BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST MYSTERY AUTHOR NANCY G. WEST

Nancy G. West is a recovering business major who returned to grad school in English Literature to learn to write. She pens mystery and suspense, sprinkled with humor. Each of her Aggie Mundeen Mysteries has either been nominated or won an award. Learn more about Nancy and her books at her website/blog, where you’ll also find that Aggie blogs, too. 

Taking the Lead Character to a Beloved Place

I’ve known Aggie Mundeen and San Antonio Detective Sam Vanderhoven for fifteen years. They popped into my head when grad student Meredith Laughlin needed help with her life-threatening dilemma in my first suspense novel, Nine Days to Evil.

Aggie and Sam solved crimes through four subsequent Aggie Mundeen Mysteries despite frequently incompatible and sometimes amusing methods. I chronicled their struggles and watched their volatile relationship combust and reassemble as they combated crime in San Antonio, Texas. I enjoyed every minute of it. Readers said they fell in love with Aggie, and some wanted to marry Sam.

But I knew the couple’s dicey relationship had to either morph into greater mutual understanding and deeper affection, or they would come to blows. I decided to really test them and wrote The Plunge, the bridge to a new spin-off series, the Aggie Mundeen Lake Mysteries.

In The Plunge, Aggie and Sam settle in for a relaxing lakeside weekend and find themselves swept up in a rampaging flood of epic proportions. As they fight for survival, disaster tests their courage and strains their relationship.

Aggie, who has measured personal success by her ability to solve crimes that challenge Sam, realizes she needs to seek satisfaction outside his purview. Witnessing the grit of flood survivors and the compassionate people who help them, she finds herself drawn to unpredictable Lake Placid and the people who dwell nearby.

Plunge with Aggie Mundeen to her new beloved place.

The Plunge

An Aggie Mundeen Lake Mystery, Book 1

Aggie Mundeen and San Antonio Detective Sam Vanderhoven take care of a friend’s cottage on Lake Placid, a retreat on Texas’ Guadalupe River. Buckets of rain and gusting winds roil the lake, turning the peaceful, shady Guadalupe into an angry, raging river. As darkness descends, lightning highlights two people arguing on a dock across the river. When lightning flashes again, they are gone. Do Aggie and Sam witness an accident? A drowning? A murder?

The Plunge infects readers with the threat of looming disaster and the helplessness of being swept along by an untamable force. Do survivors really survive if disaster changes them forever?

Catastrophe propels Aggie and Sam in a new direction and threatens to pull them apart in the new spin-off series, the Aggie Mundeen Lake Mysteries. 

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GUEST AUTHOR LAREE BRYANT'S TRAVELING RESEARCH

Author LaRee Bryant’s busy life is divided between writing, running her administrative services business for not-for-profit organizations, and spoiling her grandchildren. Her latest books are Poppy Fever and Buttercup Blues, the first two books in a new mystery series. Her historical novels, Forever and Forbidden, will be available this winter in print and e-book. Learn more about LaRee and her books at her website.     

My Kind of Research

I’m one of those people who absolutely loves the research part of writing. It’s fun as well as informative to go to the actual location of a new book idea. Seeing things in person lets me write accurate descriptive scenes in my books and often leads to interesting details to add to the plot.

One key to creative research is to find local people in the know. I’ve always found them more than willing to share their knowledge and often eager to go out of their way to take me places or introduce me to others who can contribute information.

For instance, while in Jefferson, Texas to do research for Forever, a western-flavored story which deals with a murder mystery set in the time leading up to the oil boom days at the turn of the 20th century, I stumbled on the small side-street sheriff’s office. There, I was lucky enough to meet an elderly gentleman who’d just happened to drop by for a chat with current law officers. I was thrilled to learn he’d actually been the sheriff back in the “old days.” He was eager to talk about the town and its history and I was delighted to listen to experiences he’d had and stories he’d heard as a young boy.

Hearing that the town hadn’t used a gallows way back when, that they’d marched their prisoners out to the railroad trestle, tied a rope around their necks, and then pushed them off, inspired me to create a plot situation that would have my hero facing such a fate.

A paid tour of the nearby cypress lake on a tourist barge provided the visual knowledge for my main characters’ escape from a pursuing posse through moss-draped swampy waters and an interesting tidbit about alligator eyes glowing red in the dark. Being able to create the scenes with vivid true-to-life details made many parts of the story so much easier to write.

In-person research is my preference, but a bang-up job can still be done even if you can’t do the research yourself. Forbidden is set in the Amazon jungle – a real romp of a story with headhunters and hidden treasure and all the dangers of the jungle. I’d never been to the Amazon but I met and made friends with a lady who had lived in a little village on the banks of the river for five years (hunting gold, no less.)

She was kind enough to share every memory and odd detail of her experience with me over many evenings while I furiously scribbled down every word. I’ve had several people who’ve been to the Amazon themselves read the book and tell me, “I can tell you’ve been there. You got all the little details exactly right – the smells, the feel of the jungle floor beneath your feet, the sounds, the colors. You couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been there yourself.” I just smile and say a mental “thank you” to my friend Carolyne, and bask in the glow of such a great compliment.

Poppy Fever

Mysteries and murders pop up in Poppy Green's world faster than weeds in a garden. Pretty, perky, and insatiably curious, Dallas's budding interior plant-care specialist digs her way out of a bumper crop of misadventures with a little help from her new neighbor, ex cop J.C. Tucker. When Poppy accidentally winds up in possession of an expensive diamond pendant belonging to her richest and most difficult client, she fears she'll be branded a thief if her client discovers she has the jewel. When the client disappears under strange circumstances, Poppy goes on the prowl for answers. Danger escalates when she stumbles on the woman's body and realizes she needs to solve the mystery before the killer turns his sights on her.

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