Guest Post & #Giveaway – Tangled Up In Brew by Joyce Tremel #cozy @JoyceTremel
Tangled Up in Brew (A Brewing Trouble Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Berkley (October 4, 2016)
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0425277706
E-Book ASIN: B01AHKXIAQ
Synopsis
Another intoxicating mystery featuring brew pub owner Maxine “Max” O’Hara—from the author of To Brew or Not to Brew
BEER TODAY, GONE TOMORROW…
Brew pub owner Maxine “Max” O’Hara and her chef/boyfriend, Jake Lambert, are excited to be participating in the Three Rivers Brews and Burgers Festival. Max hopes to win the coveted Golden Stein for best craft beer—but even if she doesn’t, the festival will be great publicity for her Allegheny Brew House.
Or will it? When notoriously nasty food and beverage critic Reginald Mobley is drafted as a last-minute replacement judge, Max dreads a punishing review. Her fears are confirmed when Mobley literally spits out her beer, but things get even worse when the cranky critic drops dead right after trying one of Jake’s burgers. Now an ambitious new police detective is determined to pin Mobley’s murder on Max and Jake, who must pore over the clues to protect their freedom and reputations—and to find the self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner.
Guest Post
Many thanks to Joyce for stopping by and sharing with us what happens while she is writing. I am not a writer but could totally see myself talking to the characters when they are not behaving!
I have a confession to make. Sometimes my characters misbehave. Now, I’m not talking about them doing bad things. After all, some of the characters are villains. Villains are supposed to misbehave and cause all kinds of trouble. Even in cozy mysteries like I write, bad guys are—well—bad. It’s when they decide they don’t want to be the bad guy and someone else is responsible for that murder that they cause havoc with my plot.
The good guys and the supporting cast aren’t any better. Here’s what I mean. I don’t write a detailed outline, but I do have the story mapped out. Certain characters are supposed to do certain things at certain times. I’ll be chugging along adding words to the page knowing exactly where the scene or chapter is going and then WHAM. Dead stop. I’ll write another sentence. Maybe change a few words or rearrange some dialogue, but nothing works. I’ll stare at the page for a few minutes or a few hours. Before I know it, I’m talking aloud to the characters in the scene. “Why are you doing this to me? Why aren’t you cooperating? You’re supposed to (insert whatever action).”
Fortunately, they don’t actually talk back to me, but they might as well. I can almost hear them laughing at me when I try to force them to do something they don’t want to do. With a few books under my belt now, I’ve learned that sometimes I have to let them have their way. I’ve written scenes where I forced the outcome to fit what I wanted. I almost always end up scrapping and rewriting those scenes. The newly written material is invariably what the characters wanted in the first place. I swear I hear them sometimes say, “I told you so.”
Before you decide that I’ve completely lost my mind, let me explain. When I plan a book I only have a general idea of what the characters are like. Sometimes new characters that I hadn’t even thought of when I started the book appear suddenly and worm their way into the story. Even in a series, or maybe especially in a series, the characters grow and change as the story progresses. Through the words I put on the page, each character changes as they interact with the others scene by scene and chapter by chapter. Even though they’re figments of my imagination, for the story to make sense and for the characters to feel like real people to the reader, I have to let them act like real people. And that means sometimes letting them have their own way and misbehave. Just because I’m the author, it doesn’t mean I know what’s best.
Just please, whatever you do, don’t tell my characters I said that!
About the Author
Joyce Tremel was a police secretary for ten years and more than once envisioned the demise of certain co-workers, but settled on writing as a way to keep herself out of jail. She is a native Pittsburgher and lives in a suburb of the city with her husband and a spoiled cat.
Her debut mystery, To Brew Or Not To Brew
Webpage * Facebook * Twitter * GoodReads
Giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
check out the other great blogs on this tour
October 3 – A Date with a Book – REVIEW*
October 3 – The Girl with Book Lungs – SPOTLIGHT
October 4 – Shelley’s Book Case – REVIEW
October 4 – Island Confidential – INTERVIEW
October 5 – Grace. Gratitude. Life. by Marie McNary – REVIEW
October 6 – Melina’s Book Blog – REVIEW
October 7 – fuonlyknew – REVIEW
October 7 – Queen of All She Reads – SPOTLIGHT
October 8 – A Holland Reads – REVIEW
October 8 – LibriAmoriMiei – REVIEW*
October 9 – Mystery Playground – GUEST POST
October 10 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, &, Sissy, Too! – REVIEW
October 11 – Texas Book-aholic – REVIEW
October 12 – Cassidy Salem Reads & Writes – REVIEW*
October 13 – Bibliophile Reviews – REVIEW
October 13 – Author Annette Drake’s blog – SPOTLIGHT
October 14 – Cinnamon, Sugar, and a Little Bit of Murder – REVIEW
October 14 – Cozy Up With Kathy – INTERVIEW
October 15 – MysteriesEtc – REVIEW*
October 16 – Brooke Blogs – REVIEW
October 16 – StoreyBook Reviews – GUEST POST
Dianne Casey
New author and series to me. Looking forward to reading, a brew house setting sounds really interesting.