Tag: “A Rose from the Ashes” by JPC Allen

Stockingful of Books Giveaway!

stockingful of giveaways

It’s giveaway time! I am thrilled to announce my mystery novel, A Shadow on the Snow, and the short story prequel to it, “A Rose from the Ashes,” in Christmas fiction off the beaten path are part of “Stockingful of Books Giveaway”. This giveaway runs 11/6 through 11/12, and the prize consists of ten Christian fiction books. The 1st place winner will receive all ten books (authors’ choice of format) and the 2nd place winner will receive three books (authors’ choice of format) of their choosing. A variety of genres, from fantasy to historical romance to suspense and more, are featured.

You can enter to win here:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/bfce54d312/?

Here are the opening lines from both of my stories. I hope I’ve written them well enough to intrigue you to enter the contest so you can read the whole mysteries!

Glancing left and right, I crunched across the frozen weeds to the abandoned children’s home. I could not afford to be spotted now. If only I could take a few seconds and snap some pictures. The light from the early December sunset was perfect. Gashes of blood-red light seeped through the clotted clouds, creating an ominous background for the gray stone building that was rumored to be the scene of a murder.

At the back wall of the home, I slung the strap for my camera across my chest and climbed through an opening that once held a window. I dropped to the bare ground, my long, dark gold braid catching on a loose nail in the sill. I disentangled myself and crossed the dirt floor. The fired had burned the wooden floor away. And the roof and the whole interior. The four stone walls loomed above me like a medieval fortress as the sunset’s rays spotlighted sections of the garbage-strewn floor.

I knelt by a large fireplace, straining to detect any sound of the psychics, ghost hunters, or thrill-seeking high school kids who had come to catch sight of the ghost of Bella Rydell.

from “A Rose from the Ashes” in Christmas fiction off the beaten path

I’M NOT FOOLED, RAE. YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER.

I stared at the sheet of copier paper in my hand as the note fluttered in a gust of January wind.

Really? It had only taken three weeks for someone to hate me and my mom enough to leave an anonymous insult.

Turning over the envelope, I saw my address was written in the same marker, same all-caps style. It was postmarked. I must have missed it when I grabbed my mail last night.

Shivering on the minuscule landing to my apartment, I blew out a sigh, which formed a little cloud in the freezing air. At least the idiot hadn’t crept up to my mailbox in the dead of night. I shivered again, and it wasn’t from another gust.

People could hold a grudge in Marlin County, Ohio.

from A Shadow on the Snow

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How to Write a Christmas Mystery

how to write a christmas mystery

For some reason, Christmas and mysteries go together like silver and gold on a Christmas tree. Christmas mysteries are a very old tradition in the genre. One of the first, and best, is “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”, a Sherlock Holmes story. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple had Christmas cases. So did Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, V.I. Warshawski, Brother Cadfael, and Father Brown. Maybe the mystery of God coming to earth, fully God and and fully human, gives the whole season an air of the unexplainable. If you’d like to try your hand at this very specific sub-genre, here are a two tips on how to write a Christmas mystery.

The Story Can’t Take Place at Any Other Time

The best Christmas mysteries take advantage of what the season offers. In “A Christmas Party” by Rex Stout, the boss of an interior design firm is murdered during the Christmas office party. The man who was working the bar in a Santa Claus outfit disappears during the confusion created when the boss collapses from cyanide poisoning. Santa was so heavily made-up no one at the party can describe him.

In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie, old, mean, manipulative Simeon Lee invites his four sons, their wives, and one granddaughter—some of whom he hasn’t been on speaking terms for years—to the family home out in the English countryside for a real, old-fashioned Christmas. Or so he says.

Neither of these stories would work at another time during the year. Except at a Halloween party, you couldn’t have a waiter or other staff help disguise themselves so effectively. In America, Thanksgiving is the only other holiday which gives a character a plausible reason to gather warring family members.

One of the many fun qualities of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is how well it incorporates characteristics of Christmas that existed at the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it. A commissionaire who is an acquaintance of Holmes, finds a precious stone, the blue carbuncle, in the crop of the goose his wife was going to roast for Christmas dinner. Holmes and Watson follow clues through a bitterly cold London night to figure how the jewel, stolen from a luxury hotel, ended up in the goose. 

Include Themes of the Season

Another quality you can take advantage of are the meanings of the season. One aspect of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” that makes it so special is the offer Holmes extends to the culprit once he uncovers him. In “A Christmas Party,” Archie Goodwin learns just how highly his boss Nero Wolfe values him. “The Killer Christian” by Andre Klavan is about redemption. In my Christmas mystery, “A Rose from the Ashes”, I used a theme of mercy and forgiveness as my teen detective Rae Riley attempts to discover how her father is and if he tried to murder her pregnant mother.

For more recommendations of Christmas mysteries, click here.

What are some of your favorite Christmas mysteries?

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Adding Humor to Enhance Drama

As I finished writing my YA mystery short story, “A Rose from the Ashes” in 2018, I faced a dilemma. My main character Rae has found her father. How did I write the scene without drowning it in gooey sentiment? I learned adding humor to enhance drama prevented this from happening.

I knew I had to go for the big emotions. In the first draft, I had tried to write the story by playing it safe, keeping the emotions at a distance. That version felt empty, and readers would feel cheated. But if I wallowed in all he feelings the father-daugher reunion required, I risked turning my mystery into a soap opera.

Humor to the Rescue

After toying with the scene, I realized humor could keep the emotions from veering into high school drama queen territory. That sounds counterintuitive. How can humor make a dramatic scene better rather the undercut it? I think it works like combining salty and sweet, like salty caramel. The sugar and salt seem to be opposites and yet the contrast makes both flavors stand out.

So as Rae experiences the thrill of finding her father, he’s trying desperately to hold himself together and not pass out from the shock. The humor allows the drama to go big but prevents it from getting out of control.

Keys to Adding Humor to Drama

The first key is to establish the tone of your story. Rae has made humorous observations throughout my story, so the tone that isn’t deadly serious even if the mystery is. Readers don’t think it’s out of place to find something to smile or laugh about in the story. But this isn’t a hard and fast rule. I’ve watched scenes in shows or read them in books that are very serious and humor still works in them.

Years ago, I watched an episode of the western TV series, Gunsmoke. Marshal Matt Dillon and several women are traveling through a desert when outlaws begin following them and mounting attacks. The outlaw leader tells his men before the latest attack that “No one lives.” But when the outlaws close in, the marshal and the women repel the attack, and the outlaws scramble for their lives. Back at their camp, one outlaw, spitting mad, throws down his hat, turns to the leader, and demands, “‘No one lives?’ Us or them?”

The remark was so unexpected in this serious drama in which the heroes are struggling to survive a hostile setting and merciless enemies that I almost busted a gut with a laugh. But it worked because of the second key to adding humor to enhance drama: root the humor in the personality of the characters.

It made perfect sense for this character to say that line because of the situation he was in and the way he said it. I can add humor to any scene if I’ve already established that a particular character would say or act in a humorous way.

For more of my posts about humor writing, click here.

Do you think humor can enhance drama? What have you read or watched where this technique worked?

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Christmas Book Giveaway!

CHRISTMAS BOOK GIVEAWAY! To celebrate the Christmas season, I’m holding a drawing for the prize package in the picture.

Almost everything you see is from the Buckeye State. The candies are from Marie’s Candies, founded in West Liberty, Ohio. The ornament comes from the shop Celebrate Local, which features only products made in Ohio. From the Lake to the River is a collection of short stories all set in Ohio, past and present, by Ohio authors, including my YA mystery “Debt to Pay”. Although stories in Christmas fiction off the beaten path take you as far away as the fantasy realm of Callidora and ancient Bethlehem, three of the six Christmas stories are set in Ohio. My YA mystery “A Rose from the Ashes” takes place during a snow-bound December in southeast Ohio.

TO ENTER: Leave a comment on any post here or on my Instagram or Facebook pages from now until 5 p.m. Dec.15. I will announce the winner on Dec.16.

You must be a U.S resident and 18 years or older. If you are younger than 18, you must provide proof of permission from your parents. If your name is drawn, you have two weeks after I contact you to claim the prize.

I’m so excited to give you all a chance to sample the best of the Buckeye State!

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How Was Your NaNoWriMo?

Whew! It’s the last day of November. How was your NaNoWriMo? I hadn’t planned on doing it the traditional way, but I had planned on finishing my WIP novel. A Shadow on the Snow. Then my youngest got strep, and when we thought he was on the mend, he broke out in a terrible rash of hives that took almost a week to improve. Despite that, I was able to attend the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. I skipped some sessions so I could write uninterrupted. I now have a goal to finish my novel by Dec. 7, in time for a FB book party where I’ll discuss writing “A Rose from the Ashes”. I want to announce that I’ve finished the sequel.

If you participated in NaNoWriMo, tell me how it went. Or if you didn’t, what’s the state of your writing today? If you’re a reader, tell me what you read through November. I’d love to know!

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