Joyce Ann Brown, Author
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The Author's Blog

Winter Mysteries

12/20/2020

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Recently,  I posted an excerpt of one of my books on a Facebook page called Read Local Kansas City in an event called "Holiday Festival of Authors." The theme  for the excerpts was  Winter and Winter Holidays.

Each of the Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mysteries is set in a different season. Catastrophic Connections reveals a lovely Kansas City springtime and the beauty of the American Virgin Islands. Furtive Investigations is set during  the winter, partly in Arizona and partly in Kansas City. Nine LifeFelines'  mysterious events happen during the summer in Peru and Kansas City, and   our sleuth and her family are Tailed  from San Antonio, Texas during    a colorful Kansas City  fall.

The excerpt  I posted is from Furtive Investigations:


Gray drizzly dusk arrived around Four-thirty on this January Saturday afternoon in Kansas City, and it was as dark and gloomy as a winter street in Dickens’s London by the time Clay and Janae stuffed their bags into the back seat of Janae’s little car and set off for their Plaza hotel. Tiny wet snowflakes glistened in the streetlights and in the glow of their headlights. Bare, black-silhouetted tree branches, shivering slightly in the chilly wind, and ghostly mansions, surrounded by their expansive obscured lawns, lined each side of Ward Parkway.

Clay kept his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel as he maneuvered the slick streets, and Janae sat stiff and unmoving. They rode along in silence until Clay drove under the brightly lighted overhang at the entrance to the hotel.

“Whew. A port in a storm,” Clay said.

“Like landing in Oz after escaping a tornado,” Janae said.


Find   all the books in the series  for sale on my Amazon author page. 

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Reading and Writing: A Personal Essay

7/10/2020

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My essay "Slow Reader"  has been published at WritersCircle.net. It's an essay about why I like dawdling over the written word.
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The site, WRITERS AGAINST COVID-19, was originated to provide uplifting or humorous stories for people isolated or affected by the coronavirus.  The distraction helps people cope. 

I have another story on the site, "Still Waters," which is a humorous story based on a true event that happened to me and my husband when traveling in Europe in the 1990s.
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Inclusivity or Stereotype: How to Portray Diverse Characters in Novels

6/13/2020

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​   Over the past few weeks, I have read advice about how to help combat racism and inequality. Most recommendations involve educating oneself about the minority experience by reading, asking questions, and listening with an open mind, rather than relying on prior-held beliefs.

 Daily life for me includes writing mysteries. Using diverse characters in my books without resorting to tokenism or stereotype has always been my goal. But I haven’t experienced racism against myself or my family members, and I can’t live inside the skins of people of different ethnicities. Reading and listening to others must be my guide to creating true characters and scenes.

 Sisters in Crime, a mystery writers’ organization, recently launched an initiative to give grants to minority-owned bookstores and to promote minority mystery authors during the next year. The Romance Writers of America had a blow-up after a Chinese-American writer tweeted that a fellow writer’s novel was a “raciest mess.” The novel depicts Asian characters with “slightly yellow” skin and “slanted almond eyes,” and 19th-century Chinese women as demure, quiet, and compliant. The criticized writer sued, and the Tweeter was ousted from the RWA. Members took sides, board members quit, and chapters went under. The organization is struggling to come back with new leadership and new policies to support racial minorities.

In view of reports like these, it seems not only individual writers, but whole organizations are contending with inclusivity in different ways. During a recent Zoom writing meeting, I asked how the authors in that group deal with diversity in their books. One said, “I don’t go there.” Another told about being upbraided by another author because, in one of her books, she wrote about the “black quarter” in 1900 Kansas City. Even though it was historically correct, she cut the scene from her story. Our author of international mysteries said she doesn’t mention ethnicities and leaves it to readers to visualize the appearance of her characters. All the authors agreed we should be careful not to use clichés and to have our work checked by people with the same ethnicities or race as the characters we are creating.

A historical romance author in my writing group, Theresa Hupp, says this on her blog: “As a writer of historical fiction, one of the issues I struggle with is how to portray interactions between characters of different races. I could ignore the topic by not having characters of different races in my novels, but I think part of the purpose of writing historical fiction is to show the time period of the novel in all its facets. Race has been an issue in American life since our earliest days.”
 
Authors must ask: How do we put ourselves in the shoes of other people who are older or younger; hold political opinions that make us cringe; are violent in ways we would never be; are of the opposite sex; hold different sexual orientations/interests; grew up in circumstances totally unlike our own; or are of different ethnicities? To avoid stereotypes, an author must do serious research that involves, like a method actor, learning enough to rely on an intimate knowledge of the subject to span the gap between his/her real life and someone else’s potentially very different one. One shouldn’t stereotype even minor characters—the street sweeper is a real person, not just a chance to insert a diverse character. Authors need to listen to the opinions of beta readers, just as movie studios rely on test audiences for feedback.

Author Mitali Perkins says, “It's best to avoid socially-constructed race words like African-American, Asian-American, etc. The descriptions of physical appearances probably indicate the ethnicity of your characters even if you weren't purposeful about it.” Also, she says, don’t use food metaphors to describe skin color. Historically, the consumption of coffee and cocoa depended on slavery. It’s not only a cliché, but also offensive to use those words to describe someone of color.

In my Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mysteries, the inspiration for my characters (as well as for the cat antics) came from people (and cats) I’ve known or read about. Any stereotypes are accidental. One of the main characters in Furtive Investigation is, like my nieces, part Philippian. In Nine Lifelines, there are individuals from France, Peru, and the Ukraine. On my travels, I’ve met the people and heard stories I used as inspiration. Tailed includes reference to Latin-American gangs. I admit to never meeting a gang member in person, but I was robbed by one and did my research to try to understand what drives them. Catastrophic Connections doesn’t refer to ethnic minorities, but part of it takes place in the American Virgin Islands. I travelled there several times to do research for the book.

Plato said, “Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” As an author, I want to write those books. As a reader, I want to read those books. A book that inaccurately describes people and ideas corrupts the soul, clips the wings, throws obstacles at the imagination, and misrepresents life. It doesn’t mean we can’t describe unjust situations in history, as long as we don’t infer the people in those circumstances deserved to be there because of their inherent natures.

How about you, reader? Have you read books that stereotype a race, a religious group, an age group, or another minority? How do you think authors should learn about people who are different from themselves before creating a character?

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New Product Giveaway/Big Sale

11/30/2019

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The klutzy landlady and the unpredictable cat work with a CSI agent, an irascible police detective, and some passionate young people to scare up an unscrupulous villain with links to an underground world of corruption, drugs, and murder. ​

  https://www.audible.com/ep/acx-redemption?bp_o=true
​

Contact the author to receive a code to get a free copy. 


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Tailed, the fourth Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery, is on sale until December 7.
A mystery romp with a klutzy sleuth, a clue-sniffing cat, and two clueless crooks. https://www.amazon.com/Tailed-Psycho.../dp/1981612807/

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Cats of the World

8/1/2019

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This summer, I had the great pleasure of visiting Greece. I went to see the ancient ruins and was well-rewarded. So much has been excavated, some has been or is in the process of being restored, and the museums in Athens reveal so many artifacts that I could hardly take it all in. 

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But that's not all. The people, the food, the land and seascapes, and the animals blew me away. 
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And the cats! Kitties were everywhere...sidewalks, cafes, houses, alleys...and people took care of them all. Psycho Cat and my spoiled kitties would have felt right at home.
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New Book Cover

4/8/2019

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The fourth book in the Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery series has a new cover. It's also on sale for $0.99 in the e-book format to inform new readers about this funny adventure. Beth and Sylvester sure do meet up with some gnarly characters, and the crooks that follow them to Kansas City from San Antonio are two of the roughest.
https://www.amazon.com/Tailed-Psycho-Landlady-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B079VQRHL3/
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Nine Lifelines: A Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery (Special sale)

8/29/2018

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Nine Lifelines has a new cover, and to celebrate, the e-book version will be on sale for $.99 for a short time. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0747SB6KJ
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Take a Cozy on Vacation

6/20/2018

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The Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery Series

Catastrophic Connections
Furtive Investigation
Nine Lifelines
Tailed
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Catastrophic Connections on Sale in June

6/8/2018

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The e-book version of the fourth book in the Psycho Cat and the Landlady series is on sale the next few days for $1.99.
Find it on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079VQRHL3

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Book Club Discussion Questions Added to Site

4/10/2018

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Book Clubs can now find discussion questions for Tailed on the author's Web Site. See the questions here  on "Discussion Questions for Books."
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Psycho Cat Posts YouTube Video

3/26/2018

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International Women's Day: Strong Women in Fiction

3/8/2018

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March 8 is International Women's Day. It promotes gender parity and also celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Look around. Strong women aren’t necessarily CEOs of large corporations, congresswomen, or organizers of events for important charity organizations. The strong woman in this story juggles a variety of roles and responsibilities.

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                                                   MANY HATS
                                           
By Joyce Ann Brown
 
  The nurse left work at five o’clock—a rarity.  This evening, the doctor had taken over her phone calls to patients and ordered her out the door.
"But I have two more--"
"Your health is important. Go play tennis, and enjoy."
Reaching the parking lot, she saw her friend, Lola, lumbering toward the cars.  Every morning, Lola picked up donuts and, in order to get a close parking space, got to the building and up to her reception desk half an hour early. With a quick wave, the nurse jogged on toward her own usual space at the back of the lot. Exercise. She took her own medical advice seriously.
            Abruptly, she slowed to a creep and pressed a cell phone speed dial number.  Twice she had forgotten to call her husband on tennis night, and twice, just as she hit the court, she had urgent and—not nasty exactly, but frustrated “where-are-you” calls by the after school child care providers. She was still trying to repay her neighbor for all the last-minute pick-ups.  It was her husband who had urged her to take one evening a week to play tennis.  But it was his late calls from clients, who didn’t respect his night with the kids, which made him sometimes forget his commitment. Over the phone, he assured her that in ten seconds he’d be out of the office and on his way to after-school care.


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            That call cost her several minutes, but there was still time to get onto the court at 6:00, if she hurried.  First, she had one stop to make—to get a gift for her daughter to take to a birthday party after school tomorrow. Earlier, they had decided a certain toy was too expensive.  Now, it was too late to find anything else, and Creative Play closed at 6:00.
            She glanced at the back seat when she got into the car and hit her forehead with the heel of her hand.  A hot day in September, she had decided this morning, is not a day to leave one’s tennis racket in the car.  She pulled into the front space recently vacated by Lola, ran into the doctor’s building, retrieved her tennis bag from the coat room, and got back to the car in six minutes, tops.  Five-fifteen, still time for the gift stop.


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On the way to the store, her mother rang her.  “Are you coming on Saturday to help with the lawn work?  It’ll be a party.  I’m making a big lunch.”
            “We’ll be there.  All of us are coming.”  Since her father passed away a year ago, her siblings’ families had helped Mom with the big jobs.  She finished the phone call in the parking lot before she raced into the toy store and found the gift.  Unfortunately, there was a line at the check-out counter.
            Now she would really be late!  Okay, maybe not.  The courts were close, and she was a fast dresser.  She drove down the street toward the racket club entrance past a city park pond where people were walking or jogging on the hiking trail. Almost there, she slammed on her brakes.  Ohmygosh, a mother duck with six ducklings following had casually stepped out of the tall grass into the street—right in front of her!  Cars going both ways stopped to let the ducks pass.  She glanced at her watch.  She started to think the last couple of ducklings were dispensable.  A momentary lapse.


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The last adorable little duckling waddled out of the street, and she sped into the racket club parking lot, past the front desk, and into the locker room.  The nurse, mother, wife, daughter, personal shopper, careful driver, tennis player ran onto her assigned court only three-and-a-half minutes late. The first player to arrive, she practiced serves until the others walked on.


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The Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery series features an ordinary woman who wears multiple hats and takes on another, that of a sleuth, to help family and friends by solving mysterious crimes that are affecting their lives.


Read posts by other women authors who write fiction with strong women protagonists:
Darlene Deluca, author of women’s fiction and romance
Pamela B. Eglinski, author of suspense and historical fiction
Theresa Hupp, author of historical fiction
Juliet Kincaid, author of historical mysteries
If you like the excerpts these authors have posted, please let them know in a comment on their blogs. Writers always enjoy hearing from readers.
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Author USB Drives

2/18/2018

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 I now have Psycho Cat USB drives to give away at book signings thanks to USB Memory Direct, a wholesale company that sells USB drives for businesses. Their business card drives identify the companies with their own logos and text. I love my book-shaped drive with the cat and my info, but next time I may order one of their custom-shaped drives and ask for a yellow cat-shaped drive.

Go to https://www.usbmemorydirect.com/ to see all the different options and to order your own 8-Gig drives.

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Fourth Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery Now Available

2/18/2018

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A year later, but here it is--the fourth Psycho Cat & the Landlady Mystery.

Beth, Psycho Cat Sylvester, and husband Arnie are all getting older and are supposedly retired. They are on an RV vacation in San Antonio, Texas when on returning from an Alamo Museum and River Walk visit, they find their truck ransacked. The robbers' attempt to steal the truck as well as the contents has them spooked, especially when they finally get to the RV park and discover evidence that their fifth-wheel RV might have also been broken into. A day later, they find out about a murder that happened in the parking lot the day they were robbed.

Another mystery for Beth and Psycho Cat to investigate and solve? Or, will it be the end of the road for the two sleuths? Purchase the book here to find out.

Note: The truck break-in happened to the author in real life. That scary experience and the attending policeman's stories of crime in the neighbor became the inspiration for Tailed. What happens with the cat's tail and to the tailing crooks is a product of the author's noir sense of humor.


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Edited Edition of Nine Lifelines Now Available

8/25/2017

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Updated and ready to read. What's going on with that guy falling from the balcony?
(Click on the image to buy print or e-book.)

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    Author
    Joyce Ann Brown

    Joyce Ann Brown loves to travel. Some of her settings, such as the Virgin Islands, a small town in Arkansas, San Antonio, and Peru are based on places she has been.

    Beth Stockwell, the landlady sleuth in CATastrophic Connections, Furtive Investigation, Nine Lifelines, and Tailed loves to speed-walk. Read the author's blog about hiking trails in Kansas City, including the Trolley Track Trail where Beth walks.  

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