Thank you Bryan Stone, a fine author and blogger, for inviting me to participate in this blog tour.

Bryan is working on his third Kay Francis cozy mystery novel.

I’ve read the first two in the series (Murder at the Belmar and Midnight in Valhalla)  and can hardly wait to read what the actress is up to this time.

I also follow his blog  not only because I like the content he posts but also because of his eloquent style of expressing himself. Whenever I read either one of his novels or his posts I feel like I am getting a lesson on how to write well.

This blog tour requires that I answer 4 questions about my writing process and then nominate the blogs of two or three other writers who inspire me,  to do the same.

1)      What am I working on?

Right now I am in between large projects. I’ve just sent a short story titled The Benefit of Tears to ROOM Magazine’s short story competition. I have to thank Bryan for this as his post on Nathaniel West made me go back to reading The Day of The Locusts and came across this line: only those who hope have the benefit of tears, thus inspiring me for the title of my story. Thank you, Bryan.

My crime novel The Protectors is off trying to grab the attention of a publisher while I’m still debating about self-publishing my women’s fiction novel The Dating Club. I am in editing mode for this novel, preparing to send out to Beta readers. I also have a sequel to The Protectors in the works.

As for my blog, I like to have series. I am someone who can get bored fairly easily and so the notion of a series appeals to me. Once finished I can go on. You can read these series on my blog: Ten Great First Dates, Writers’ Desks, Female Nobel Prize Laureates and Femmes Fatales.

2)      How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I think that The Protectors is more of a literary novel with a crime occurring in it rather than a traditional mystery novel. It’s not a who-done it for from the get go the reader pretty much knows who committed the crime. I am a criminologist by profession and  so I am interested in the whys of crime.

In The Protectors, I have three criminals: a serial killer, a destitute woman and a cop, each with different motives and past histories tangled up with their crimes. I like to push the social and psychological button.

As for The Dating Club, it’s different in that, although it can be categorized in “chick-lit” its protagonists are older and more concerned with issues such as death, mortgages and loneliness in middle age. The novel examines the effects of an absent father on  a woman’s future relationships.

 My novel Mourning Has Broken is also different in that it is a connected essays on grief. For those interested, I have posted excerpts on my blog.

3)    Why do I write what I do?

The simple answer to this question is because I must. In some ways it is the writing that chooses me and not the other way around. Oh, this sounds like such a cliché but it’s true.

4)    How does my writing process work?

I am such a disorganized person when it comes to writing. I take all these notes down that I never use. I started to write Mourning Has Broken when my sister died after a five year struggle with lymphoma. I told myself that I would write for a year whenever I fell into the grieving well. What surfaced was a collection of essays on mourning. After that year, I re-wrote, hired CreateSpace to edit it (which I have had pointed out still has mistakes) and published through Createspace. Otherwise, on a normal writing day (everyday) I make myself a cup of tea and read in bed to motivate myself to whatever it is I am working on that day, whether it’s my novels, a synopsis, a query letter or a blog post.

Who’s Up Next on my Writing Process Blog Tour?

The purpose of this blog tour is to offer support to fellow bloggers, to expose their writings to a larger audience and so I invite you to take notice of what these wonderful writers are up to and to follow them next week as they post their own writing process.

D.G. Kaye

She is a nonfiction writer of memoirs about life experience, matters of the heart and women’s issues. D.G. began writing using it as an emotional tool to sort and express her emotions back from her days growing up in an emotionally turbulent childhood. D.G. writes to share her stories about emotional conflicts, overcoming, and she digs deep within to analyze where emotions stem from and how they play into our older selves.

D.G. Kaye is the author of Conflicted Hearts and Meno-What? A Memoir.

D.G.’s debut book, Conflicted Hearts – A Daughter’s Quest for Solace from Emotional Guilt delves into her emotional struggles as a child, growing up with a narcissistic mother.

Her newest book, Meno-What? A Memoir is a humorous and informative journey she shares about the pitfalls of menopause.

  D.G. also blogs about life, her opinions on people and events and she also shares helpful articles about the writing world. D.G’s favourite quote is: Live Laugh Love . . . And Don’t Forget to Breathe!

I have read both her books and have loved them equally as well. Her voice is authentic and writes with honesty and perception.

You can follow D.G. on twitter, facebook, her author page on Amazon and her website.

Claudia Anderson

Claudia Anderson is a writer who specializes in fantasy fiction and creative non-fiction. She authors a blog titled Humoring the Goddess: Managing the Madness and Magic of Middle Age (www.humoringthegoddess.com), sharing the humorous and often confusing side of life after 50.  She also is a frequent contributor to the blog at Retirement and Good Living (www.retirementandgoodliving.com) , and a Copywriter for Imagine Publicity (www.imaginepublicity.com).

She has been published in the Wisconsin Regional Writer, Paper Tape, and the Peninsula Pulse. She has written several novels dealing with time travel, romance, and mystery, and is working on getting them published.  When not writing, Claudia is an Internet Data Conversion Specialist Analyst for a catalog distribution company. She is happily married, with two grown sons and one adorable grandson.

One of my favorite quotes of hers is from her post Ten Ways To Become a Better Writer: the dreams of those who have only a high school degree are no different than those with a Ph.D.  It is what one does with those dreams that matter in the long run.  You can read the full post here. 

Grace Lessageing

Grace Lessageing writes a blog titled  Anecdotage  where she writes about what is important to her in her life: children, music, food, health.

Writing as Jane Dean she is the author of A Year of Familiar Strangers, a novel about a marriage falling apart as she faces the empty nest syndrome.

She began writing about 5 years ago, starting with short stories &then penning the novel she always wanted to write

She runs a writing group called the Spokes and also writes a weekly, meandering blog about anything she think of, including ageing, life, society and current affairs.

She is also leader of a creative writing group and lives in Bournemouth UK.

Her novel is available here.