Today, I would like to welcome to Shelf Full of Books Jean Erhardt, author of Small Town Trouble. Jean is on tour with her book right now and has stopped by my blog with a guest post for this stop. Take it away Jean....
Years ago, I
took a fiction writing class with author/teacher, Joyce Thompson at Lewis and
Clark College here in Portland, Oregon.
On the first day of class, the twelve of us settled around a big table,
eager to begin. Joyce introduced
herself, then proceeded to take a deck of cards from her briefcase. She passed a card to each of us. They were Tarot cards. She said, “Take a good look at your card, see
what the image brings up for you, then write
something. You’ve got twenty minutes.” Most of us sat there looking dumbfounded. Write something? About what?
something. You’ve got twenty minutes.” Most of us sat there looking dumbfounded. Write something? About what?
At the end
of allotted our twenty minutes, a few of us had managed to write a page, others
a paragraph or sentence or two. We took
turns reading aloud what we had come up with.
The
following week, Joyce began the class by saying, “I’m going to give you three
words. They are: Ring.
Unhappy. Winter. Write something using these words. You have fifteen minutes.”
On the third
week, we gathered again at the table.
She said, “Today, I will give nothing.
No Tarot card, no words, no prompts.
You have ten minutes. Write
something.”
Again, we
went at it. At the end of this exercise,
she explained that the purpose of these assignments was simple. They were designed to get us to the point of
being able to sit down at anytime, anywhere and write something without waiting
for inspiration, the right mood, or the Muse to drop by. “You must learn to write spontaneously,
without preconceived ideas, without hesitation.
When you have mastered the ability to do this, you will become a
writer.”
While many
years have gone by, I have never forgotten this experience. She was right. To be able to sit down, pull up a chair and
start writing is the ticket.
About the Author:
I was raised in the small rural town of Amelia, Ohio, about twenty
five miles out of Cincinnati. My younger brother and sister and I had a pony, a
horse, many great dogs and a couple of motorcycles. We raised a lot of hell. My
father served in The Big One at 17 and, after riding a motorcycle around
Europe, became a lawyer and later a judge. My mother worked as a homemaker and
nurse, a skill she had to use a lot with all of the injuries my siblings and I
subjected ourselves and one another to.
I wrote my first mystery story when I was in fourth grade. It was
about a kid a lot like me who heard strange noises coming from the attic and
became convinced that the attic was haunted. Eventually, the mystery was solved
when she investigated and found a squirrel eating nuts in a dark corner. It
wasn't a terribly exciting conclusion, but my teacher gave me an A anyway.
As a teenager I worked at a lot of different jobs. I worked at a
gift shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is a frequent locale in my books. I
was a swimming instructor and a lifeguard where my primary goal was to never
get wet. I did a stint in a stuffed animal gift shop at the Kings Island
amusement park where I actually sort of met the Partridge Family when they shot
an episode there. After graduating from high school, I went on to attend
Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, a stone's throw from the Great Smoky
Mountains. There was some more hell raising at college and I made some very
good friends and occasionally we have our own private reunions.
In high school and college I played basketball and I graduated
from Maryville College with a degree in Phys Ed. I went on to teach at Amelia
Junior High, the same junior high that I had attended. There was something a
little weird about passing by my old school locker every day when I walked down
the hall as a teacher. Plus, some of the teachers I'd had back when I was in
junior high were still working when I started to teach. Some of them had been
none too fond of me as a student and I don't think they were much fonder of me
as a teacher! I coached the girls' basketball and volleyball teams which was
the best part of my job.
In my late 20's I moved to the West Coast to get a broader
perspective on life or something like that. I ended up working in retail
security, or loss prevention, as it is now known, at an upscale Northwest
retailer. I kept getting promoted and with each promotion, the job became less
and less fun. It was a lot more fun catching shoplifters than sitting in
endless meetings and crunching budgets. After ten years of that, I quit to try
my hand at some serious writing. I wrote two books of fiction (not mysteries),
Benny's World and Kippo's World, as well as a book of not-especially-reverent
poetry called A Girl's Guide to God and numerous short stories, articles and
poems which have appeared in The Sonora Review, The Quarterly, Word of Mouth,
Blue Stocking and 8-Track Mind.After that, it was time to go back to work. I
got my private investigator's license and hung out my shingle. At first, I took
a lot of the cheaters cases. It seemed to me that if a guy thought his woman
was cheating, he was usually wrong. On the other hand, if a woman thought her
guy was cheating, she was almost always right. Eventually, I moved on to take
mostly criminal defense investigation work which often involved trying to
figure out what the client did and didn't do and then minimize the damage of
what they usually did do.
Contact the Author
About the Book:
Meet Kim Claypoole, restaurateur, reluctant heroine and amateur
sleuth with moxie galore. "I'd had a feeling all along that this wasn't
going to be my day. But I hadn't been prepared for things to go this
badly..."
In Small Town Trouble, the first in a series from mystery writer Jean Erhardt, we get acquainted with Kim Claypoole's irreverent and witty ways of dealing with the peculiar characters and events that she finds in her life.
Claypoole's adventure begins as she leaves her home in the Smoky Mountains to help save her kooky mother Evelyn from financial disaster. Setting off to assist Evelyn (i.e., "the other Scarlett O'Hara") with her newest personal crisis, Claypoole leaves in her wake her Gatlinburg doublewide, her restaurant, The Little Pigeon and her restaurant partner and sometimes best friend Mad Ted Weber as well as a budding secret love affair that's hotter than an Eskimo in July.
Claypoole's savior complex leads to more trouble when she bumps into an old flame in her hometown who asks for her help clearing her hapless brother of murder charges. In true Claypoole fashion, she gets more than she bargained for when she gets dragged into a complicated quest to find the true killer complete with topless tavern dancers, small town cops, a stream of backwater characters-even a meeting with the Grim Reaper. Can Claypoole muddle her way through the murky depths of this bizarre murder mystery before it's too late?
With biting humor and wit, Small Town Trouble will leave you guessing what's around the next corner in the quirky life of Kim Claypoole.
In Small Town Trouble, the first in a series from mystery writer Jean Erhardt, we get acquainted with Kim Claypoole's irreverent and witty ways of dealing with the peculiar characters and events that she finds in her life.
Claypoole's adventure begins as she leaves her home in the Smoky Mountains to help save her kooky mother Evelyn from financial disaster. Setting off to assist Evelyn (i.e., "the other Scarlett O'Hara") with her newest personal crisis, Claypoole leaves in her wake her Gatlinburg doublewide, her restaurant, The Little Pigeon and her restaurant partner and sometimes best friend Mad Ted Weber as well as a budding secret love affair that's hotter than an Eskimo in July.
Claypoole's savior complex leads to more trouble when she bumps into an old flame in her hometown who asks for her help clearing her hapless brother of murder charges. In true Claypoole fashion, she gets more than she bargained for when she gets dragged into a complicated quest to find the true killer complete with topless tavern dancers, small town cops, a stream of backwater characters-even a meeting with the Grim Reaper. Can Claypoole muddle her way through the murky depths of this bizarre murder mystery before it's too late?
With biting humor and wit, Small Town Trouble will leave you guessing what's around the next corner in the quirky life of Kim Claypoole.
Book Links
This giveaway is international
For a chance to win one e-book and one paperback of Small Town Trouble
The winner will be announced at the end of the tour.
No comments :
Post a Comment