The Comeback Kid

Breaking up with a series is traumatic. Sometimes you have no choice because the publisher pulled the plug. Sometimes your heart is broken by an author who decides to end a series. Sometimes you end the affair. After long-term relationships, I dumped two popular series—Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta mysteries and John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport mysteries. What can I say? We were in a rut. And then there’s the break-ups where your heart is ripped out and then stomped on by Louboutin stilettos. So what happens you’re asked to reconcile?

I found Deadly Love in the mystery section at Border’s. It didn’t take long to figure out that the author, B.D. Joyce, was Brenda Joyce. I’d enjoyed her romance novels featuring the Bragg family. In fact, they’re buried two-rows deep in my bookshelves. The introduction to her new series read: “Welcome to the world of Francesca Cahill, crime solver extraordinaire. Francesca is no ordinary heroine. She refuses to bow to convention, wears her heart on her sleeve, and is determined to right the ills and injustices of the world.”

               

Color me intrigued.

Set in turn-of-the-century New York City (1902 to be exact), the mystery centers around a little boy who is spirited away from his bed during a high-society ball. Two people race to save him: bluestocking reformer Francesca Cahill and NYC Police Commissioner Rick Bragg. The characters engaged my interest right from the start. Francesca’s father, Andrew, is a millionaire who made his fortune in meat-packing after a humble beginning as a farmer. He adores Francesca and often turns a paternal blind-eye to her adventures. So it is her mother, Julia, an American blue-blood, who rules the family with an iron fist. To Julia’s despair, Francesca has little interest in obtaining a husband. Instead, our intrepid heroine would rather follow local politics and effect positive change for the less fortunate. Luckily Julia has another daughter: the beautiful Connie who is (seemingly?) perfect and (happily?) married to the dashing Neil. The youngest child, Evan, a charming ne’er do-well with a gambling problem, is the apple of his mother’s eye and an irritant to his hard-working father. At the end of Deadly Love, Francesca and Bragg solve the crime and become very “special friends.”  

In the second book in the series, Deadly Pleasures, Joyce introduces her most intriguing character yet—Calder Hart. Half-brother to Bragg, Hart is a bad boy in the best sense of the word—disturbingly sensual, sardonically witty, and uncaring about what society thinks of him. He is also Bragg’s arch-rival, so it’s no surprise when Hart turns his attention to Francesca to get a rise out of his do-good brother.

I tore through Deadly Affairs and Deadly Desire in 2002. By Deadly Caress and Deadly Promise, both published in 2003, I was firmly in Hart’s corner. Bragg was blonde and noble, but Hart was dark and hot. (I do love me some bad boy.) And then came the moment that arrogant womanizer Calder Hart could no longer deny his infatuation with the beautiful and brave Francesca, and he made her an offer of marriage. I’m not ashamed to admit that I squealed audibly when she said “Yes!”

I waited impatiently for Deadly Illusions, which didn’t come out until 2005. And I was chomping at the bit by the time Deadly Kisses dropped in 2006. It was the biggest nail-biter yet! Hart, who is suspected of killing his devious ex-mistress Daisy, ends his engagement to Francesca to protect her from scandal—breaking her heart and my heart in the process. Only Francesca believes in his innocence, and it is a frantic race to capture the murderer and Hart’s heart. (Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.) The series was on fire. Then these devastating words posted to Brenda Joyce’s website in 2009.

I would like to thank all of you who have emailed me inquiring about The Deadly Series. My publisher is simply not interested in publishing the final book at this time. I realize that a majority of my readers do not know that I don’t get to write whatever I choose, but what they [the publisher] request I write. When I announced after Deadly Kisses that I was taking a break from the series, I had every intention of finishing this series. I’m saddened that the characters have been left in limbo. If you wish to voice your concerns, I’m including the [publisher’s] email address.

Limbo? This was more like being left in an upper level of hell. When I said the series was on fire, I didn’t mean it literally! I had questions that demanded answers—Would Francesca and Hart ever marry? If so, would the sensuous Hart, who sometimes enjoyed intimacies with multiple women at the same time, remain true to the virginal Francesca? Would Bragg get over losing Francesca to Hart? Could Hart and Bragg rebuild their fractured relationship? And what would happen to Evan (Francesa’s scamp of a brother), Sarah (a bohemian artist and Evan’s ex-fiancée), Maggie (a working-mother of common birth who is crushing on Evan), Roarke (Bragg’s half-brother, a medical student who shows an uncommon interest in free-spirit Sarah), and the other secondary characters I’d grown to love?

Deep breath. And now for the comeback.

Last year, I received an email from Brenda Joyce. The subject line: "A very important message about The Deadly Series." Her publisher had had a change of heart. It planned to re-release the last two books in the series in December 2010 and January 2011 and—wait for it—the 9^th book in the series, Deadly Vows in February 2011.

I’m happy to say that Joyce delivered. For the first time in years, I had to turn to the back page to see how Deadly Vows ended. And now it’s your turn. Treat yourself to a great series and be sure to read them in order, you won’t want to miss one second of the adventure, mystery, and romance. 

Vanished!

Last week I blogged on what happens when an author stops writing a series that you love. Today I’m writing about what happens when an author stops writing a series that you love and then disappears. Yes, disappears! I’m not exaggerating. It’s a true story, and it happened to me.

Unlike most of my “keepers,” I’m a little fuzzy on how I first came across Dating Can be Murder by Jennifer Apodaca. If I’d hazard a guess, my Mom probably passed it on to me. I’m a voracious reader of romance—Regency, contemporary, urban fantasy, dystopian, young adult. Throw in a 7-foot flaxen-haired Viking and it’s the cherry on top of my sundae. My mother, on the other hand, is a voracious reader of mysteries—from Miss Marple to Miss Plum. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to name a cozy mystery series she hasn’t read. But we do share books across our genres—at least the good ones.

Looking down at the really bad cover of Dating Can be Murder—limp dead guy in a suit, splayed across a giant heart floating in midair with what looks to be a bullet hole through it—I’m pretty sure it came from my Mom. Call me superficial, but it’s just not the kind of cover that would’ve caught my interest. But I’m being lazy. Let me just pick up the phone and ask. Be right back.

Did you miss me? And yes, after much prompting, Mom recalled giving the book to me. “I thought you would like that one.” Interesting. It appears that Mom is not as enamored of the series as I am. Is that going to stop me from extolling the undeniable charms of the Samantha Shaw mysteries? Nope.

The book starts out in grand fashion. I call it breaking up with style. Our spunky heroine, Samantha Shaw, is in a pickle. Her husband Trent has been killed in an unfortunate peanut-related incident. After finding a stash of women’s underwear in his vintage Mustang, her mourning period is brief. So what’s a scorned woman to do? How about taking the life insurance money to buy breast implants and a dating service? Sounds like a plan. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Pause. Actually I don’t know, so I’m going to Google it.

I’m back. Again. According to Wikipedia, the quote is “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley [go oft awry].” It’s from a Robert Burns’ poem entitled “To a Mouse.” Who knew?

Anyway, Samantha’s plans gang aft agley. In addition to being a serial cheater, her dead husband was also a liar, a thief, and a drug dealer. And now Samantha and her two young sons are being threatened by some really scary bad guys. Sam’s life is made even more complicated by two new men in her life—Gabe Pulizzi, an ex-cop who now runs his own security firm and Detective Morgan Rossi, who is looking into all the strange happenings that surround our heroine.

So why should you be interested in the trials and tribulations of Samantha Shaw? Here are three good reasons. First, while the story is fast-paced, the mystery is enjoyably on the light side—no coked-up drug dealers, decapitated bodies, or sexual deviants. Wait! There may be a mention of a vibrator. Or maybe that’s in the fourth book in the series: Batteries Required. Second, the book is damn funny. For example, Sam’s cheating-ex was a record-setting condom salesman. Another example, Sam reviews romances and erotica, awarding stars for extra “sizzle.” You get the picture. Third, Apodaca’s characters are likeable and well-rounded. You feel for Sam—literally. The sexual tension between Sam and Gabe actually elicited a physical reaction from me. I’m not ashamed to say I got a tad bit warm during their first sex scene. Bottom line: Apodaca and Sam (and, let’s be honest, Gabe) had me hooked. I eagerly consumed the next four books in the series—Dying to Meet You, Ninja Soccer Mom, Batteries Required, and Thrilled to Death—and looked forward to future stories and many more hours of entertainment.

Or maybe not.

When my internal alarm clock told me to start looking for a new Samantha Shaw mystery, I was in for a shock. I googled Jennifer Apodaca and someone named Jennifer Lyon popped up. In fact, Jennifer Apodaca had virtually disappeared. All that remained of my beloved author was a small tab on Jennifer Lyon’s website. Like Samantha Shaw, I had a mystery to solve. Unlike Samantha Shaw, it didn’t take me 300 pages do so.

So what exactly happened? Jennifer Apodaca had pulled a Phoenix—a mystery writer “died” and an urban fantasy author rose from the ashes. In the author’s own words:  “She [Jennifer Lyons aka Jennifer Apodaca] unleashed her inner witch and created the Wing Slayer Hunter series about tortured alpha males and the very special witches who loved them.” Wow. I didn’t see that one coming.

So where does that leave me today? Jealously guarding my dog-eared copies of the five Samantha Shaw mysteries. They are not on loan—to anyone. And making room on my shelf for a new author. But I’ll be honest here. Jennifer Lyon is not Jennifer Apodaca. The oven still “sizzles,” but one important ingredient is missing from the recipe—humor. My advice: savor your books, because you never know when the menu is going to change.

The Break-up

Break-ups. They happen to everyone. We all handle them differently. They come in all sizes and shapes. You’ve got the discreet break-up. Reese, you showed amazing grace, and I really hope the second one works out. The out-of-left-field break-up. Will we ever know what happened between Tim and Susan? The serial break up—J Lo and husband No. 1 (the chef), husband No. 2 (the dancer), the almost-husband (the actor), and husband No. 3 (the singer). The break-ups that don’t stick the first few times. A classic example is Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. For a more contemporary one, look no further than Sean Penn and Robin Wright. Then there are the train wreck break-ups: the ones we want to look away from, but just can’t. Sandra, no one deserves that kind of break-up, least of all America’s sweetheart. 

There are the break-ups that break our hearts. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Jen Aniston. Five years later, and I still haven’t forgiven Brangelina. There's the break-ups that defy description. I could write a story about a female protagonist, let’s make her an astronaut, who puts on a pair of diapers and drives 18 hours to kill her boyfriend. No one would believe it. And yet, that story is true. It has even been immortalized in song by Ben Folds. But today I'm blogging on a different kind of break-up. It’s the one you experience when your favorite series of books come to an end. It’s painful. It’s depressing. And, for me, there’s usually some anger involved.

The year was 2002. It was coming up on the one-year anniversary of 9/11. I was looking for a light-hearted story to escape into. And I found Maggie Needs an Alibi by Kasey Michaels. I’d read Michaels’ historical romances, but this book was her first foray into a new genre—the comedic mystery. It was just what the doctor ordered. The premise was intriguing. The heroine, Maggie Kelly, finds herself accused of murdering her publisher. (How many authors dream of doing that?) Maggie’s allies in proving her innocence—the two main characters in her best-selling mystery series: the mouth-watering Alexandre Blake, Viscount St. Just, and his naïve, slightly overweight sidekick, Sterling Balder.

What? How? Easy. The two characters simply show up in Maggie’s New York apartment one day—alive, thankful to Maggie for creating them, and, in the case of St. Just, a Regency-era James Bond, looking to solve a crime and get his flirt on. Of course, Maggie thinks she’s either lost her mind or fallen victim to an elaborate hoax. In fact, Maggie is a bit of a neurotic mess. Her main sources of entertainment are lounging around in her pajamas, playing “Lemmings” on her computer, and smoking. She doesn’t get out much, avoids her family at all costs, and her love life can best be described as non-existent. All of which beg the question: how did Maggie create such a fascinating character as the delectable St. Just? Debonair, clever, and charmingly sardonic, St. Just is the epitome of the romantic regency hero. And his looks are nothing to sneeze at either. Maggie has given St. Just Paul Newman’s blue eyes, Val Kilmer’s sensuous pout, Peter O’Toole’s aristocratic nose, Sean Connery’s “slightly more British, bedroom voice” and “hair as black as midnight, casually rumpled in its windswept style, à la Beau Brummell.”

We’ve covered the mystery and the (potential for) romance. So what about the comedy I promised? Well, just try and imagine the high jinks that might ensue if an 18^th century aristocrat was somehow transported to modern day New York City. Reading how St. Just and Sterling acclimate is totally hysterical. How does Maggie tell Sterling, who’s crushing on the housekeeper in The Brady Bunch, that Alice is merely a character in a TV show? How does St. Just adapt to modern day menswear? Hint: he doesn’t give up his cravat without a fight? How does Maggie explain St. Just to her cynical, often inebriated agent? After all, St. Just is the spitting image of the main character in Maggie’s books. How do St. Just and Sterling survive with no money, no social security numbers, and no place to lay their top hats? Not all these questions are answered in the first book. Instead, you'll have to follow Maggie, St. Just, and Sterling, through the other five books in the series: Maggie by the Book, Maggie Without a Clue, High Heels and Homicide, High Heels and Holidays, and Bowled Over. And hopefully you’ll fall in love with the characters as I did.

Unfortunately, falling in love makes breaking up even harder to do. And that is where I stand today with my beloved series. In the last book, published in 2007, the commitment-phobic Maggie and the reformed-rake St. Just had finally succumbed to what I knew all along was “True Love.” After solving yet another mystery, a bowling-related murder involving Maggie’s father, Maggie and St. Just were engaged and moving into their dream home. And then…nothing! After waiting anxiously for the next book in the series, I logged onto Kasey Michael’s website and found this curt (and heart-breaking) message:

Don’t want the Maggie Kelly series to end? Proclaim your love for Maggie by writing to: Ms. Laurie Parkin, VP and Publisher, Kensington Publishing Corp., 850 Third Ave., New York, New York 10022.

So don’t get too attached to your favorite characters, cause you never know when you’re going to be dumped cold—stone cold.

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

More than 10 years ago, my mom called me up at work one day to ask a book-related question. She wanted to know when Sophie Dunbar’s next mystery was coming out. Dunbar is the author of one of our favorite series—The Eclaire Mysteries. There are four books in this series about Claire Claiborne and her high-society New Orleans beauty salon: Behind Eclaire’s Doors, A Bad Hair Day, Redneck Riviera, and Shiveree. As I thought about my Mom’s words, I realized that it had been a while since we’d read Dunbar’s last book—Fashion Victims, the first book in a new series.

So, while eating lunch at my desk, I browsed all of the usual websites and was surprised at what I found. Or rather what I didn’t find. There were no new books that I’d somehow missed. (Okay, I’m good about staying on top of my favorite authors, but when you have hundreds of “favorite” authors, it can be tricky.) I googled Sophie Dunbar’s name, looking for her website. Nothing. Now I was intrigued. Unfortunately, I was also finished my lunch.

That night I returned to my keyboard to solve the mystery of Sophie Dunbar’s apparent disappearance. I consider myself the Queen of the Internet search, and I was not about to relinquish my crown. (Humble much?) Plus, it would be fun to solve a little “mystery” related to one of my favorite mystery writers. A few minutes later—mystery solved, but with mixed results. I retained my Queen of the Internet crown, but lost a “friend.” And yes, although I’d never met Sophie Dunbar, when I read that the 54-year-old author had died on May 11, 2001, from breast cancer, I truly felt like I’d lost a friend. When I called my Mom to tell her the news, she felt the same.

Sophie Dunbar came back into my life this past summer when my Mom brought the Eclaire Mysteries on vacation with us. She’d lent them to my sister-in-law to read. While that might not seem like such a big deal, I should probably share a few facts about my sister-in-law, and hope she doesn’t disown me when she reads this blog. First, she considers flipping through gossip mags reading. Second, outside of coursework (she’s back in college getting her teaching degree), she probably reads about three books a year—two of those when she’s on vacation with my family. Finally, she once uttered the words: “Why read the book when you can wait a few months and see the movie?” Her words left me speechless. And if you know me, you’d know what a feat that was. My sister-in-law read Behind Eclaire’s Doors in record time, and she loved it. She was still reading the second book when our vacation ended.

When I sat down to write this blog, something made me google Sophie Dunbar again. It was a little depressing at first. Her five books are out of print and only available through Amazon’s Seller Program. Other mentions of her are few and far between. Three lines in an online article by Terry Weingart entitled “In Memory 2001: Mystery Writers Gone but Not Forgotten.” About 10 lines on her author page on murderexpress.net. But then I read them, and what a 10 lines they are!

I now know my “friend” Sophie Dunbar a little better. For example, her favorite book in the Eclaire Mystery Series was Redneck Riviera. It is the third book published in the series, but it was actually the second book Dunbar wrote. Not happy that she’d changed the setting from the Big Easy to Mississippi, her publisher chose to release A Bad Hair Day instead. In fact, Dunbar had to switch publishing houses before her favorite story would make it into print. (If you read the series in the order the books were published, as my Mom and I originally did, you will note that the timing is a little off.)

The other thing I learned about Sophie Dunbar was more intriguing. As a pregnant, unwed teenager, Sophie Dunbar had given a son up for adoption. Thirty years later, after intensive research and with the help of a female detective who specialized in adoptions, Sophie Dunbar’s son made contact with his birth mother. Mother and son shared their first face-to-face meeting at the 1998 Malice Domestic Mystery Conference in Washington, D.C. When I read these words, a chill went down my spine. How strangely appropriate to unravel such a great mystery at a conference for mystery writers. Immediately, my overactive imagination went into hyper-drive.

What had been going though Sophie Dunbar’s mind when she first laid eyes on her son? Had she been scared? Nervous? Uncertain? Excited? Regretful? Overjoyed? Had Sophie Dunbar known about her breast cancer diagnosis? After all, she would die a mere three years later. Perhaps she’d already been in the fight for her life even while she agreed to meet the baby she’d given away. Of course I will never know the answers to these questions. They will remain a mystery.

What I do know is that I will not forget Sophie Dunbar. Her books will always have room on my bookshelf. Her characters will always have a special place in my heart. If you have not read her Eclaire Mystery series, I urge you to do so. From the pleasure of true love to the pain of infidelity to the power of forgiveness, the connection between Claire and Dan Claiborne is powerful and oh-so-steamy. Their adventures are good for a chuckle and always served with a heaping helping of Southern Charm and a dash of murder. Even better, I can visit Sophie Dunbar’s engaging stories whenever I want, and—as my Mom did this summer and I’m doing today—I can share her work with others who may have missed them the first time around.