Slips of Yew: A Dez Duchiene Mystery, Book 1

New book! New series! New main character who is commandeering my laptop and making me write all the books …

I’m excited to announce publication of Slips of Yew, A Dez Duchiene Mystery.

“Where were you last Tuesday?”

Dez Duchiene moved to New York City two years ago, married Stevie Langford, the man of his dreams, and buried his upper Midwest roots. When a homicide detective appears at his door, that past resurfaces quickly.

Whitney Travers, a conservative politician in liberal Madison, Wisconsin, and also a friend and mentor, dies unexpectedly. While Dez struggles with the man’s political stance, he goes home for the funeral. Kelsey Travers asks Dez to investigate her father’s death using his connections from his activist days. He can’t say no to his childhood friend.

After the funeral, Stevie, mortified by what he sees as a red state, returns to New York. As Dez delves into interviews with colleagues, friends, rivals, and an attractive distraction he met at the funeral, he worries Stevie may have left him for good. Dez’s journey takes him back to the Madison he loved, and uncovers changes that break his heart.

Can he solve the murder and save his marriage before he loses everything?

I’m still not certain exactly where Desmond Dayton Duchiene came from, but I’ve had a blast the last couple of years seeing the world through his eyes. While LGBTQ representation in media has been increasing, characters are still mostly supporting roles or comic relief, and in literature their existence is expressed in tragedy and self-loathing.

Dez does not fall into any of those categories. He’s the main character, a hero, with passions and flaws (he has a bit of an ego and doesn’t always play well with others). He’s an out-of-work hospitality professional, an extrovert, and a newlywed working through the learning curve with his husband on how to be a good spouse and how to function in a world that’s still strongly entrenched in heterosexual norms.

He came of age during the Act 10 protests in Madison and tries to bridge the gap between conservative and liberal thought, though that’s becoming more and more difficult. When I first started writing this story a little over two years ago, I thought some of my political narrative was on the extreme side – and then 2020 happened. Some of it is positively tame, now.

I still have faith in a unified reality, and want to mainstream Dez and his stories as much as possible. I think he’s a vital voice in a world that needs more diversity and I’m doing my best to serve him well.

Slips of Yew is available via special order through your favorite local bookstore, and on Amazon.com in both print and Kindle editions. The best way to support an indie author is by leaving a review on Amazon – thank you! Click here to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WL9QVG8?pf_rd_r=86Z7KB0JKWX22PQVD3J2&pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&pd_rd_r=dca2bdcb-ce4f-4d31-b5d1-d89e4fecb08d&pd_rd_w=BYVVY&pd_rd_wg=MnXHR&ref_=pd_gw_unk

Good luck to my NaNoWriMo friends – here are 6 ideas to help out!

Today (November 1^st) kicks off the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! My friends are collecting their notes, changing their Facebook profile pictures and getting ready to commit 50,000 words to a story in the next thirty days.

I love the idea of people focusing on a creative pursuit like this. It gives you a chance to examine your own beliefs and ideas about life through storytelling, and it challenges you to have fun. Because if you can’t have fun you’ll never come up with 50,000 words.

Here are some ideas you might find useful:

1. Create a character you like. It amazes me how many books are published featuring unlikable protagonists. It’s hard enough to read 300 pages about an unlikeable character – I can’t imagine what it’s like to spend so much time creating, editing, and working with that unlikeable character! Yes, your character should have flaws, but I want to root for them to succeed in whatever it is they want to do.
2. Take your likeable character and make him/her miserable! You ever have one of those days where everything goes wrong? That happens to your character today and every day. Two steps forward, one step back (we are still rooting for him/her to succeed, so some forward progress is nice, but not a lot).
3. Set your story someplace where you’ve been, or where you can imagine being. Tell me about it in vivid detail, because I probably haven’t been there! If I have been there, tell me about it so I can feel special when I think, “I know where that is!” In mystery novels, the advice is to make your setting so strong it’s almost a character. I think that can be applied to any genre.
4. Give every character a secret. Reveal them, one by one. This gives depth to your characters and adds texture to your story when you’re not in the main flow of your plot.
5. Keep your reader asking questions – but answer some of them as you go. A novel is like a scavenger hunt. There’s a primary goal, but a lot of little components are needed to complete it. Reward your reader with small answers from time to time as you work your way toward the big finish.
6. Be brave! Let your characters sit in your head and play. Your brain works best when it is starting to get bored. If the characters are already primed and in your imagination then you will get ideas in the shower. On your daily commute. While doing laundry. Be ready for them and write them down!

NaNoWriMo is a great challenge and a lot of fun. My mystery novel, Asperger Sunset, started out as a NaNoWriMo. Well, several of the characters did. And I went through six years of editing and rewriting afterward. But the book never would have happened if I didn’t sit down to write a novel in the first place!

Best of luck to everyone and I hope to see the results from some of you in about thirty days!

Asperger’s and Honesty

Can people with Asperger’s lie? It would be nice to say no, but the truth is most people figure out that saying certain things get them into trouble, and once in a while everyone lies, usually to protect themselves.

It is true that people with Asperger’s lack some of the skills needed to tell a good lie – body language, either consciously or subconsciously, may give it away. Or the tone of voice, or an inability to create a plausible story. I do admit to using the “Aspies Don’t Lie” concept in Asperger Sunset as a plot device, but it is pretty idealistic.

People with Asperger’s do, however, have a strong desire to follow rules. Anxiety and emotion create a chaotic world and rules sort things out. Children with Asperger’s often play meticulous games with their toys, lining them up and grouping them, keeping everything in order. Following the rules is rewarded with a reduction in chaos.

This ties into lying. One of the rules is “Be Honest.” Honesty is a personal trait of mine that I follow with almost obsessive precision. Over the years I’ve learned honesty that can hurt someone’s feelings often should not be shared, and I can be silent about something, but if faced with a direct conflict, I cannot lie.

This past weekend I ran into an odd situation regarding honesty. My family had gone out to dinner. As the children are now teens, their appetites are adult-sized and restaurant bills have gotten higher, so dining out is a treat for us, not a regular occurrence. We went to a brew-pub style restaurant, enjoyed our time together, and then got the bill.

My spouse started tallying the tip. My eldest, who is very budget-conscious, glanced at it and said, “that’s a really good deal.” My husband agreed. Just forty dollars, he said.

Forty dollars? No. For four of us, each having a dinner plus drinks plus an appetizer in a state with seven percent sales tax, that didn’t make sense! I asked to see the receipt. I spotted the problem immediately. Our harried waitress had forgotten to add our drinks!

I felt an overwhelming need to correct the problem. The place was very busy. Our waitress, thinking she was done with us, had moved on. The hostess couldn’t help us, so she sent us to the bartender. He was surprised that we not only had noticed the error but wanted to correct it.

Was it the right thing to do? Most people pay little attention to numbers – they wouldn’t have noticed the error in the first place. Others would say, “oh, cool, free drinks,” and gone home. For some reason I had to correct the problem. I had to pay for those drinks. It was being honest. And “Be Honest” is a rule that must be followed.

What about the fallout? The waitress may have gotten in trouble for ringing up the bill wrong. Or she may have seen the total and gotten angry because she thought we stiffed her on her tip, since we only tipped on the original charge. Or do they think we were total idiots for paying for something we weren’t asked to pay for in the first place?

I know restaurants make a huge profit on drinks. I also know most small, family-owned businesses continue to struggle in this economy. I could have left things as they were, pretended I didn’t notice the mistake and moved on, but something in me could not let it go. Maybe I made a deposit with the Bank of Karma – will the universe reward me in the future? I was embarrassed to be doing something almost no one else would do, but I followed the rule. It lessened the chaos. I cannot lie.

My mystery novel, Asperger Sunset, features a pretty honest fellow caught up in a murder. It’s available in paperback or kindle or can be ordered through your favorite local bookstore!