Eat! Next Diet and Exercise! Then eat some more!

Do you, like most Americans, have a love—hate relationship with food? You love sizzling steaks and pizzas dripping with gooey cheese, but occasionally you’re filled with remorse. Then you avoid everything but salads and exercise. After you lose a couple of pounds, you return to your old routine and regain the weight. This is sometimes called yo-yo dieting.

Funny? Sad and pathetic? Annoying, especially to me, a former professor of nutrition. Maybe, that’s why I wrote Murder…A New Way to Lose Weight.

Let me tell you a little about my new medical mystery.

Dieting is hard. So is fitting into a new job where you aren’t wanted. Linda Almquist is trying to do both as she investigates allegations against two diet doctors that they are taking shortcuts in their current clinical trail and endangering their patients. When she discovers one of them dead, the police suspect the other diet doctor. Maybe they’re wrong. The murders might be related to something in the past – something involving her boss the Dean.

One subplot in this novel is Linda’s efforts to lose weight. There are many insidious threats to her weight loss plans (i.e. tempting high-fat foods typical of New Mexican cuisine, vending machines with junk food, and humongous servings in most restaurants).

As a nutritionist, I also wanted to tell readers about a hot new area of research—gut bacteria. Scientists have found the microflora (bacteria) in the gut change with weight loss. Researchers hypothesize they may be able to help patients increase weight loss and keep weight off by altering their gut bacteria. That’s why my diet doctors are studying the gut bacteria of their obese patients in a clinical trail. However, I was careful to not make false promises. (I guess I wouldn’t be good on TV infomercials.)

Please note the diet doctors in Murder…A Way to Lose Weight do not resemble any researchers in the field, but they do have the characteristics of several overly ambitious researchers, who have had ethical lapses.  

Murder… A Way to Lose Weight (paperback & Kindle) is available from Amazon (http://amzn.com/1610092392).

Writing Advice from Oscar Wilde

 What can you learn about writing from Oscar Wilde - the famous Irish author and wit?

Humor is important.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Know your audience.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Experiment with new ideas and approaches.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

The best fiction has the ring of truth.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. 

I think writing fiction is a type of mask. Often the “truth” is more apparent in fiction than nonfiction.

Advertise your writing.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Now I’m taking Oscar’s advice and am promoting my newest medical mystery,

MURDER…A WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT, by participating in a GoodReads Giveaway. You can win a FREE copy by signing up by June 4 at: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/188425-murder-a-way-to-lose-weight.

One more piece of advice from Oscar.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

I think you’ll find Murder… A Way to Lose Weight can be read on several levels (and hence several times). It’s a mystery. It’s got lots weird science tidbits (and references at the end), which will make you think and spark your conversation at boring parties. It addresses real problems in medical schools—scientific misconduct and hazing of junior staff and women. These problems can affect the safety of drugs you depend on. 

Here’s the blurb: Dieting is hard. So is fitting into a new job where you aren’t wanted. In MURDER…A WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT, Dr. Linda Almquist is trying to do both as she investigates two diet doctors who are endangering the lives of obese participants in their current clinical trail. When she finds one diet doctor dead, the police suspect the other diet doctor. Then the threats against Linda begin.

Also available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ENPSPR2

Garage Sale Your Writing

I’m not talking about selling your books at ridiculously low prices. I’m talking about editing your writing.

1. Get rid of what isn’t useful. The first step to a garage sale is recognizing you don’t need and will never use many of the treasures you’ve stashed in your house, garage, and/or storage unit. They’re just clutter and prevent your enjoyment of useful items.

Similarly, an author needs to read a draft of his/her writing and think. Does this sentence or section advance the plot, develop characters, or establish the location? If not, perhaps the sentence/section should be deleted.

If you really love a section of writing but know it adds nothing to your current story or novel, create a file of deleted sections, which you hope will be useful in the future. These are the items I put a high price tag on at a garage sale and don’t mind if they don’t sell because I can put them out at the next garage sale.

2. Organize your material. I find shoppers are more apt to buy items in a garage sale if the objects are arranged logically and attractively. For example, at my last garage sale I was trying to sell necklaces. (My mother had a fetish for beads of all colors and “heart” necklaces and had bought hundred of them over fifty years. None were of much value individually.) I hung the necklaces from an old wooden clothes dryer rack so that shoppers could examine the wares without tangling or breaking the chains. I sold about a hundred.

Creativity is the key to good writing, BUT many readers today prefer organized material that is easy to read. Paragraphs with more than ten sentences and sentences with three or more commas generally slow the reading process. This is one reason why many readers report they like dialog. The paragraphs and sentences tend to be short. Readers can peruse pages of dialog quickly. 

3. Never call your material junk. A positive attitude is important in any activity. If you don’t value what you’re selling or writing, why should anyone else?

4. Work hard. Successful garage sales and editing are hard work. You may enjoy the work (or maybe not), but you’ll be proud of the final result—a neater house or an improved novel.

5. Laugh at yourself and learn from your mistakes.

So are you ready to garage sale your writing and step up your editing efforts?

Maybe you’d like to examine tow of my editing efforts in the last year.

In Murder...A Way to Lose Weight, two ambitious diet doctors are testing a new way to lose weight. One doctor is killed after she develops a conscious and admits they took “short cuts,” which are endangering the lives of their obese patients. As the police turn up clues, the readers learn a bit about weird poisons and the social mores of a medical school. 

In I Saw You in Beirut, a woman uses memories of her student days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and of her career as a globetrotting epidemiologist to provide clues for the identification and extraction of a nuclear scientist, known only as F, from Iran. But memories are often biased or incomplete, and she travels to the sites of her memories to gather new evidence.

Amazon sells both the paperback and Kindle versions of Murder…A Way to Lose Weight (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610092392) and I Saw You in Beirut (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610092201).

Mixing facts into a thriller helps to develop characters and plot

 Major characters in novels need backstories. Instead of fantasizing histories for all the characters in my novels, I like to plant several into real situations.

Here are the facts: In the early 1960s, scientists identified zinc deficiency in Iran. At that time, 2-3% of the villagers in some regions of Iran didn't pass the physical for the army because of stunted growth. The head of the research team Dr. James Halstead, Sr., was married to President’s Roosevelt’s daughter, Anna.

I used these facts to explain how certain characters in I Saw You in Beirut became involved in espionage in Iran. Isn’t that a lot more believable than the backstory for James Bond?

Facts are often stranger than fiction. When I wanted to show, not tell, the readers about another fiery character in I Saw You in Beirut, I used a real incident from my research lab.

Summary of the real incident: On a fall Saturday in 1979 or 1980, one of my foreign female graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became so annoyed with a fellow student that she threatened him with the knife, which she was using to cut a birthday cake.

Science headlines can advance plots. The development of a nuclear “industry” in Iran has long been a source of headlines. I enhanced common fears to create the plot for I Saw You in Beirut. Then I included a map with major cities and important sites for the nuclear industry at the front to the novel to add authenticity.

Plot summary: A mysterious source of leaks on the Iranian nuclear industry, known only as F, sends an email from Tabriz: Help. Contact Almquist. Intelligence sources determine the message refers to Sara Almquist, a globetrotting epidemiologist, and seek her help to extract F from Iran. As Sara tries to identify F by dredging up memories about her student days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her work in Lebanon and the Emirates, groups ostensibly wanting to prevent F’s escape attack her repeatedly. She begins to suspect her current friendship with Sanders, a secretive State Department official, is the real reason she’s being attacked.

I Saw You in Beirut (Kindle & paperback) is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610092201.

Promote Your Books as if They’re Fad Diets

My latest murder mystery Murder...A Way to Lose Weight is about dieting. So I‘ve thought a lot

about fad diets in the last year. Many fad diets were first promulgated in the 1950’s. Countless nutritionists have denounced them but they keep  reappearing. What gives them such tenacity? Why are they so popular? Do fad diets provide insights into publicizing books?

What are fad diets?

I’m defining fad diets as those that basically allow you to eat all you want of one special food but restrict your intake of other foods. Famous people have endorsed these diets, but I’m leaving their names off to avoid controversy. Examples of fad diets are: the Banana Diet, the Hollywood Diet (sometime called the Grapefruit Diet), and the Baby Food Diet.

Many users of these diets have reported weight loss. Why? The dieters developed an aversion (Perhaps that’s an overstatement, but I doubt it.) to bananas, grapefruit, and baby food and ate much less. Accordingly they lost weight.

So what did you learn?

Basic science holds true. If you consume less calories and exercise more, you lose weight. Fad diets add a little advertising pizazz to the bland basic advice. In some cases, this pizazz caused people stick to their intentions long enough to lose weight.

How does this relate to promoting books?

Strong writing is like your basic balanced 1200-calorie diet with plenty of exercise. It works and produces the desired results – a good, maybe even great novel. However, it usually takes a well-known name, a dynamic platform (which mean lots of hard work doing promotional activities), and/or catchy advertising gimmicks to turn it into a best seller. 

Have you found the fad diet (advertising gimmick) to sell your books? I’d like to hear about it. I’m sure other writers would too. Leave a comment.

In Murder...A Wayto Lose Weight, two ambitious diet doctors are testing a new way to lose weight. The two, eager to become rich and famous diet gurus, take “short cuts” and endanger their patients’ lives. One doctor is killed after she develops a conscious and admits their “short cuts.” As the police turn up clues, the readers learn a bit about weird poisons and the social mores of a medical school. 

WHAT MAKES A SERIES WORK?

Marilyn on right with Bonnie Hearne

Today my guest is veteran author, F.M. (Marilyn) Meredith. She’s written forty novels. I think that makes her an expert on the topic - book series. Her newest novel is A Crushing Death.

The easy answer is the characters. For a series to work, the reader has to love the main character(s). If the main character(s) isn’t realistic with some flaws and redeeming qualities, he/she/they aren’t going to compel readers to be anxious for the next offering in the series. The writer hopes the reader will want to find out what is going to happen to the heroine/hero or supporting cast next.

In the Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery series there is a large group of on-going characters:

Officer Doug Milligan is the main character in the first book of the series: Final Respects. He appears, and sometimes stars in the following books—and is now Detective Doug Milligan.

Officer Stacey Wilbur, the only female officer for a long while, is in many of the first books, but becomes an important character and the love interest of Detective Milligan in Smell of Death. She eventually becomes Officer/Mrs. Stacey Milligan.

A favorite among readers of the series is Officer Gordon Butler. He makes his first appearance in Fringe Benefits. Nothing goes easy for Gordon in the job or his love life.

Officer Abel Navarro appears in most books. He’s married to Maria, an emergency room nurse and they have a daughter. He becomes Sergeant Navarro later in the series.

Officer Felix Zachary, the only black officer for quite some time. He’s married to Wendy, a teacher, and eventually joins Milligan as a detective.

The character who shows the most growth is Officer Ryan Strickland and much of the change can be attributed to his wife, Barbara.

The latest character to make an appearance is the new chief, Chandra Taylor, also African American. She plays a big part in the two latest books—Violent Departures and the brand new A Crushing Death.

There are other characters who come and go, some important, others not so much. In my opinion, the men and women in the Rocky Bluff mystery series is what makes the series work.

I’d love to hear from readers and what they think makes a series work.  Once again, the person who comments on the most blogs during this tour, can have a character named after them in the next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery. So be sure to leave a comment on this blog.

Tomorrow you can find Marilyn at: https://mmgornell.wordpress.com/

A CRUSHING DEATH Blurb:

A pile of rocks is found on a dead body beneath the condemned pier, a teacher is accused of molesting a student, the new police chief is threatened by someone she once arrested for attacking women, and Detective Milligan’s teenage daughter has a big problem.

Here’s where to get it: http://www.amazon.com/Crushing-Death-Rocky-Bluff-P-D/dp/1610092260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457618775&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Crushing+Death+by+F.M.+Meredith

Bio:

F. M. Meredith who is also known as Marilyn Meredith is nearing the number of forty published books. Besides being an author she is a wife, mother, grandma and great-grandmother. Though the Rocky Bluff she writes about is fictional, she lived for over twenty-years in a similar small beach town. Besides having many law enforcement officers in her family she is counts many as friends. She teaches writing, loves to give presentations to writing and other groups, and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, three chapters of Sisters in Crime and on the board of Public Safety Writers Association.

Website: http://fictionforyou.com

Blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com

Facebook: Marilyn Meredith

Twitter: MarilynMeredith

Do You Want to Write a Medical Mystery?

Lead in the water of Flint, Michigan and the Ebola and Zika viruses have made science newsworthy. Maybe, you’re toying with the idea of writing a medical mystery. Where do you begin?

The first step in writing a medical mystery is research. This means perusing newspaper stories, items on the WEB, and articles in Science, Scientific American, and medical journals for hot topics.

I decided a topic that interested almost everyone was dieting. Hence the title of my new mystery, Murder…A Way to Lose Weight. I noticed many researchers were studying the effect of the gut microbiome on the human body.

You’re thinking, “Who cares? What’s a microbiome?”

Let me reword the sentence: Scientists think they can help you lose weight by altering the bacteria in your gut. It could be a relatively easy way to lose weight.

Now I have your attention. This also illustrates my second point. A novelist must transmit complex science accurately, simply, and in a lively manner. In essence, (s)he must make the science exciting and not slow the plot with too many details.

In Murder...A Way to Lose Weight, two ambitious diet doctors alter the bacteria in the guts of obese subjects in a clinical trail. The two are so eager to become rich and famous diet gurus that they take “short cuts” and endanger their patients’ lives. One doctor is killed after she develops a conscious and admits the “short cuts” to Linda Almquist, the acting associate dean in a medical school.

As the police, with Linda’s help, turn up clues, the readers learn a bit about weird poisons and the social mores of a medical school. 

Good medical mysteries (like Robin Cook’s Coma) are realistic. Readers are more apt to be scared if they believe the situation could happen.

That’s why I use poison, which was the cause of a rash of real accidental poisonings in New Mexico in the 1980s. I wove the information from two scientific articles into my tale of an intentional poisoning and set the novel in Albuquerque as an oblique clue.

To add further authenticity, I referenced key articles in the “The Science Behind the Story” at the end of the novel.

Are you ready to start writing a medical mystery? Maybe, you should read Murder…A Way to Lose Weight first.