Dorit Sasson Virtual Book Tour…Welcome

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Administrator

My name is Dorit Sasson, and I’m a contributing author of the chapter, “The Best Time to Get in my Way” that is part of a transformational anthology called, Pebbles in the Pond: Transforming the World One Person at a Time. Last week, I was the first author out of 46+ authors to receive my cartons of books and woo-hoo – what can I say? What a transformational feeling!

When I received an invitation to be a contributing author to this anthology from Christine Kloser, the transformational catalyst and three-time award winning author, I knew there was a higher purpose waiting for me.

It was time to find my Israeli-American tribe after living in Pittsburgh. I left the US as a teenager to join the Israeli army and came back to the States almost twenty years later as a mom and wife. When I arrived in Pittsburgh, I felt like an immigrant all over again, disconnected and voiceless.

I had snippets of journals, published and unpublished stories and blog posts that would form the voice of the chapter, “The Best Time to Get in My Way” which describes my pain stories of how I was able to come full circle.

I write in my chapter:

“Even though I was a returning Americanwho spoke fluent English, I felt everyone around me was speaking anotherlanguage. I left the USin 1988 as a teenager and came back a mom and a wife almost twenty years later.”What’s an SUV?”, I would ask. “What’s Target?” But what I was reallylooking for was a deeper connection to family and friends. Coming back to livepermanently in the US after all those years in Israel had triggered deep andpainful memories from my NYC childhood home – mainly of social and emotional isolation.

In Pittsburgh, I didn’t have the support systemthat most women my age with young children had, but I had another problem – Ifelt like an outsider. I was uprooted. At times it seemed that the strangerssitting next to me on a bus were my only family. Perhaps they could evenunderstand me at that moment. Maybe because they looked lonely too? I didn’tknow how to react to this “new environment” at first, so I started a journal tohelp me cope with the social and emotion isolation I felt from sacrificing myown home, family, and friends. I recorded what people said, how they looked –no matter how painful the scenario in order to get perspective. Sometimes the“small town mentality” of Pittsburghwas too friendly and it unnerved me. Other times it was too unsettling. Thetheme of “finding a connection in a world of darkness” very quickly emerged inmy writing.”

As you probably can notice, writing this chapter was not random. I had been living my Story for years. I had confronted some of those painful memories of not being able to say and feel what I wanted to say and feel as a cultural learner of Hebrew whether I stuck on an army base in Gaza Strip or teaching Israeli high school students.

And so, this cultural journey continues. I am still in the process of creating my tribe and giving voice to those voiceless experiences.

Pebbles in the Pond is now Available for Pre-Order!

Order now, before May 20th and receive your BONUS transformational pack.

Hear my Chapter on Youtube – “The Best Time to Get in My Way”

Z Is For Zero, Zealot, Zip and …

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Administrator

Z is for Zero, Zealot, Zip in Cold Water and Zero Cemetery Lane

The grand finale of this A to Z Blog Challenge tour should end with a huge number, but instead it ends with the least number, zero. It could be Zero Cemetery Lane (A Cricket Sawyer paranormal Romantic Suspense)

Or the address of The Bed and Breakfast Murders.

Or, perhaps, our little friend Zip from Knapsack Secrets in his own young adult mystery suspense Cold Water. [A July 2012 release]

All of these novels have one thing in common, the mystery element. Zero itself is a mysterious number, it holds the place of miniscule amounts or unfathomable mega amounts.

The strangeness of the address number, Zero Cemetery Lane, is no accident. It is a real address in a tiny burg in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The address itself led to the creation of the mystery based on a piece of real estate not far from that address. Ask yourself who would feel safe having their address zero—no one—nothing could exist at zero—but it did— and the cemetery was close at hand with room for more to be planted.

Then whatever possessed a mystery novelist to name a character Zip, the character himself. Once profiled, an active African American teenager preferred the nick name to the moniker Ziegfeld. His nickname fit because of his restless, hurried manner of zipping from this to that and here to there. ADD, no, just super hyper activity of a busy mind and a need to move and the circumstances that wouldn’t allow him the peace of home and mind.

All three novels play with Z. It may be the last letter of the alphabet, but when you are always last you try harder. And Z seriously delivers for a mystery suspense author.

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection today and get the free short short story “Black Roses.” Recommend a friend sign up and when they do you will receive a copy of the short short “The Hanging Tree.”

There is a safe unsubscribe link in every newsletter so you never have to stay (though we hope you will) if you don’t want to. Hurry – get your name in quickly! You won’t want to miss a single episode.

Y is for Yesterday, Yellow Crime Sceen Tape and…

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Administrator

Y is for Yesterday, Yellow Crime Scene Tape and Faith Yachne in The Pink Lady Slipper

Yesterday is a fascinating term, especially, when surrounded by yellow crime scene tape as it is fairly often, if not always, in a mystery.

Yellow itself is a fascinating word for a mystery writer. Yellow, cowardly, yellow skin, yellow scrapes along the concrete where a body was found, was it perhaps, dragged, heels leaving their marks along the way. The Yellow Wallpaper, that story haunts me. I wish I had written it. Was the woman being slowly poisoned by her husband as she hallucinated about the people living in the wall paper? I have a lime green and yellow patterned wallpaper and matching paneling in my bedroom—this story frightens and engages my mystery inclined mind.

Faith Yachne, a religious zealot in The Pink Lady Slipper is a different shade of yellow. She hides behind a skewed vision of herself as prophetess and evangelist, but her real mission might be to save herself from her abusive mind-controlling preacher, husband.

Don’t discount yellow, its muse food, just as a yellow legal pad creates the landscape of a novel that, the blank white page or computer screen cannot, for me and my pen and many other writers I know of.

Yellow is all sorts of things.

Dandelion yellow became “Dandelion With Angel Wings” my very first published story. Published in Thema Magazine in 2000. It is a story about cancer survival and a daughter born against all odds, with the tenacity of a dandelion and the beauty of an angel.

Engage your mind in color, technicolor – vivid as the scene you see in your mind and your readers will follow to see what new color you see. Is it new, or is it a clue. That’s up to you. But Yellow is certainly a good place to start. Yellow sky means strong winds – April Shauers was warned about the tornado before it trapped her, she just didn’t listen she was tracking a serial killer in my book Tracker.

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection today and get your copy of “Black Roses.” Recommend a friend sign up and when they do you will receive a copy of the mini-mystery “The Hanging Tree.” Hurry sign up today you don’t want to miss a single fact, and entertainment packed issue of The Mystery Readers Connection.

Once a month, in your in box, several columnists, several new (to you) authors join us to present their unique look at mystery and story. There is a safe unsubscribe link in every newsletter so you never have to stay (though we hope you will) if you don’t want to. Hurry – get your name in quickly! You won’t want to miss a single fun filled issue.

X Is For Xray, Xylophone, Xeno Transplant lab, Xhosa Tribe and…

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Administrator

X is For X-ray, Xylophone, Xeno Transplant lab, Xhosa Tribe and Skull Music or Diamonds, Death and Deceit.

Skull Music, the mystery suspense novel began as a writing prompt including an x-ray of a skull, a tape cassette with a weird sound, and a dolphin. The x-ray became the key that unlocked the story for me…I have no idea how I found or concocted the xeno-transplant lab.

Any word could be a trigger. Who would think a xylophone might be? Orchestrated Murders, [A Works In Progress] a whole, life-sized orchestra suspended from a real museum ceiling with life sized mannequins—or are they mannequins? The sight sparked an amazing story for me that is still unraveling.

An old Piano, an even older theatre, a piano man and his cast came from a man’s face in a piece of wood-grain wall paneling where I lived one cold lonely winter, his image haunted me until he became a character in Ghost Music of Vaudeville and I changed his name to Piano Man.

Give me a word or three and I’ll give you a mystery, because that is what I do, that is my livelihood and my life.

My mother’s penchant for a quote or saying to fit every occasion created many stories for me. When she told me her grandfather, who I never knew, always began his story telling with “Back when Tag was a pup and turkeys chewed tobacco…” That became the thread that created Watch ForThe Raven in a practically non-stop writing marathon.

She died before I got it finished. Matter of fact she died before I finished any of my thirty some books, having never read a one or even knowing I was writing for publication.

If you want to be a writer watch for a phrase, a word, a picture that strikes a note. Jot it down and at your next opportunity examine it with x-ray vision. What can it say to you? Write that story, write it now!

Read with a writer’s eye. Take that first sentence, make it yours and write its story. X-ray, Xylophone, Zanadu.

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection today and get the free flash fiction story “Black Roses.”

Recommend a friend sign up and when they do you will receive a copy of the flash fiction mystery “The Hanging Tree.” Hurry sign up today you don’t want to miss a single fact, and entertainment packed issue of The Mystery Readers Connection. Once a month, in your in box, several columnists, several new (to you) authors join us to present their unique look at mystery and story.

W is for Wayout, Whodunit? and …

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Administrator

W Is For Way-out, Whodunit? And Writing Wide, or Watch For The Raven

A way-out is crucial for your sleuth, and at times it will seem the antagonist whodunit, will be the only lucky one—the antagonist is always the one with a way-out, always– until the end that is.

When you are writing a mystery, your sleuth must always have a way out. Even when he doesn’t know whodunit, and the future looks its bleakest—that is when your protagonist will shine and her true strengths will come through.

As a writer of any genre when the dreaded writers block threatens you – you could crack open a copy of Writing Wide, or Writing Wider to find writing prompts, writing tips, writing exercises and a way out. You are the protagonist of all you write. The forward thinking answer to the way out. Whodunit? Yoududnit, when you hear a reader rave (not to be confused with Watch For The Raven) about your latest creation.

Pick up that pen writer soldier. March to the front line, and write like the wind in whatever strength and direction it blows you.

Sure paint yourself (your protagonist) into a corner but always have a target so you know instinctively where to find the way out. Good Luck!

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection today and get your copy of the story “Black Roses.” Recommend a friend sign up and when they do you will receive a copy of the flash fiction mystery “The Hanging Tree.” The next issue is due out April 26, 2012 – that’s today = )

Hurry sign up today you don’t want to miss a single fact, and entertainment packed issue of The Mystery Readers Connection. Once a month, in your in box, several columnists, several new (to you) authors join us to present their unique look at mystery and story. There is a safe unsubscribe link in every newsletter so you never have to stay (though we hope you will) if you don’t want to. Hurry – get your name in quickly! You won’t want to miss a single issue.

V Is For Villian, Vegetable and…

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Administrator

V is For Villain, Vegetable (poison, edible Zucchini) Valentine Express

Villains come in all shapes and sizes. They wear many hats and not necessarily always the black hat of the days when villains dressed in black and good guys dressed in white. Their motives for their vicious treachery are often as varied as the characters possibilities would suggest.

Sometimes in an inanimate object, a string of beads, power stones of the goddess Ebony, as in Diamonds, Death and Deceit, become the villain with accomplices.

Sometimes a vegetable (poisoned by accidental bad zucchini or mushrooms) turns deadly at the hands of a caterer or an act of Mother Nature. Capricorn Goat, a catered meal turns deadly. Did Echo Folio, the caterer) poison her ex-boyfriend and his fiancé at their engagement dinner? (But there’s more – you can find out on the contest page for this mystery novel.) Food propels the means, method and motive for many a genre.

A simple meal will never again look the same once visited by a mystery author’s romantic suspense in Valentine Express. A railroad engineer and a bubbling brew of spaghetti sauce provide the milieu of another Cricket Sawyer bit of short fiction.

U is For Underground, Undertaker and Under Cover Cops…

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Administrator

U Is For Underground, Under Taker and Under Cover Cops, and perhaps, your sleuth.

An underground railroad for escaped slaves in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula seems like a long reach, a stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t. Truth is often stranger than fiction. The same place had been a stage coach depot, a prohibition era bootlegging operation, and, in its hay day, a Crime Family/Mafia hangout/resort. Bed and Breakfast Murders, and other novels found their story in this setting.

Not only do mystery writers’ find spots like this fodder for a story, sometimes, as in this instance the location spawned many stories.

The Pink Lady Slipper and its sequel Bed and Breakfast Murders got a paranormal twist, an undercover cop and a body or two left for the undertaker after a visit to the coroner and forensic lab to determine cause of death. Zero Cemetery Lane by Cricket Sawyer, a paranormal Romantic Suspense, made good use of the past, the history of the sprawling brothel aspect of this same spot.

Your sleuth can use the darkened hallways of history and to shroud mystery and intrigue and undercover cops, underground railroads, speakeasies and undertakers with all the aplomb a good mystery needs.

So dig around in the archives, or explore the real estate in your own back yard, you are sure to find some fodder for your muse. A book titled A Writers Guide to Places by Don Prues and Jack Heffron can give you a place to start. Or Coast to Coast Ghosts, by Leslie Rule perhaps. Check your local library and bookstore for more places to start your mystery quest.

P.S. Stop on over at www.billieawilliams.com and see what is going on over there. Sign up for a writing course, the Mystery Book Club or the Mystery Reader Connection newsletter and more.

T Is For Trap, Tip Toe and

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Administrator

T Is For Trap, Tiptoe and Tracker that is what a detective does, but in the case of Tracker it’s also a career. The protagonist raises and trains bloodhounds for her search and rescue operation, Shadow and Tail Kennels.

“The Tender Trap,” a sixties movie, was a romantic comedy. The trap in a mystery is very often, where the sleuth finds herself, if not at the very beginning of the story, quickly afterward.

April Shauers, in the novel Tracker is trapped physically (though sometimes in mystery the trap could be mentally rendered)and she must tiptoe to the tune played by the antagonist, serial killer, Jeddah Close, if she is to save her severely injured bloodhound and herself from certain death.

Very often by trapping our sleuth, giving the antagonist his goal early on—the mystery writer can plot a course that propels the reader along wishing she could see around the twists and turns ahead for the protagonist.

Engage your reader quickly. Paint your protagonist into the corner with no way out—except his or her wits and your reader will be searching the scenes to signal a way out, dreaming avenues, and tunnels, sky hooks and ropes as your protagonist ferrets a way out from the traps that keep our hero jumping to escape their jaws, until the very end.

Smile at your reader. Give her thumbs up and a thank you for her help. Good job, well-done, mystery solved, protagonist saved, and antagonist receiving his just desserts. You reader will sigh and search the bookstore for your next book. (we hope).

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection today and get the free flash fiction story “Black Roses.” Recommend a friend sign up and when they do you will receive a copy of the flash fiction mystery “The Hanging Tree.” Hurry sign up today you don’t want to miss a single fact, and entertainment packed issue of The Mystery Readers Connection.

P.P. S Tracker is out of print, order your copy Today, from the author while she still has a few copies left.

S Is For Sleuth, Surrilous, Skullduggery and…

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Administrator

S Is For Sleuth, Scurrilous, Skullduggery and Skull Music, which contains all of the aforementioned.

When your sleuth (accidental or detective-type) is on the case, she must be constantly alert for scurrilous or vindictive people who would purposely mislead her in order to bad mouth or destroy the reputation of another.

Many a mystery uncovers the skullduggery under way, finger pointing, blaming others…all the while that one finger points at someone else the true sleuth is aware of the three other fingers pointing straight back to the accuser. Whether that accuser is the real criminal or not, the misdirection distracts our sleuth, because she needs to investigate every lead. She will, of course, keep in mind the green eyed beast, jealousy; possibly it has reared its head again. Or maybe, just maybe, the information is valid.

Can a milquetoast, cat loving, insurance accountant really be a deranged malevolent murderer? Skull Music may change your mind, maybe not.

Many a mystery uncovers skullduggery and scurrilous motives, ulterior motives for reporting what might have been. Also note, what every police officer knows, eye witnesses are unreliable observers. Just as with writers given a certain writing prompt, say—”yellow” or “an abandoned tricycle,” no two stories will be the same no matter the size of the group. Check out the winners in a Writer’s Digest Magazine prompt contest sometime for proof, and there are hundreds who enter their contests.

P.S. Sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection to stay abreast of all the mysterious activity, events, and news. Find new (to you) authors who lend a different twist to all things mysterious. Get your copy of the mini-mystery “Black Roses” just for signing up and if you refer a friend and they join, you’ll get a copy of the flash fiction mystery, “The Hanging Tree.”

There is an unsubscribe link on the bottom of every newsletter, and the newsletter comes out once a month on the 26^th. There may be an occasional news or event message – to keep you up to date, but your email is never shared or sold—a win, win situation. Hurry, sign up now! You don’t want to miss another opportunity to be entertained by some of the best writers you’ll find anywhere.

R Is For Red Herring, Ruse, Raven and…

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Administrator

R Is For Red Herring, Ruse and Raven as in Watch For the Raven

Red Herring is to mystery like frosting is to cake. It’s just not the same if either goes missing. Mystery readers don’t consciously think red herring while they’re reading. The groan, or the aha! usually, comes later.

Like the little boy in the spelling bee commercial for Yoplait Yogurt. “Swapportunity” says the judge.

“That’s not a real word,” says the disgruntled child. His frustration and angst tugs at our hearts. The audience roots for him—he’s right—but nonetheless, wrong. It’s the same with a red herring. It fits, but it’s not a real clue.

We’ve created a ruse, and eventually the reader knows it. The title Watch For The Raven provides the red herring. A raven is a big black, scavenger-type bird, cleaning up the bones of road kill and dead animals. It is also a Native American animal spirit guide so we could think the helper is in the title—but is he? Read Watch For The Raven and you will know.

In mystery as in life, don’t be in any hurry to jump to conclusions. You may be leaping into an abyss of muddy, gator-filled swamp or there may be a raven not flying overhead but lurking somewhere in the shadows of your mind or is it in the story?

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for The Mystery Readers Connection to stay abreast of mystery news, new columnist’s stories of mystery, and much more all for free, once a month in your in box, plus you will get the free flash mystery “Black Roses” for joining. And, if you recommend a friend and they join you will get a copy of the flash fiction mystery, “The Hanging Tree.” There is a safe unsubscribe option in every email from The Mystery Readers Connection. You have nothing to lose. Sign up today, Hurry! Don’t miss the next installment.

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