When You Start Writing too Soon

 By Elaine L. Orr

When an idea comes to me it's exciting and also tempting to put words on paper. I may start with a few sentences but then graduate to a few pages of notes. If I'm in the middle of another project, I can stow those pages in a computer file or paper folder and have enough information to continue when I go back to it.

It's not necessarily a good thing when I have time on my hands. I may start a book immediately. After a few chapters I realize I don't know the characters, setting, or or perhaps plot well enough to continue. What I have may be good but the phrase "now what?" enters my mind too often. That's OK if you're writing an outline but troublesome if you're in the middle of a chapter.

I have finally learned that what I omit if I make an early start is showing the normal world. In most mysteries, an event propels a sleuth (professional or amateur) into action. They may get involved reluctantly but eventually there is enough at stake to push to find a killer, kidnapper or embezzler. Take your pick.

Having a period of time before the inciting event lets the reader know something about the sleuth as well as their town and some of the other people in it. Without that first chapter, or however long it takes, every time the author introduces a character or they visit a place, the reader will want an explanation.

I started a new book before Thanksgiving, The Handyman's Last Bite, and I was considering introducing a couple more characters so the pool of red herrings could be larger. (How's that for a pun?) Then I did a forehead slap and realized I should have mentioned those people in an earlier chapter. They need to be part of the Ordinary World before it turns upside down.

Cozy mystery authors are familiar with the four-part structure discussed for that genre (and others). 1) The Ordinary World, 2) Reactive Phase, 3) Proactive Phase, and 4) Confrontation. If you search for "four-act structure for mystery novels" you'll fund a number of very good articles. If you want more, you can go to The Creative Penn, a multifaceted site that deal with writing, publishing, marketing and more.

I don't want to "have" to use a certain structure, but the concepts are helpful. Plus, the new Ordinary World chapter in The Handyman's Last Bite provided some good ideas for other parts of the book.

If you want to become familiar with the thought process of a writer who is a meticulous outliner, get to know William Kent Krueger. I've read many of his books -- intricate and firmly ensconced in their environment.

Back to my handyman to be sure he doesn't mess up the project.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Ye Gads, Another Year

By Elaine L. Orr

I stopped making lists of New Year's resolutions a few years ago and substituted telling myself one or two things I needed to do better. I stopped the lists because too many things appeared year after year. I'm not going to lose 25 pounds. I should. Maybe if I aim for five and a commitment to keep it off..

I do want to keep writing, though it gets harder to focus and all of my fingers hurt. So, I have started dictating more. When I do a Facebook post I don't pay attention to capital letters, which is why they appear throughout the post in odd places. I do pay attention for the blog and my books. As helpful as dictating is in preserving my joints, you have to edit a lot. 

I'm also trying to learn to use AI in ways that benefit my publishing work. Note I don't say my writing, though I have asked ChatGPT a number of questions about research and plotting. If I didn't work by myself I'd have someone to talk to about those topics, and I enjoy occasionally asking questions.

What is on my mind fifteen times a day is what is happening in our country right now. It might not be so prominent if there weren't constant news stories about using the federal budget process and other policy options to decrease access to food, medical care, and now clean water. And to silence disagreement, of course. (Look at the recent vetoes of Colorado water conservation or water quality legislation. Bipartisan bills, I might add.)

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the belief that retribution and vindication are policy options. No, it's not that. It's that so few people speak up about it. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert stated, correctly I think, that Trump vetoed the bills because she (who represents Colorado) wanted the Epstein files released.

We've gotten through other difficult times before. When I say the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms in which I sub, I don't say the line, "under God." It has nothing to do with my religious beliefs. In the McCarthy era of the 1950s, that line was inserted into the pledge as a test of loyalty to the US. I'm a big fan of separation of church and state.  

The students never ask about it. I was secretary of a Lion's Club in Iowa and sat in the front of the room. We also said the pledge. Someone asked me about it. They didn't do it to imply that my choice was wrong, they were simply curious.

The other thing about dictation is when your mind wanders you talk about something and it appears in the text. I should probably make a resolution to stay on point.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Books that Mark a Turning Point

By Elaine L Orr

Books that are part of a series, especially a long one, may simply be individual components of a set of characters and their action, or books may end aspects of a series and lead to others. 

In my Family History Mystery Series, which has five books, in the first three only the main character, Digger, knows that her Uncle Benjamin's ghost arrived soon after his burial. If her contact with him were only in her residence it could have stayed that way. But he was often with her, which could be comical if she was trying to communicate with him in front of others. But that's a difficult set of scenarios to maintain.

In book three, Mountain Rails of Old, his presence becomes known to her boyfriend, who had begun to think she was keeping something from him. Boy, was she. Even now, after five books and a long short story, no one else can see or talk to him. But having someone else know about him changed a great deal about how Digger could approach her world -- and the long-ago mysteries she works to solve.

In the fourteen-book Jolie Gentil series, the first six books have her reestablishing her life in Ocean Alley and resuming friendships, especially with Scoobie. My plan was to have him be killed at the beginning of book three and that book would have been titled Justice for Scoobie. Since he had become the favorite character, that really wasn't an option. And I liked him.

A relationship evolved from friends to romance to marriage. Book ten is titled The Unexpected Resolution and they are married on New Year's Eve. It also marks the beginning of major changes in their lives. Scoobie learns a great deal about his past and a new character, an unknown much younger brother, represents a major shift. I see this as the beginning of the second chapter of their lives.

Jolie continues to solve mysteries but with more family members in her life she has to be more responsible. This led to another character becoming if not a partner at least a valuable friend in crime solving. I can't claim to always think three books ahead, but I had a local newspaper reporter lose his job and spend a couple of years training to be a Private Eye. That would make him an assistant as needed -- though he certainly wouldn't have thought of himself that way.

I found I liked having a character whose business it was to untangle mysteries and eventually George garnered his own series, the Shore Shenanigans Series. Jolie will continue with a 15th book and George will have some involvement, but George will be the predominant character in his series with Jolie and Scoobie occasionally playing supporting roles.

With a new year approaching and a lot of writing ahead, I am grateful to have published for the past fifteen years. I'm even more grateful that I still like it.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Learning to Spot AI in the Writing World and Beyond

 By Elaine L. Orr

I think one of the byproducts of generative artificial intelligence is mistrust. If I get an email from someone I don't know I'm immediately suspicious. It's especially true for book marketing outreach.

At least twice a day I get a friendly email from someone telling me how great one of my books is and how much they can do to propel it to a bestseller list. It can be any book not just new ones. However I had long short story issued in mid December and that has been a popular target.

Though the language isn't always identical the concepts are. Basically I've written something brilliant and they want to help me make money. And maybe pay them a little bit to do it. In checking with author friends it seems we are all getting deluged with these emails.

I do regular chuckles about some of the reels on Facebook. I must have looked at short videos about babies in the past, though I don't remember looking at any besides family. In any event, they now pop up regularly on my Facebook feed and I find it easy to tell which ones are fake. The kids are too cute and the pets they are interacting with are too perfect.

Every day I get one that shows a toddler reacting to having a new infant in the house. The toddler is too articulate for their age, their speech too precise. A lot of three-year-olds are talkative but they don't form all the words perfectly. The toddler in the reel is always furious that there's a new baby. The giveaway is all the adults do is laugh. Any legitimate mom or dad would be interacting with the toddler not merely laughing at them.

I've also been asking ChatGPT to write very short stories similar to those I write. I name titles of my books that they can use as samples. It's impressive in the sense that they write a few thousand words in less than ten seconds. 

However, each thing they write is full of metaphors. I can't stand overuse of metaphors because I think it detracts from the story. If you're telling a reader that someone's eyes are almost as turquoise as the Caribbean Sea, immediately they're thinking of the time they went to the Bahamas rather than the character in your story.

The real giveaway is that while there is a series of actions and a character may solve a small mystery, there's no cohesion among the character, their actions, and steps necessary to actually solve a crime. In some ways it reminds me of some of the Hercule Poirot stories. He gives you detailed information on how he solved a crime but there's no way a reader was given enough information to do it with him. 

Before you say it's pretty haughty of to make such a statement, go read a couple of the stories. Of course the setting, the crimes themselves, the characters, and the humor make Agatha Christie's stories far better! I carry a thin book of Poirot and Miss Marple stories so I always have something to read in a doctor's office.

I would like ChatGPT to compile a list of 2026 writers conferences in the Midwest. I'll let you know if it's a good list.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Never Forget, but Forge Ahead

By Elaine L. Orr

Note: I started this post on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a life changing event for my family and the nation. If you want to read something jolly, go to prior posts on my blog. Or whatever I write after this one.

Humans tend to remember tragedies. At age twelve (and forever after), I could tell you where I was standing when we heard that President Kennedy was shot in 1963. 

I remember exactly what I was doing when the 1986 Challenger disaster occurred. I worked for the Government Accountability Office and was giving a presentation to some international visitors in the one conference room that had a television set, possibly the only one in the building. People would walk by and wave or stick their head in for a second. I realized afterwards they wanted to turn on that TV.

I expect that everyone who was older than ten on September 11th 2001, remembers that a group of Saudi men flew two airplanes into the Twin Towers and another into the Pentagon. Thanks to the brave action of some passengers, the one that was headed towards Washington DC office buildings didn't make it. As an aside I was in between the White House and the Capitol and we had no idea where to go. We didn't want to go to the subway because it seemed like that might be easy for somebody to blow up.

My mother talked many times about where she was December 7th. She had moved to Washington DC a year or so previously from Kansas, to find a job. She worked at what is now called the Office of Personnel Management and moved around government agencies evaluating their personnel functions. On that day, she was sitting in the old Griffith Stadium watching the former Washington Redskins because someone from her office had given her a ticket. 

She wondered why the game announcers started calling for different senior military officers. Eventually, there were enough interruptions that she sensed that something had to be wrong. Today, we would wonder why she had to sense it; she could look at her phone to know that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. We expect information immediately.

Mother did what everyone did during times of war; she volunteered. One of the things she did was go to what is now called Joint Base Andrews one night a week with a group of other women. They were assigned binoculars and stood on the roofs of buildings watching for enemy planes. They didn't go to bed those nights but they thought that was a simple sacrifice.

The free world pulled together back then and the alliances the United States formed afterwards have seen us through the years. When people criticize NATO, they don't remember that the only time that NATO activated what is called Article 5 (joint military support) was when the United States wanted to Capture Osama bin Laden and destroy his network. Our friends stood with us.

I am as patriotic as my parents (my father was in the Army Air Corps in Africa and Europe) but I don't want to support the undeclared wars that we seem to insert ourselves into. As my dad said during Vietnam, you always support the troops but you don't have to support the president. (As proud as he was of his service in World War II and two nephews who served in Vietnam, he thought political leaders were sending tens of thousands of young people to their deaths for a war that was none of our business.)

When I see us bomb boats that are likely carrying drugs rather than trying to interdict them or I watch the federal government (in its internal war against immigrants) grab non-criminals off the streets without warrants, I cringe. The latter is especially difficult because Congress was so close to a workable immigration policy and Candidate Trump thwarted it so he could run on the issue. I half expected him to actually have a plan to develop immigration policy, but that was stupid of me.

I'm musing about all of this because it feels so bad that our country is becoming wrong about how it treats people on so many levels. And now there is what appears to be true consideration of attacking another country. We say it's because the war on drugs has become literal. But we've also stopped federal funding for many health services and research. It truly helps to provide treatment for those who've become addicted. You know, cut off demand as well as supply.

And now, because he thinks a convicted criminal was treated 'unfairly,'  President Trump has pardoned one of the most heinous drug smugglers ever convicted. Forget the massive amounts of evidence the Department of Justice amassed against the former Honduran president and the fact that he was legitimately sentenced to 540 months in prison.

American Exceptionalism?

How do we get past this? When will we again become part of the world order that promotes peace? And I'm not talking about an absence of war. I'm talking about the United States working to build a better world. 

In abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development, we've made it clear that we don't want even constructive interactions with those who need assistance in other nations. Plus, our president calls many of these nations shithole countries and most politicians yawn, so our nation clearly doesn't care.

It seems that charity in the broadest sense is something that some people only want to provide to American citizens. Oh wait, we've taken away a lot of food and medical assistance for people who need it in our country.

I probably shouldn't be surprised. We talk about American exceptionalism, but people fought hard to maintain slavery when we were founded and then fought a war to keep it. Millions of Americans spent the next hundred years trying to make sure Black Americans didn't have equal rights to vote, get an education, work, secure decent health care... 

We put Japanese American citizens in camps during World War II, though we did let some young men out to fight for the very country that was imprisoning their families. Funny, but we did not try to round up all people who had roots in Saudi Arabia after 9/11. Not that I would have wanted that, and I recognize it was not that country's government that attacked us, just a bunch of their citizens.

We started earlier than the things referenced above. When colonists landed in what is now the United States, there were 600 Native American tribes with huge settlements and trade routes throughout the US, Mexico, and  Canada. Settlers and the government murdered most of them because 'we' wanted 'their' land and said we were trying to convert indigenous people to Christianity. And we had gunpowder, so we could. 

There are millions of good people in the U.S, but Trump did win a second election after we fully knew his character, so I guess I should not have expected us to be better. I do what I can help us return to the values we used to cherish. Small donations, some volunteer work, and participation in a few protests marches. It's good to see millions of people turning out to defend our values. Maybe I'm writing this because I continue to hope for a path that will make people matter more than money.

Thank You, President Eisenhower

I also feel I should offer a belated thanks to former President Dwight D Eisenhower, who warned our nation against the military industrial complex This AI definition puts it all together.

The "military-industrial complex" refers to the powerful, intertwined relationship between a nation's military establishment, defense contractors, and political leadership, a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address, warning of its potential to foster excessive spending, influence policy for profit, and threaten democratic values by diverting resources from societal needs. Eisenhower, a former five-star general, cautioned Americans to remain vigilant against this symbiotic alliance, formed during the Cold War, to ensure defense spending served true security, not just industry's interests, highlighting the need for balance between military strength and civic priorities.

For years it seemed like jargon to me, but I eventually understood that the United States private sector makes a lot of money by making bombs so people in other countries can kill each other. After the 'bomb factories' of World War II (essential to defeating Hitler and the Japanese emperor), industrialists didn't want to end that income stream. US arms revenue was $334 billion in 2024 and the US supplies 40% of global arms sales.

Imagine if, over time, that capital was redirected from defense to civilian sectors like transportation infrastructure, education, nutrition research, and energy diversification. 

Can We Reboot?

The toughest part is we have to want to. Now, instead of melding ideas we live in silos of like-minded people, sometimes completely avoiding those who are not 'like us.' We ignore rights and resources taken away from those who are different. For the record, I don't listen to MSNBC or FOX News because both have a point of view. I don't believe echo chambers are part of the solution.

Many Americans may feel economic stresses but most still have a place to live and food to eat. True, millions aren't doing well. People will lose jobs over the next decade and be ill-prepared to take jobs in a changing economy. However, desire for change that comes from economic factors is largely self-serving. We can do better.

We need to come together to profess values of tolerance, mutual respect, and kindness so we can elect people who propagate policies to grow from those intrinsic beliefs. Those policies can enhance prosperity. If you think I'm naive, what do you suggest? Please, please don't say you don't care.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Writing a Christmas Story for an Established Series

By Elaine L. Orr

Sometimes, an idea comes to you and it doesn't matter what else is on your plate, you have to run with it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about my family history mystery series, which takes place in the mountains of Western Maryland. I'm developing an idea for a 6th book, but I missed the characters right now.

Slowly, the idea for a Christ story began to take shape. Like all good stories, mystery or not, there had to be something that needed to be resolved. Hiccups in personal relationships are always an option but I wanted something that more directly related to aspects of history in Maryland. So I did both.

I also needed a hook that tied the story to the past, The link became a broken Christmas ornament that would be a symbol for other things that needed to heal. 

Most of my characters are White, but a few key characters are Black because I always want to remember the importance of African American history in the Western Maryland mountains. In Broken Ornaments Healing Holidays, the discovered ornament came from a long-burned-out factory in the town of Maple Grove. But it is the discovery of a body in the ruins back in 1948 that provides insight into how differently Black and White citizens interact now than they did then.

The story is designed to be pleasing holiday fiction, but it does provide a perspective on something serious. So, as Digger and Marty explore where their relationship will go, they and others also hunt for the family of an unidentified man who died decades ago.

Writing a story that is in a series but is not part of the continuing flow of the series was more of a challenge than I thought it would be. With a full-length book, you can insert information about past character actions and enlighten readers about what's going on right now. In a 17,000-word story there isn't a lot of room for background. I tried to find the mix between letting readers know about ongoing characters without dumping a lot of information not directly related to this story.

Readers can decide if I achieved that.

Links to all retail sites.

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To learn more about Elaine, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

The Makings of a Good Book Festival

 By Elaine L. Orr

Last weekend's Peoria Bookfest was one of the best I've attended over the past fifteen years. Organizer Stacy Hardin owns the Book Rack in Peoria and her well established links to the business community were evident. 

Here are some of the things that contributed to the experience.

Diverse vendors. Thousands of people won't attend a local author books show in a medium-sized city unless a super famous author is signing -- not common. There were dozens of book authors but also crafters, culinary firms, and a few nonprofits. All of those people told their customers and patrons to attend the November 14, 2025 event.

Admission fees. What?! Admission fees imply there is value to participating. The fact that the Book Rack Literacy Project -- a community outreach program to provide free books for thousands of teachers and students per year -- benefitted from the event made the entry fee a worthwhile one, even if attendees weren't shopping for books.

Special benefits for early visitors (who paid a larger entry fee). Stacy promised 300 people at opening and she delivered. There was a long line to get in! People received cloth goodie bags (which also would publicize the event afterwards).

Sponsors from the community. Some contributed to the goodie bags and others secured booths to promote their businesses -- and likely things I couldn't see from behind the scenes.

Lots of publicity. The event was promoted as "one unforgettable celebration of books and community!" with 115 vendors. Facebook and Instagram had regular updates and local media had ads and mentions.

A strong business connection. The Peoria Book Rack (which Stacy bought in 2016) is a well established business that attracts book lovers every day.

This was the second Bookfest (the first in 2019, before COVID) and the next one will be November 14, 2026. If you want to participate, email Stacy for info at peoriabookrack@gmail.com. In the meantime, enjoy some pictures from 2025.

Can't resist showing my books (Elaine L. Orr) first. It also gives an idea of how packed the Bookfest was. My five series did fit on the table.

"Look, It's My Book" gives new books to thousands of young readers each year.

Allison R. Ihnken and her mix of period romances and children's books.

J. Lawson, author of Peculiar Lessons, with her mix of books and crafts.

Skye Malone, author of very popular teen and young adult books.

Evan Clouse and his mix of paranormal fantasy, horror, and more.

D. Williams, author of the Eternal Love Series.

Teresa Higus, another cozy author

Finally, the question all authors ask after a book event: "Did you make money?" Yes. Candidly, I didn't expect to do as well, because there were so many authors. I usually do better at craft shows and bazaars. Here, I sold books.

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To learn more about Elaine, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.