Words and Music: September 2019

Monday, September 30, 2019

Tell Me Again Why I'm Doing This?

"Give someone a book, they'll read for a day. Teach someone how to write a book, they'll experience a lifetime of paralyzing self doubt."—Lauren DiStefano, author of Burning Kingdoms

Book number eleven, novel number ten, “Augusta McKee Mystery” number four, is waiting for me to hit that magical “Publish My Book” button on Kindle Direct Publishing. Yikes.

Every time I get to this point, I have this moment. What in the world am I doing? Despite all the edits, proofreads, read-throughs by beta readers, this book has to have mistakes in it. Beginning with the entire concept of the story. I should just sneak away and forget about releasing it – despite the fact I’ve already announced that it will be available October 1. Two days from today.

What would happen if I reneged, other than my having a large amount of egg on my face? The sun’ll come up tomorrow. (I know you sang that, I just did.) Grass will grow, flowers will bloom, the rivers will continue to run.

This is my child, my precious child, I’m about to push out into the cold, cruel world. Will it get a cold shoulder or a welcoming reception? Will anybody read it? Will the people who read it like it? Maybe I should let it stay home today. Or for a month. Or forever. I’ll read it.

My author friends assure me all of us go through this period of self-doubt. That’s really kind of a mild way of putting it. It’s more like a sense of “whatever possessed me to sit down at my computer and start putting words together when I have no idea what I’m doing and I have absolutely no business doing this.”

And if you think it will get better with time, I fervently hope you are correct, because at this point it’s gotten worse with every book. While I’m writing it, I have the greatest time imaginable. I completely lose myself in the book. My characters take over my life. I dream about them. I tell them to please go sit in the corner so I can go to the bank and avoid wrecking my car in the process. I’m sure I walk right past friends in the supermarket and don’t even see them because Augusta or Malcolm is talking to me about a plot point. And before those two, it was Andrew and Jake Cameron. They had my attention for over two years.

Oh, I will follow through and click on that box, and watch The Case of the Purloined Professor go live on Amazon, and I’ll spread the word via social media that it’s available. And wait anxiously for the first reviews (and wish more people would kindly consider writing even a couple of lines for a review … we just never get enough, unless our name is Stephanie Meyer or John Grisham or Stephen King. Or the ex-billionaire, J. K. Rowling).

I truly am enjoying writing this mystery series. I like Augusta McKee and Malcolm Mitchell and their friends and family. It’s a thrill to feel that Augusta has a following, and I hope it continues to grow. I love that I’m learning so much about police work, its demands and intricacies (with many, many thanks to Stephen Kramer and the Greater Cincinnati Police Historical Society and Museum), and the limitations policing had in the mid-1960s—despite which they did remarkable work. Our law enforcement officers are dedicated, effective, and some of the bravest people on

the planet.

There’s my answer … I do it because I love what I’m learning, and I love being able to share it with the nice people who read my books. After all, that’s what art is. A means of sharing our passion, whether it’s art, music, dance, theater, or literature. And I’m blessed with the desire and, it seems, the ability to share my passion for music through literature.

Yes, I guess I just answered my own question. Get ready, The Case of the Purloined Professor. You can do this. October first! Get out there and do your stuff!

Thank you for your support, dear reader. It means more than you know.

To learn more please see my Amazon author page:
https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Moore-Jordan/e/B00IBZ731U/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Monday, September 23, 2019

Meet Augusta McKee—Singer and Amateur Sleuth

It’s a thrill to have received recognition from two book award programs for The Case of the Slain Soprano, my first cozy mystery. The book was named a finalist in the 2018 Wishing Shelf Book Awards and a Semi-Finalist in the 2019 Kindle Book Awards.

A departure from my historical novels, writing the “Augusta McKee Mystery Series” was a new challenge for me, and I have enjoyed it more than I ever dreamed I would. One reason was the opportunity to revisit Cincinnati, where the series is set in the 1960s. I spent sixteen years there as a college student and young wife and mother, and I loved much about the city. Many of my favorite places make their way into the “Augusta” books. Another reason I’ve enjoyed this series is the opportunity to share some of my experiences as a musical theater director for over thirty years here in Pennsylvania, and also to share some of the music I love and have been teaching young singers for forty years.

Admittedly, there is some of Susan Moore Jordan in spunky Augusta Mckee and her love of music and Cincinnati. But there the similarity ends. Having been “vertically challenged” my entire adult life at barely five feet tall, making Augusta something of a fashionista with a model's figure definitely made my character her own woman. And keeping her single—a statement in itself in an era when never-married females might have been considered "old maids" or "spinsters"—gave her a very different life.

Not much about Augusta’s early life gave any indication she’d become a fearless lady who can confront cops and climb a rock wall in a skirt as she does in the first book in the series. Born into a family of some means in Philadelphia, Professor Augusta Iris McKee has been in Cincinnati since she entered the Conservatory of Music to study singing in 1927. Now fifty-three, she is a respected member of two college faculties: her alma mater and Cliffside College, where she also teaches music literature and directs an annual musical stage production. Augusta tells few people why she has never married. The fellow college student who won her heart died at the age of twenty in 1931, the year she graduated. While she’s had men in her life, Augusta doubts she’ll ever meet another Meyer Abrams. He gave her a new passion: teaching people to sing, though she still enjoys the opportunity to perform occasionally.

Augusta is proud of the fact she appears much younger than her years. At five feet nine inches tall she enjoys wearing designer stiletto heels which bring her to an even six feet. Independent, strong-willed and outspoken, she is fiercely loyal to the people she loves. Admired by her peers, loved by her students and by the Sisters of Mercy at Cliffside College, Augusta has made music her life, and sharing her music is her greatest joy.

In the spring of 1963, Augusta is faced with a challenge she could never have imagined when the young girl playing the leading role in her Cliffside production of The Pirates of Penzance is found dead. Homicide Detective Malcolm Mitchell comes on the scene as lead investigator into Linnea’s murder, and sparks fly during his first encounter with Augusta at the campus. Later, their considerable differences resolved, they begin to work together to solve this case. By the end of the book, Augusta and Malcolm have kindled a romance.

Since I first introduced Augusta McKee, she’s had one adventure after another. In The Case of the Disappearing Director, the search for a missing eyewitness to a mobster murder, Augusta tries to stay out of Malcolm's way as he attempts to solve the case but finds herself in the middle of the action.

In the third installment of the series, The Case of the Toxic Tenor, Malcolm and Augusta work together to solve the murder of a world-famous tenor which takes place during the city’s May Music Festival in Cincinnati's renowned Music Hall in May 1964.

And most recently Malcolm and Augusta face their greatest challenge in The Case of the Purloined Professor, which will be released on October 1. In this latest of the series, Augusta is taken hostage by the ruthless kingpin of a crime family, and Malcolm must find and rescue her. He receives some unexpected help from a house guest: a shaggy Golden Shepherd named Caruso, who Mal and Augusta—to her consternation—are caring for as his master, a fellow Cincinnati police officer, recovers from a gunshot wound.