Pre-Order Death on the Danube

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Death on the Danube: a Bella Sarver Mystery
Now available for Kindle pre-order at only $2.99 at Amazon.com

I’m very excited to announce that Death on the Danube is finished. The Kindle version will be released October 5th, and can be pre-ordered now, to be delivered on the release date. I’ll also have a paperback version out soon.

This book has been very challenging to write, demanding quite a bit of research. It’s also been the most fun, so far. I’m beginning to feel like Bella Sarver and Art Halperin are old friends. I wonder what they’ll get up to next?

Working to a Deadline

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I promised to have my next mystery novel, Death on the Danube, ready by the end of September, and I’m happy to say I’ll be able to keep that promise. I finished the final revision a few days ago. It’s getting a last going-over by my favorite editor, Chuck, and then it will be up and running, and available for pre-orders.

So why the rush? I’ll be participating in a local author book-signing event in Naperville, at the 95th Street Library, on November 2nd. I want to have Death on the Danube on hand then, along with my 3 previous books featuring artist/detective Bella Sarver: Painting Lessons, Brush With Death, and Paint a Murder.

I titled the first exhibition of my paintings “A Colorful Journey,” and I see my writing as a continuation of that journey, a journey of exploration and discovery. I wrote the first book as a challenge, just to see if I could do it. I found that I could, and now I go to my laptop with anticipation, eager to find out what my characters are up to each day. It’s a lot of fun, as well as a lot of hard work. And sharing it with my readers is all part of the adventure.

On Creativity

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Falling Water, acrylic, 30 x 30

I just finished reading “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. She writes as if she’s sitting across the table with the reader, cup of coffee in hand, leaning forward, and you’re having this great discussion, except she supplies both sides of the discussion. In this case, the discussion is about what qualities we need to cultivate in order to live our most creative lives. It’s all very upbeat and encouraging, whether you think of yourself as a creative person or not. As someone who has to admit to some level of creative impulse in her life, I found it very enlightening.

Speaking of creativity, for a while now, I’ve been exploring abstract shapes, colors, textures and designs in my paintings. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m certainly not done with that aspect of my ‘colorful journey’, but I was inspired recently to return to a genre I painted earlier – landscapes. In ‘Falling Water,’ I used my recently acquired ‘abstract’ skills to try to capture the almost explosive power of water as it thunders and roars its way down a mountain. I hope this painting manages to capture some of the electric energy I felt looking at scenes like this up in Alaska recently.

Death on the Danube

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I spent the last couple of weeks working on the technicalities of my latest mystery novel, the least favorite part of my job. There’s a reason why traditional publishers get paid the big bucks! Book design isn’t a lot of fun, but there’s plenty of help out there, so hopefully, the finished product will look fantastic as well as being a good read. I’m publishing the paperback and Kindle versions simultaneously, and there will be a special offer for Kindle pre-orders, so be on the look-out for that. In the meantime, what do you think of my cover?

From the back cover:
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It was meant to be an idyllic cruise on the Danube, filled with castles and romance.  But first the omelet maker disappeared, and then a body was found in the refrigerator, and Bella Sarver and her new husband, Art Halperin, were suddenly up to their necks in murder – again.  Past history and drama play havoc with the present in this newest adventure of artist-turned-amateur sleuth Bella Sarver.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner said it first, but Bella realizes the same sentiment while visiting the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and viewing examples of “degenerate art,” so-defined by Adolph Hitler back in the 1930’s.  In fact, reminders of the Nazi era are everywhere in Eastern Europe, and Bella finds that the events of that time are still exerting their influence today.  But some of the passengers cruising the Rhine-Main-Danube Rivers on the M/S River Muse will never need to worry about these things, or anything else, anymore.

Death on the Danube

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This week, I began draft #5 of Death on the Danube. I finished the 4th draft about a month ago and decided to just let it sit for a while. In the meantime, I let my husband read it. He thinks it’s really good, but he had some helpful suggestions, too. I’ve been mulling things around, and now I’m ready to approach the project with a fresh eye.

The story is done. The mystery is solved. (Hint: Bella Sarver provides the key information, though she has a lot of help from the German and Romanian police.) But now it’s time to really whip this book into shape.

This is my fourth novel, and I’ve learned quite a bit about the writing process. It’s all very well to come up with a basic mystery, but fleshing out the characters, letting them tell the story in their own words, and letting the story go its own way is where the work part comes in. It’s fun, too, though, a new adventure every time. So back to work, and I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Pop-Up at the Pavilion

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Saturday, July 20th, 10 to 4

I hope to see everyone at this art show and sale in Villa Park, adjacent to the Villa Park Historical Museum at 220 S. Villa Avenue.  The Pavilion is right along the Illinois Prairie Path, near downtown Villa Park, and there’s plenty of parking.

I’ll be showing and selling paintings from my Whimsy series, which are all 12 x 12 inches and framed in either white or black. 

There will be 35 to 50 artists from Studio 630 and we’re looking forward to a fun and art-filled day.  So do plan on joining us!

Why Write a Murder Mystery?

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As any fan of murder mysteries knows, the genre can encompass all kinds of stories, from English country murders to small hidden towns in Montreal to intrigue in Washington to ….  You name it.  All these novels tell about the murder:  the who, what, where, and why of it.  But the best ones tell another story as well.  A murder mystery can serve as a vehicle for social commentary, for exploring an historical event, for telling a love story, or any of the many reasons that a writer decides she has something to say.

The nice thing about creating a series in this genre is that you can have ongoing characters who grow and change over time.  They have stories of their own to tell, alongside the story of the victim and the perp.  Reading a series is like visiting old friends, catching up, finding out what’s new with them.  And writing a series is much the same.  It’s a lot of fun for me to write about Bella and Art and their friends, to find out things I didn’t know before, to travel together.

Are murder mysteries in the same class of fiction as great literature?  Maybe not.  And yet – Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers gather new fans to this day, so if a definition of literature is something that touches readers of many places and times, has something to say and something to teach, then maybe murder mysteries are worth reading after all.   

Death on the Danube

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I’ve finally got to the end of my new mystery novel, Death on the Danube, and I found out ‘whodunnit’ and why. Bella Sarver and her new husband, Art Halperin, meet a bunch of interesting people, including at least one with murder in mind. It was a lot of fun to discover who these people are and what makes them tick. As the writer, I set them in motion, but then they take on a life of their own and who knows where that’s going to lead?

The story takes place on a cruise along the Rhine-Main-Danube Rivers, with many stops on the way from Amsterdam to Bucharest. I enjoyed researching the historical backgrounds of my settings and the artists who lived and worked in them. (How did anyone ever write a book before the Internet?) But now comes the hard work of starting at the beginning and revising the entire novel so that it really comes alive.

I mentioned this to a friend the other day and she asked me about the tediousness of the task of revision. Her question took me by surprise, because I don’t think writing is the least bit tedious. Now that I have all my characters in place, I look forward to the chance to flesh them out so they can become living, breathing people. It’s all part of the fun of writing. It’s an adventure for myself as well as for my characters.

I’m hoping to get the final draft in shape by the Fall. Wish me luck!

New Gallery Show

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I’m happy to have two of my most recent pieces on exhibit at the Studio 630 Summer Show. The opening reception is Sunday, June 9th, 1 to 3 pm. The Gallery is located at the National University of Health Sciences, Bldg B, on Roosevelt Rd. at Highland, Lombard. The show will be up for 2 months, and is well worth a visit.

Scherzo, mixed media, 24 x 24

I Hear a Symphony

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Music inspires me and I always listen to it when I’m working in my studio. I like all different kinds, depending on my mood: Classical, New Age, Broadway show tunes. The music helps the paint flow. Here are a couple of new pieces I finished recently to show you what I mean.

Sonata, mixed media, 30 x 30 and Scherzo, mixed media, 24 x 24