Happy Labor Day

As folks in the U.S. celebrate Labor Day, most people think about the people who labor in factories, service jobs and construction workers, because it started as a "workingmen's holiday".

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate  on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

I grew up near Detroit, so Labor Day was celebrated by the auto workers in a big way, so it wasn't until recently that I started thinking about other jobs that maybe aren't recognized in the same way: policemen, firefighters, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, chaplains, farmers, ranchers, retail sales people.... and the list could go on and on.

So thank you to all of them for the work they do to serve and protect and make our lives better.

A Bit of A Problem

But rather a nice problem to have in a way. I am busy trying to finish the second book in my mystery series while doing early promoting on the first one. I feel like a juggler at times, and a poor one at that.

For a little while, I'm a writer, hacking away at the latest scene in Stalking Season. Then I get up, walk around my office chair and become my publicist. I contact places to send the ARCs for review. Work on the promo pieces that go out with ARCs. Write the cover letters that go out with ARCs. Did I mention I have a few ARCs on hand?

The first book, Open Season,  introduces Sarah Kingsly and Angel Johnson, homicide detectives who are unlikely and unwilling partners. When people start dying in area shopping malls, the detectives find themselves up against a killer who has his own race card to play. Some people have described it as "Lethal Weapon" in Dallas with female leads. 

Here is an excerpt from Open Season, which will be released in December from five Star Cengage/Gale. I will post another excerpt in a few weeks.


Sarah took a deep breath and faced Quinlin in the stuffy cubbyhole of an office. The room was hot and musty. Dust motes floated in the slivers of sunshine that had penetrated the haze of accumulated grime on the windows of the old building. The scent of his cologne hung heavily in the still air. Chaps. Rich, masculine, and too easily a distraction.
 
Dressed in a dark, somber suit, Quinlin didn’t speak. He watched her with the careful scrutiny of a snake considering a field mouse. A trickle of perspiration ran down Sarah’s back and dampened her white T-shirt. Shifting in the wooden chair, she contemplated the wisdom of taking off her jacket, then decided against it. He would interpret it as a sign of weakness.
 
She thought she was prepared for this. She’d rehearsed it a million times, remembering the images, nailing down the sequence, readying herself for his opener, “Detective Kingsly, tell me what happened that night.”
She recalled the moon playing tag with a few heavy clouds, casting weird, disorientating shadows on the crumbling buildings. She remembered wishing the clouds would give way to rain, anything to relieve the oppressive heat that had pounded the city relentlessly for weeks. She remembered thinking the heat made people do crazy things.
 
Maybe that’s why it had happened.
 
The rest of it flashed through her mind like a sequence of freeze frames.

Franco and the boy turn.
A glint of metal in the moonlight.
John pushes her away, reaching for the gun tucked in his waistband.
The clasp on her purse sticks.
A flash of gunfire.
The sharp report of return fire.
Struggling to get her gun.
Franco is down.
The kid swings his gun toward John.
She fires the same time the kid does.
The coppery smell of warm blood.
Hers?
No.
Goddam it, John, get up!
Why is everything so quiet?
Where is the kid?
There’s a big gaping hole in the cheap sequined evening bag.

I'm So Excited

The first book in my mystery series will be released this coming December and I have just received the coverart from my publisher. I really like what the artist did. The skyline is Dallas, where the story is set, and the badge is an official Dallas PD badge. I have had a number of people tell me that the cover is great and would make them pick up the book.

What do you think?

Also, I have just received blurbs from two authors whom I have the greatest respect for.

"Open Season is a solid police procedural with fully developed characters and provocative social issues." --- L.J. Sellers, author of the Detective Jackson mysteries

“Detectives Sarah Kingsly and Angel Johnson are crisply drawn characters. The hard-edged story of racial tension in Dallas could be drawn from today’s headlines. Open Season is a smart, spirited page-turner.” —Bruce Cook – Tommy Gun Tango

In his e-mail Bruce also thanked me for letting him read the book in advance and wrote, "It was great fun, with likeable characters and a strong plot."

Wow, what a terrific week this has been. It is the kind that gives a writer a real boost, and I'm sure all the writers reading this are nodding heads in agreement. The business of writing is so intense and challenging at times that we may wonder why we keep doing it.

This is why....

Open Season will be coming out in hardback in December from Five Star Cengage/Gale.

Introduction

Since I'm listed on the masthead for this blog, I thought I should introduce myself. Can you tell I have a lot of experience with newspaper and magazine work? If you are a good detective you would note my use of a word not often used in the blogging world.

My writing career started when I wrote a humorous column for a suburban Dallas newspaper many moons ago. From there I went on to do a lot of journalism for regional and national publications - columns, feature stories, reviews, and news stories - but my heart was always in fiction. I've written short stories, novels, screenplays and stageplays - not all of them published or produced, but I keep on trying.

I love mysteries, especially police procedurals and some of my favorite books were the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain - alter ego of the amazing Evan Hunter. Reading his work taught me a lot about how to handle an ensemble cast in a series, and I hope I have mastered even a smidgen of his ability in my series that will debut this December.

Open Season introduces two women homicide detectives in Dallas, one white and one black, who deal with racial issues that are impacting the department and the city. They both see the pairing as better PR than policy, but they can't let that hamper their efforts to find the killer who is murdering people at area shopping malls.

My earlier books are One Small Victory, a romantic suspense first out in hardback, and now an e-book through Smashwords. Play it Again, Sam, is a woman's novel in e-book format from Uncial Press. I have self-published a young adult novel, Friends Forever, for Kindle, and put a short story up there, too, The One O'clock Nap.

I am honored to be a part of this blogging group and hope that readers find my prattling worth the read.

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Maryann's Web site