A Very Unambitious Man: A True Anti-Hero

For about the first 20 pages, I always wonder why I buy M. C. Beaton's "Death of ???" mysteries. Death of a Ghost was no different. I find her declarative, staccato style annoying, not only because it's the antithesis of most of the advice I read about writing. Yet, the series continues on the "best selling" charts as it approaches the 40th book.

There is no mystery to the success of Beaton's hapless Highland sleuth, Hamish MacBeth. The books are as funny as all get out. A walk down the high street of Lochdubh, as Hamish ponders some murder or other problem, presents a series of chuckles as he meets the residents of the small town. In Death of a Ghost, the reader gets a funny subplot when a minister's wife tries to hook Hamish up with her neice.

Don't look for any indepth characterization here. The characters of the McBeth books walk their ordained path with a minimum of description and deviation. The chuckles are of prime importance. Even McBeth's constabulary opponents play the part of foils.

Oh, there's a mystery to be solved about who murdered whom and why. It even sports some nice twists and turns. All in all Beaton's books are more complicated than it first seems. Still, Hamish keeps to his set patterns of avoiding credit for the crimes he solves.

Care to take a look at a sample and other reviews? You can find print and epub versions of Death of a Ghost at

Amazon      B&N/Nook       kobo/Rakuten

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Other Interesting Reading

For once, I found a news feed useful...one about the Queen of Great Britain and Megan Markle doing a royal tour together. Not a royalist. [I'm sort of stuck in a Pantagenant mind-set.] But, this article on body language gave me a tick for one of my characters--Pillar.

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Then, an issue book buyers of all sorts should be interested in: anti-trust law. You know that 20th century idea that no one business should control sales of a particular product, aka no monopolies. The US has a particular problem with the idea. Can anyone say Amazon? -- Anyway, seems there has been some stirrings lately, and The Passive Guy wrote a blog about it.

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My Writing Rut

is depressing. Oh, I'm making some progress. Finally got Cahal and Britt together again--in Chapter 12 rather than Chapter 4. Now I have to go back because I forgot to include a bit about Britt's Granny Nan's rings. [I think it's going to be an important part of the last battle at the end of the book so it was necessary.] Ugh.

Am making more little banners for There Be Demons. Won't getting them on Twitter yet. I'm waiting for the publisher to get the book blurb changed. [You can also download the ebook on kobo/Rakuten.]

5***** Review: "a great adventure through a fantasy land that captures your imagination and keeps you turning the pages to find out what happens next. Characters are well developed and the journey we are taken on is fast paced and filled with twists and treachery throughout."

Feisty Britt Kelly's life is a disaster. When her divorces her mother, her family moves into her half-sister's apartment in the projects. Britt must adjust to a new school and a step-mother who hates her and her younger brothers

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But poverty and coping with a new school aren't Britt's worst problems. In the long standing Demon Wars, the minions of Prince Vetis build a secret base in Trebridge behind the Kingscourt's battle lines. When she is drafted to fight the demons with three new friends, Britt didn't know demons existed. She's not even sure she wants to fight them.

The race is on. As the demon forces grow, the Gargoyle Guardians of the city must teach the four teens to use enough "Grace" as a weapon to survive. Britt's new problem: learning to control her magical powers...in spite of Gillen, the gargoyle leader, pissing her off with his fussy rules.

Visiting Your Favorite Fantasy and Realistic Worlds

When a writer creates a realistic setting, readers will imagine much more detail than the actual words used. That's one of the wonderful things about books. I'm sure you have your favorite settings/worlds and react to the world the writers created.

 [Any comments about your favorites welcome.]

If you've read this blog, even sporadically, you've gotten an idea of what kinds of worlds I like to lose myself in. I think of them as fantastically wonderful settings for characters to act in, and where I can enjoy arm-chair adventures. You may or not agree with me or the books I like. But, I'll bet you have your own worlds/settings you like to return to. 

Over the last few weeks, I've returned to several worlds worth mentioning, but they didn't really give me any new insights into the writing process. Even so, I'd like to review them.

Flowering Judas by Jane Haddam. Her running mystery series, featuring detective Gregor Demarkian, has run for years with Haddam delivering competent entertaining puzzles in each book. Here, Demarkian, a retired FBI agent and consultant, is brought in to find out why the body of a man missing for years is suddenly found hanging from a bill board in his home town. Yeah. Demarian's up for solving the puzzle as he chases the clues through an unknown town. While Haddam's interesting plots shine, I think her three-dimensional characters sparkle more.

Even though my favorite part of Demarkian's world, the Armenian enclave along Cavanaugh Street, has a small role in Flowering Judas, I give the book Five ***** Stars.

Death of Yesterday by M. C. Beaton. Another long running series, this time set in far northern Scotland, features Sergeant Hamish MacBeth, a genius at solving crimes and avoiding promotion. He also has problems getting married, a strong sub-plot in this book, and his nosy, small town neighbors always make matters more difficult. 

Beaton creates tangled plots that begin with a tiny wiggling thread of a crime, often a murder. The more MacBeth investigates, the more tangled the thread becomes. The ending comes as a surprise because the real criminal behavior is more serioyus than offing a stand-offish artist who gets killed because she sketched the wrong person.

Death of Yesterday only gets Four**** from me because Beaton's writing is trending towards cookie-cutter descriptions, though her characters remain interesting. Even the detectives in the home office, who are jealous of MacBeth's success rate, supply a few surprises.

Last but not least, Hunted by Kevin Hearne. Atticus O'Sullivan is still running from various preternaturals and pantheons, with only a few allies besides his Irish wolfhound and Granuaile, the new druid he just finished training. And that causes problems for the book. The opening was one big long chase ... for about half the book. Even Atticus rising from the "dead" almost failed to save this book from a competent, but Three*** Star rating. Hearne's sense of humor saved his rating in my eyes. If you like an irreverent take on life in general...and gods in particular ... this book is worth the time to read it. I give it Four**** Stars.

You think that's a lot of books to read in two weeks? I still had another one about Henry the VII I didn't review. Guess I could say, I can read a thousand page book a week ... but I don't want to. I prefer variety. 

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Not much new stuff written this week. The big achievement was finishing the content edits for The Ghost in the Closet. Did have to change the name of my main character from Doodie to Dumdie. Seems my editor came from another part of the country. This California girl didn't associate the name "Doodie" [which was explained in the  story as coming from the way Dumdie sang to herself as a child] ... with "doggie do", which term I do understand ... though I tend to use the term sh*t.

Now that the copy edits are done, I can send the story to the formatter. Think I can get it published by before the 11th? If you like me on Facebook you'll know when The Ghost in the Closet comes out for free on Smashwords.

Still I wonder: What reasons have caused you to change a character's name?

Though I managed to get this blog done, it seems tinkering with my website ate my whole week-end.  I still have to change the inevitable typos and glitches yet, but I like the change in appearance so far. You can check it out, if you want.

To-Read Pile Discoveries

The Read ...

Found two gems in my to-read piles ... in two separate piles.  First, award winning Connie Willis' Lincoln's Dreams, which turned out to be Robert E. Lee's dreams instead.  The main character is an author's research assistant who keeps tracing down obscure facts about various participants in the American Civil War.  What I found so intriguing was that Willis took all those facts and built a back drop for the love interest's mental/physical collapse.  I think the book classifies as a psychological thriller.

An example of the way Willis uses facts:  "We spent the rest of the day in the library.  Annie took notes on Lincoln.  I read Lee's letters and tried to find out what Annie [Lee's daughter] had died from.  Nobody seemed to know.  I found the chicken, though.  Its name was Little Hen.  She had walked uninvited into Lee's tent one day, and Lee had kept her for over a year.  She laid an egg under Lee's camp cot every day and sat on Traveller's [Lee's horse] back, which delighted the soldiers."

M. C. Beaton's A Highland Christmas, featuring Hamish Macbeth, was the other book I read -- if you can call 130 pages of large print a book ... even if bound like a mass paperback.  From what I can tell, if you are the author of a popular series, you often get rewarded by being asked to write long short stories or novellas for theme anthologies.  If you are close to the top of your game, your novella [or shorter] may get bound as a single.  Or, at least they did ten years ago.

The series, set in the "very far north of Scotland", easily contains over fifteen cozy mysteries where Macbeth's rogue supervisor presents a greater opponent than the criminals.  All the major secondary characters of the novels appeared in this volume.  I love the way Beaton skates across the Highland character cliches without getting bogged down.  The novelette is well paced and yielded many chuckles and some out loud laughs.  What more do you want for entertainment in the dentist's waiting room.

Web and Other Stuff ...

So, you're in the business to make money writing?  Well, Tim Ferriss who wrote the Four Hour Work Week, gives his opinion on his blog about "how writers really make money"[This via the an AW Water Cooler thread started by V-Man.]   The comments are interesting.

Then, there are the financial problems of Barnes & Noble.  While I don't think the behemoth will go to the bone yard any time soon,  their wrinkles are showing.

A couple days ago, after over a month of visiting other places to buy books, we happened into the local store.  Did my usual browse the display areas, the sci-fi/fantasy section, mysteries, and YA.  Can't remember buying a book.  Today, I browsed the grocery store book section while the old man restocked our light bulbs.  Found four new books.  We're talking Patricia Briggs, Christine Feehan, and similar names here.  Didn't see hide nor hair of them while at B&N.

Saggy, baggy bookstores, anyone?

Progress ...

This blog is so late, I had better have made some progress in my writing.  *smirk*,  *smirk*  I did.  I posted the second Renna's Tale -- As Subborn As a Half-Elven.  Still don't have any artwork, but we'll see what Sunday brings.

And, no.  I didn't query any agents.

Trivia ...

Embarrassment, really.  Chanced to look at a couple comments I left earlier on other blogs a couple days ago.  Oh, the typos.  No one would ever want me to be on their team for a spelling bee.  I don't even want to know how many typos can be found in the Renna stories.