I haven’t read all the nominated books this year, not even close, and I’ve reviewed even fewer — However, there are two especially I’d like to draw your attention to.
Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts is up for best paperback original (I read it as an ebook without harm). You can read my full review of Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts, the latest installment in his contemporary mystery-thriller series featuring Long Beach, California police detective Danny Beckett. Sorry for the dark cover, but it’s a screenshot on my darkened phone while reading in bed. Yes, it’s that good.
Earlier this year, I also read, loved, and reviewed Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye. If you haven’t already heard of this book, it’s a wonderful, edgy exploration of Jane Eyer’s story. You won’t be sorry you picked up this one, or frankly any other book by Lyndsay Faye. It also happens to have one of the most beautiful and interesting covers of the year as well.
Congrats to all the wonderful mystery writers on this list, and congratulations to us fans of mystery novels — we’re spoiled for choice!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
I love a good series of mysteries and I fall absolutely in the “Read Series Books In Order” camp. I’ll even research an order to a series if the author says there is no order. When left without an authorial order, or a fan derived one, I default to publishing chronology. Yes, I’m a big ol’ nerd. Then, I at least get a similar experience as original fans of the series.
A great place to figure out series order is on LibraryThing. Just type in the title of the book and under it will appear the name of the series and a number. Click that link and it will take you to a series page (here’s the page for Laurie R. King‘s Mary Russell – Sherlock Holmes Series). I love that the orders for series are largely sorted out, but also include things that maybe you’ve missed — like short story appearances in out of the way anthologies.
Mary Russell – Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King
I hate spoilers and in the past when I’ve jumped to a later book and it’s like: “Why was she here? What business did she have, placing flowers on the grave of my beloved side-kick…” NOOOOOO!!! What happened!?? GAHHH!! SIDEKICK IS DEAD!!?? Yep. They were killed as punishment for my skipping around, that’s why.
That said, I’ve been doing it again, and haven’t been stung too bad so far. Since I’ve started writing myself, I have discovered another layer of enjoyment reading a good story that takes the sting out of my misdeeds. I’m coming to see the mechanics of the story a little more. Sort of like my experience as a museum curator and visiting museums on vacation and admiring mounts, signage, and good interpretive tools.
What about you? Do you skip around within a book series, or are you a ‘no exceptions’ order reader? Leave a comment and let me know, or request to join my new Facebook Group and we can all share!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
I’ve never been one of those ‘New Year, New Me’ people. You want to make a change? Do it. Do it now. Do it later, if you must, but don’t wait on the calendar to change. Calendars go, changing with a precision I understand about as clearly as my earliest ancestors watching the fiery sky ball go up and down.
Calendar for Success
2016 was a toughy.
Some good, some bad, some tough. Some really bad. It was also the first year I’ve tracked my writing. I’ve been writing off and on for years, but I’ve set a goal to be able to support my family with my writing in the future, and step one was to see just how much I can do. My daily schedule has more demands than ever since I became a father half-way through 2015, my partner and I moved in together, and she was unemployed, then unevenly employed, and now full-time employed, but on a different schedule than I am. So, when I’m home, I’m home alone with our son. It’s impossible to write with a computer on one knee and a toddler on the other. These aren’t complaints, just acknowledging what I have to plan around to be better this coming year.
2016’s goals? A review.
So many writing podcasts….
Going into 2016, I knew I wanted to write novels and non-fiction too, like so many others, (I have for years). But from what I learned I wasn’t sure …. how. So this year, I listened to *all* the writing podcasts (seriously, there are so many and many of them are great!), lurked and read lots on kboards and lots of different facebook groups as well. I think I’ve got down what I need to do, but there’s still the doing. At least I have encouragement from my partner (check her out!)
I wrote quite a bit last year at the holidays, and I could hit 1000 words each day without too much trouble. It felt doable that first week, so I set 1000 words per day as my initial goal. It didn’t last long. I cut it back to 500 words per day, net on projects. No adding in journal writing, or blogging, etc. 500 words on fiction and/or nonfiction projects. That’s been more doable with the very little time I have available. But consistency has been a long way off, but I tally that up to how inconsistent my home-life “schedule” has been.
From my word tracker.
I did a little better hitting that 500 words/day goal, achieving just over 85,000 words in 2016. Yes, that’s not even half of my annual goal, but you know hitting it nearly every other day (statistically) is a big win for me. I’ve never measured my words before, I wasn’t sure what to go by, so this feels really good.
So, where did those words go? Well, another big win for me was publishing my first piece of fiction in the flash fiction series Mondays are Murder with Akashic Books. So, only 1000 words, but still — I’m proud of it. The other 85,000 words? Another small portion went into a non-fiction book I’ll be publishing soon. It’s the journal of a young teacher in western New York in 1887. It was a fun project, and I’ll have more about it soon in my facebook group.
A cover idea for my upcoming nonfiction book. What do you think? Leave a comment!
I also worked on two different historical series — one is a mystery series set in 1930s Denver with a private investigator who is a veteran of the WWI air corps. The other is more of a thriller series set in the 1910s, featuring a female magazine writer who becomes the guardian of her young nephew and goes on adventures. These have been tons of fun to write and once I’m ready to launch you’ll be the first to know.
I was also short of my reading goals this year as well, but I tracked them better than before, but I definitely missed a few books somewhere in the late summer/ early fall and forward.
I read 28 of 30 books I was hoping to read this year. I remember setting the goal of 30 books last year and thinking that was doable. I was close! There were a few (maybe a lot) of DNF books too — too long-winded usually, or narrators/ protagonists I couldn’t spend the amount of time with I’d need to to get through the book. So these are just the *finished* books, not every one I cracked open.
What about 2017?
Well, I think I’ll try to read the same number of books and shoot for 30 again. But, I need to write more. A lot more, but instead of trying for a higher daily word count, I’m going to aim for consistency. I also need to hit *publish* on a few things. It looks more and more likely that I’ll be doing just that on my first non-fiction book very soon. Details to follow, of course. Until then, why not be my friend on Goodreads?
