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Nan Sampson – Author

~ Mystery, Magic and Mayhem

Nan Sampson – Author

Tag Archives: Coffee and Crime Mysteries

Exciting News!

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Nancy Bach in Author Spottings

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

author events, Barnes & Noble, Book Signings, Coffee and Crime Mysteries, Crystal Lake, Ellie Gooden

Hello, fellow babies!  Exciting news for you.  I’ll be signing books (and drink napkins and whatever else floats your boat) at the Barnes and Noble in Crystal Lake, IL on Thursday, July 27th as part of their New Writers Night.  If you’d like to come out to meet me, ask me to introduce you to Charlie (I get that a lot), beg me to include you in the next Coffee & Crime mystery, or just to hob nob with the local literary elite, be there at 6 o’clock sharp!  I’m so excited that my books will physically be in a real book store, I’m ready to explode!

As Bob Barker would say, come on down!  We’ll have a blast and I’ll share with you what’s going to happen next for Ellie Gooden, Charlie, Erik the Red and the whole crew from Horizon, Wisconsin!

Hope to see you there!

new writers night

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The Bambi Syndrome – Or How Walt Disney and I Are Alike

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Nancy Bach in The Writing Journey

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

character development, Coffee and Crime Mysteries, Ellie Gooden, orphans, Walt Disney

“You’re as bad as Walt Disney,” my editor said to me after finishing a draft of one of my WIPs (Works in Progress).  “All your characters are orphans.”

“That’s not true,” said I, vehemently.  “I mean, okay, Ellie from my Coffee and Crime mysteries is, but Ellie’s parents’ murder is part of the series arc.  In my steampunk book, though, the main character, Jonathan… oh.  Still, his father was really old when he died.”

“Yeah, but his mother died when he was young.”

“Okay, okay, but in the space opera trilogy, Peder’s parents—”

“Are dead.  He was dropped off on the door step of his foster father’s estate when he was three.”

Hmm.  I thought back across my many myriad novels, both finished and unfinished and I had to admit, my editor was right.  I seemed to have a thing for characters with dead parents.  If not outright orphans, all of them seemed to have one dead parental unit.  Which got me wondering why.

The answer came almost instantly.  It’s all Walt Disney’s fault.  I remember when I was little, how I had to be taken, crying inconsolably, out of the theater whenever my mom would take me to see a Disney movie.  Bambi, Dumbo, Pinnochio.  Orphans all, and a plot line rife with personal loss.  Is it any wonder I have this template of the hero that includes the death of a parent?  The better question is, what the heck was wrong with Walt Disney?  I didn’t create this monster.  He did!

farewell-bambis-dad

Farewell, my son!

“One could reason,” I therefore proposed to my editor, “that the death of a parent or parents leaves an indelible mark on a character.  Those kinds of traumatic events make for great internal conflict and give the character depth and resilience.  Right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but you kill them in such gruesome ways.  Remember in that fantasy novel how you killed the guy’s parents in a raid on their village?  And then, just when the kid was living happily with a foster father, you had the house attacked and his foster father eviscerated on the stairs.”  She shuddered.  “I mean, who does that?  Wouldn’t a knife in the back have sufficed?”

“I was going for pathos.”

“An arrow through the chest is pathos.  Evisceration is Roger Corman.”

Pah!  “It was dramatic,” I countered, and ended the discussion.

Still, it caused me to ponder.  Good books are rife with horrific events – not necessarily physically horrific, but certainly emotionally so.  The reader wouldn’t care much about the story if the stakes for the character weren’t high.  Yet even so… it seems to me that writers – or maybe just me in particular – find great joy in torturing our characters.  Again and again and again.  I mean, wasn’t it Nabokov who said that the job of a writer is to chase your character up a tree and then once they’re up there, throw rocks at them?

Think you’re safe up there now?  Hah!  I can fix that.

person-in-tree

Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Charles Adcock

 

See, this is what it’s like to be a writer.  The goal is always ‘just how bad can I make it for this poor soul?’.  And then, just when the reader thinks it can’t possibly get any worse… heh heh heh.

That’s right.

You kill their OTHER parent!

My non-writer friends tell me it’s probably a good thing that I’m a writer, cuz otherwise I might do all these horrific things to real people (wait, these characters ARE real people…at least to me).  I always smile sweetly and respond with, how do you know I’m not writing from experience?  That usually shuts ’em up.

Illegitimi non carborundum!

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What Weight Do You Normally Fight At?

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Nancy Bach in The Writing Journey

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Tags

Coffee and Crime Mysteries, Ellie Gooden, Nan Sampson, Writing

I’m ba-a-a-a-ack!

im-ba-ack

Greetings fellow Earthlings!

As some of you know, I took a rather spectacular fall just before Thanksgiving. Face-planted onto concrete right in front of a bunch of people from the Evil Day Job.  It was spectacular.  Blood everywhere, broken bones, including my hand and nose (and my pride), sprained things, even had to have stitches. I looked like I’d gone a round in the ring with Mike Tyson. Worst part? I spilled my entire large Coca-Cola, my special treat for that week!

I’d include a picture but you might bust something laughing – or try to blackmail me. Anyway, sorry to have been MIA for so long, but I’m back (just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet!).

On the plus side, I’m once again able to type (and write), and Book Three in the Coffee and Crime Mysteries is due out in early spring, so there’s that to look forward!  I think this is the best Ellie book yet.  THings heat up for her both in town, with Charlie and even in terms of the death of her parents.  Lots of fun!  And the cover!  Oh, the cover.  My cover artist, Raven Blackburn, has knocked it out of the park again.  I’ve shared it on my Facebook page and here’s a sneak peek for all of you as well!

coverrevealbanner

Anyhoo, now that my tippy-tapping fingers are back in action, you can look forward to more idle ramblings, pithy musings and giddy babblings soon.  Oh, and as always, the peasants are revolting.

revolting-peasants

Illegitimi non carborundum!

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Nan Sampson Author

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Book #4 of the Coffee & Crime Mysteries Coming Soon!

Release of Ellie Gooden #4!September 15, 2017
Fringe Benefits, Book #4 in the Coffee & Crime Series coming soon!

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