DJ Swykert's The Death of Anyone

My guest today is DJ Swykert, author of a great, fast paced read, The Death of Anyone. Welcome, DJ. Now that everyone is comfy, and have their favorite cyber beverage in hand, let’s talk writing...

Anne - Tell us a little about yourself.

DJ - I’m a blue collar person from Detroit. I’ve worked as a truck driver, dispatcher, logistics analyst, operations manager, and ten years as a 911 operator, which was the very best job of them all. I write stories like you’d watch a movie and put them down on paper. I’ve been fortunate to have my work appear in: The Tampa Review, Monarch Review, Detroit News, Zodiac Review, Barbaric Yawp, Bull, and others. You can find me on the blogspot: www.magicmasterminds.com. I am a wolf expert.

Anne - Sounds like you’ve had many interesting and various life experiences that just beg to be written down. Mind if I dig a little deeper? Is there something about yourself you’d normally only share with close friends?

DJ - It may not be apparent, but I’m very sentimental.

Anne - Another important element for a writer. Okay, time to move on. When did you first realize you were destined to be an author?

DJ - The first thing I ever wrote was a poem to impress my art student girlfriend. That was right after high school. It wasn’t very good, but she was impressed that I made the effort. I’ve been scribbling things down ever since.

Anne - What one or two lines best sums you up as an author.

DJ - My writing is very straightforward. I think dialogue is what I do best.

Anne - Tell us about The Death of Anyone.

DJ - The Death of Anyone was released by Melange Books in February, 2013. The book introduces readers to a DNA search technique not in common use in the U.S., Familial DNA. A lot will be written on this subject as the real life trial of Lonnie David Franklin, The Grim Sleeper, unfolds in California later this year. The trial will set precedence for future use of this DNA search technique and I suspect will eventually lead to a Supreme Court decision on its admissibility. The defense is going to severely question LAPD investigating Lonnie Franklin as there was no direct evidence linking him to the crime.

Detroit Homicide Detective Bonnie Benham has been transferred from narcotics for using more than arresting and is working the case of the killer of adolescent girls. CSI collects DNA evidence from the scene of the latest victim, which has not been detected on the other victims. But no suspect turns up in the FBI database. Due to the notoriety of the crimes a task force is put together with Bonnie as the lead detective, and she implores the D.A. to authorize an as yet unapproved type of a DNA Search in an effort to identify the killer. Homicide Detective Neil Jensen, with his own history of drug and alcohol problems, understands Bonnie’s frailty and the two detectives become inseparable as they track this killer of children.

Anne - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I took The Death of Anyone with me while on vacation in early April, and could not put it down. Would you share an excerpt with us?

DJ - Of course!

Benham sipped her coffee and looked through her brief notes of the case. They were very brief, there was little to put in them. A young girl, perhaps ten, dead, strangled, almost for certain assaulted, lying in an alley for a few hours. And it had only been a few hours—Pierangeli seemed pretty sure she hadn’t been there long. She was found at around nine-thirty am, so she died maybe around eight am. She lay there, choked, defiled, beautiful, and dead, and nobody was looking for her. She had to have been taken pretty early this morning, so it’s been about five hours she’s been gone, and nobody loves her enough to miss her. Benham could feel the anger rising from within, from the source where feelings come from, from deeper but inclusive of the stomach, from the birthplace of emotion.

 

A hand touched her shoulder and startled her. “Me and Jensen are here, bring on the dancing girls,” Dean Russo bellowed, joyous almost, and that irritated Bonnie a little. There was nothing to be happy about this day.

“You’ll get your wish. The belly dancers will be here in a few,” Benham said, with a bit of obvious disdain that Russo picked up on.

“You picked the place.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bonnie answered, feeling a little sorry now she sounded so disapproving. “Yeah, I picked it. Didn’t think about belly dancers, but, hey, we’re here, and I love pastitio, and they have the best. Sorry if I sound pissy, it’s only because I am. Once you see the girl you won’t be dancing in the street either.”

Russo quit laughing. “How long you been in homicide, Benham?”

Bonnie could see she rubbed something, “A couple of months.”

“You were in narcotics?”

“Yeah, I was in narcotics. I was in it and it—I was narcotic.”

 

There was a pause. Jensen looked across at Russo, glared a little, trying to shut him up with a look. And out of the corner of his eye let Bonnie know he saw her, too. He wanted her to keep this cool.

But it was a little late, and Bonnie was a bit volatile. “You know fucking well I was in narcotics. And you fucking know why I’m in homicide. I got myself transferred out for becoming more narcotic than narc. Quit beating around the bush. What’s your point?”
 

Anne - Thank you. As I said above, The Death of Anyone is a terrific read. Do you belong to writer organizations, critique groups, or depend on beta readers?

DJ - I belong to a small Cincinnati writing group. We get together once a month, have dinner first, then read our work and offer suggestions. Writing is a process, like learning to play the piano, practice does make perfect, or at least make you better. I believe in the editing process. My long time live-in girlfriend is my first editor, and of course then there is the editing process with the publisher. Everyone plays a role in the final product.

Anne - In this book what are you most proud of? Why?

DJ - The Death of Anyone crosses several genres; mystery, suspense, romance and even some real science. I am particularly fond of the two homicide detectives, Bonnie and Neil. They are really good people, but a bit flawed, which I think makes them both interesting and believable. I think readers will both empathize and sympathize with them.

Anne - Final question, DJ. Where can readers find you online?

DJ - I belong to an artistic collective and have a page there: www.magicmasterminds.com I'm on Facebook. Or you can just email me, I’m gabby, and always willing to talk to readers and writers: djswykert@hotmail.com

Anne - Thanks so much for dropping by, DJ. I wish you every success with The Death of Anyone...and can’t wait for your next release.

* * *

Mike Jastrzebski's Key Lime Blues

My guest today is author Mike Jastrzebski, author of one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in quite a while, KEY LIME BLUES.

It’s a pleasure to have you drop by my little corner of cyberspace, Mike, and talk writing. Let’s start with something personal. Tell us a little about your personal life.

Mike - In September of 2003 my wife, Mary, and I moved abouard our 36-foot sailboat, Rough Draft. We sailed the boat from Minnesota to Mobile, Alabama where we lived for two years docked at a small marina. After rescuing and repairing our boat from Hurricane Katrina, we sailed to Florida where we spent three months living at a mooring in Key West, and from there we cruised up the east coast to Ft. Lauderdale where we lived and worked for six years.

We hoisted the sails once again in the spring of 2012, traversed the Gulf Stream and explored the Abaco Islands until hurricane season sent us back to the east coast. We spent the summer in Cape Canaveral at a very pleasant marina, and are currently back in the Bahamas to do some drifting and start work on the next adventure in the Wes Darling series.

Anne – I’m green with envy, Mike. Writing in the Bahamas sounds like heaven. When did you first realize you were destined to be an author?

Mike - When I was in the 6th grade I started my first novel and I was hooked. It was a modern takeoff of Treasure Island. Considering the maritime nature of that book and my current boating lifestyle, I figure it must have been fate.

Anne – Agreed! Tell us about your most recent release.

           

Mike – It’s entitled Mind Demons: A depraved killer clashes with a dedicated investigator in this psychological thriller about the abuse of power and the hidden demons that torment the thoughts and actions of ordinary people.

When two women disappear under mysterious circumstances investigator Linda Morgan suspects that the women have been murdered, but the police aren't buying her idea that a killer is targeting vulnerable young woman.

Determined to prove her theory Linda presses on with her investigation, unknowingly placing herself and those she cares about in danger as she chases down the truth.

Anne – Do you have a fear, phobia, or habit you’d rather no one knew about?

Mike - I have a fear of attending parties, especially when most of the attendees are strangers.

Anne – I’m equally uncomfortable in gatherings with more than six people, and that’s even when they’re friends and acquaintances. :( 

How long does it take you to write a book?

           

Mike - Usually a year, although I did pump out the first draft of The Storm Killer in about two months. The rewriting still took me nearly a year.

Anne – I often ask authors to describe their home office as appears right now. I’d curious to hear about your writing space.

           

Mike - My home office is a fold down desk in the cabin of my 36-foot sailboat, Rough Draft. The room is six by eight feet, with a settee on either side of the desk. When writing I often have research books and manuscript pages strewn about, which drives my wife crazy since this is our living area. It's not a good thing until I take a break, walk outside, and gaze across the crystal blue and green waters of the Bahamas, were I am sitting at anchor answering these questions.

Anne - Do you belong to writer organizations, critique groups, or depend on beta readers?

           

Mike - Up until last year I belonged to Mystery Writers of America and a great critique group. Traveling around by boat has restricted my access to these groups but my friend and fellow author, Christine Kling, is traveling in the same area on her own boat and we are critiquing each other's work.

Anne - How many rejections did you acquire along the way? What kept you going?

           

Mike - Literally hundreds of rejections. What kept me going is the fact that I never wanted to do anything else. I've held many corporate jobs but the truth is that I don't play well with others, which makes writing the perfect job.

Anne - What is the hardest part of writing for you?

           

Mike - Sitting in a chair in front of the computer. It's so damn easy to get up and find something else to do.

Anne – I hear you loud and clear! Final question: where can readers find you online?

Mike – They can check out my website and blog.

Anne – Thanks so much for dropping by and chatting, Mike. 

I’d like to encourage readers to download any and ALL of Mike's books. Key Lime Blues, Dog River Blues, Mind Demons, or The Storm Killer (which is free on Amazon until tomorrow (April 21, 2013).

* * *

Judy Alter's Murder at the Blue Plate Cafe

My guest today is author Judy Alter. An award-winning novelist, Judy writes the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries series: Skeleton in a Dead Space, No Neighborhood for Old Women, and Trouble in a Big Box. Danger Comes Home will be published in July 2013.

With her most recent novel, Murder at the Blue Plate Café, she moves from inner city Fort Worth to small-town East Texas to create a new set of characters in a setting modeled after a restaurant that was for years one of her family’s favorites.

Before turning her attention to mystery, Judy wrote fiction and nonfiction, mostly about women of the American West, for adults and young-adult readers. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame at the Fort Worth Public Library.

Follow Judy at http://www.judyalter.com or her two blogs at http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com or http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com. Or look for her on Facebook or on Twitter @judyalter.

Anne – Welcome to my little corner of cyber space, Judy. Where did you get the premise for your most recent release, Murder at the Blue Plate Café?

Judy - I knew I wanted to write about food in one way or another, and I kept remembering this small café in Edom, Texas, where my children and I frequently ate when we visited good friends on a nearby ranch.

Since I was going to put a murder into the novel, I thought it best to disguise the town—or at least change the name of the restaurant and town. The Blue Plate name came from a combination of diners with blue-plate specials and the Blue Willow my mother always served on and I serve on to this day. I’m not sure where the characters came from, but I know the first line just popped into my head one day.

Anne – Tell us about Murder at the Blue Plate Café.

Judy - When twin sisters Kate and Donna inherit their grandmother’s restaurant, the Blue Plate Cafe, in Wheeler, Texas, there’s immediate conflict. Donna wants to sell and use her money to establish a B&B; Kate wants to keep the cafe. Thirty-two-year-old Kate leaves a Dallas career as a paralegal and a married lover to move back to Wheeler and run the café, while Donna plans her B&B and complicates her life by having an affair with her sole investor.

Kate soon learns that Wheeler is not the idyllic small town she thought it was fourteen years ago. The mayor, a woman, is power-mad and listens to no one, and the chief of the police department, newly come from Dallas, doesn’t understand small-town ways. Worst of all, blunt, outspoken Donna is not well liked by some town folk. Kate is always suspicious of Gram’s sudden death, “keeling over in the mashed potatoes,” as Donna described it. Kate learns that’s not at all what happened and tries to sort out the truth.

But when the mayor of Wheeler becomes seriously ill after eating food from the café, delivered by Donna’s husband, Kate is even more suspicious. When Donna’s investor is shot, all fingers point to Donna and she is arrested. Kate must defend her sister and solve the murders to keep her business open, but even Kate begins to wonder about the sister she has a love-hate relationship with. Gram guides Kate through it all, though Kate’s never quite sure she’s hearing Gram—and sometimes Gram’s guidance is really off the wall.

Anne - Would you share an excerpt?

Judy – Of course! Here’s the opening passage:

“Gram's dead.”

The voice on the other end of the line was my twin sister, Donna, and her message was short, if not sweet. The phone had rung at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning—not a time I was in a mood to be pleasant, let alone cheerful. I'd tried muffling it with a pillow, but the persistent ringing finally moved me to pick up the receiver and mutter, “Yes,” in a rather ungracious tone.

I know there two sides to every story, but Donna and I did not get along, hadn’t since high school when she’d been the belle of the ball and I was pretty much a wallflower. To say that I’d blossomed in later years into a kind of yuppie social butterfly in Dallas did nothing to make Donna happier with me. From my point of view, it just made her jealous. As far as I could see, Donna would make the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. Given to easy hysterics, she always found life full of drama, which mostly wore me out. I thought she needed the drama because she’d stayed in Wheeler, Texas, married her high school sweetheart, and raised a family, while I was off in Dallas, frittering away (her words, not mine) my twenties and now thirties in bars and a series of dead-end love affairs. She never mentioned my really good job as a paralegal. I thought, with some conceit I admit, that she was jealous of my life.

This, however, was not funny, like most of her dramas.

I gripped the phone so hard my hand hurt. “Gram is not dead,” I said fiercely. “I just saw her…and she was fine.” My head was pounding. Why, oh why, had I had so much wine in that smoky bar last night?

“That was a month ago,” Donna said, her voice rising, “and you haven’t seen her since. Not that she wasn’t fine. She was until yesterday afternoon. She was at the café cooking mashed potatoes, and I don’t know what happened.”

I cut her off. “Donna, you’re babbling. Just tell me what happened.”

Anne – What a great beginning! I definitely want to read more. Now, let’s get back to the genius behind the book. When did you first realize you were destined to become an author?

Judy - I began to write at about age ten, short stories on small notebook paper; in high school, I submitted a story to Seventeen, which came back practically the next day. In college I majored in English because some man was going to marry me and take care of me—that didn’t exactly work out. I began seriously writing by doing non-fiction—medical articles for lay people—and wrote my first novel in 1978.

Anne - Describe your home office as it appears right now, and be honest. Is this a good or bad thing?

Judy - I live in my office. It’s a small former bedroom with French doors into the living room. One wall is lined with an overcrowded bookcase, and there are pictures and mementoes on every wall. My desk faces into the living room and is usually messy, but I try to straighten it every night so I can start fresh in the morning.

The office is also my dog’s favorite room and since she’s not quite two and still a puppy at heart, it is strewn with dog toys. And oh yes, there’s a TV that I often keep on mute so I can glance up and see what I’m missing. Mostly I watch news and cooking shows.

Anne - How long did your journey from wannabe to published writer take?

Judy - I was lucky because my first novel was published by a New York house, although to my surprise as a young-adult book, and that pigeon-holed me as a y/a writer for years. But the road to mystery publication was much rockier—I knew the world of western writing but that of mysteries came as a shock. I had a disastrous year-long involvement with one agent and another year-long involvement with a publisher that came to nothing. All in all, though, I was luckier than many—probably only queried 20-25 agents before I decided to go the small press route. The first small press I queried took my manuscript, and now they’ve published four, with three more scheduled through 2014.

Anne – Final question. Outside of writing, what accomplishment are you most proud of?

Judy - Raising four children as a single parent. They are wonderful, warm, caring adults, and they’ve given me seven terrific grandchildren. Sorry, but this outweighs writing.

Anne – No apologies necessary. Like you, I’m a writer but it will never replace the ones I love. Thanks so much for dropping by today, Judy. I wish you every success with Murder at the Blue Plate Café.

*  *  *