ordinary people to make and transport illegal liquor. The literature on this subject is vast and often available on the Internet. Two of my favorite discoveries so far: my hometown of Champaign, Illinois, had an underground passage between two major streets so speakeasy patrons could escape excise agents, and there’s a wonderful article on Prohibition in Cincinnati online

Prohibition