Welcome to my new website. My God, it’s full of books!
Specifically, MY books. Books that contain characters and places I have loved and nurtured from a dream or a feeling or a sudden sense that a story just tapped me on the shoulder through all the stages of their evolution until they appeared in pixels or print in what we call the Real World.
In these books, you’ll hang with all sorts of people: A lost-in-space amnesiac with unsettling abilities. A pint-sized PI who carries a baby blue .357 magnum and rides a Harley blessed with Holy Water by a perhaps-too-anxious mum. A young man from Philly who watches ghost baseball games and wonders if he really has to marry a cockroach named Svetlana. A Jedi named Jax who thinks he may be the last of his kind, and his droid bestie, I-5, whom Jax is pretty sure is the first of his kind. A NYPD detective who worries about being yanked into the misty past at any second. Did I mention Han Solo? He’s in one of these books, too.
You’ll also visit a lot of very different places in these books, from the familiar present-day San Francisco, to a very different future-San Francisco peopled by Ohlone ghosts and a wizard named Chickpea. From Philadelphia, circa 1955, to a past Poland where magic lives in the elements and contains the seeds of vast ruin, to places that don’t exist in this world, or exist only in this or that book.
You can travel in space with an intrepid xeno-anthropologist who’s the best trade negotiator the Tanaka Corporation has to offer. In fact, you could find yourself time-traveling in a variety of ways with a bunch of different folks.
And wherever you go or whomever you’re with, there’s always a chance you might save a people or a world or the entire universe … or maybe just your best friend.
So, let’s make Reality behave together, I invite you to step into my bookshop and choose an adventure.
(We’re open, though the rest of the site is a work in progress.)
I was hopeful about Coulter’s THE TARGET (second of a series) because I’d enjoyed her gothics so much back in the day, but this novel, even more than the previous one, THE MAZE, had some deep issues without the unique crime angle.
Editorial absence: There were so many confusingly vague sentences, plot errors, timeline errors and reality issues that I kept putting on my editor hat and gnashing my teeth. I wondered if Ms. Coulter’s editor had developed Jane Auel syndrome, an affliction in which an editor is afraid to actually edit a very popular author. (The author may not even want or be aware of this happening, by the way.)
Fits and starts plotting: More than once, the plot reached a point at which the entire cast was breathing sighs of relief and saying, “It’s over, at last.” From the reader’s POV, it was clearly not over. Bad guys were still on the loose, murderous movers and shakers still had a vendetta going, the main characters were still in danger. These people were mostly seasoned crime-fighters (FBI agents and a judge) and should’ve known better. Those elements can’t be thrust aside just because the writer has a character say, “Oh, Really Awful Criminal wouldn’t continue to strike back.”
All of the above contributed to an overall sense of Puppet Master Syndrome in which characters do things just because the writer needs them to do them at this point in the plot. As a result it was sometimes hard to get a handle on the personalities of the characters.
Unclear and unrealistic action sequences: Example: at one point the hero has dived into the ocean from a pier and is pursuing a criminal. Criminal shoots hero in the shoulder, yet the hero is able to hold the criminal in a headlock and tread water with one useless arm. He is fully clothed and wearing shoes and his injured arm is described as hanging down, with blood streaking down his arm and his shirt plastered to the wound … though our hero would have to be up to his neck in sea water in order to maintain the headlock on the criminal. This is not my experience with the way bodies behave in water. This got more complicated when we suddenly realize the hero’s family and others are watching from directly above on the pier and then, equally suddenly, “two men were in the water.” You realize a sentence or two later that the two men referenced are not the hero and the criminal but two FBI agents who have jumped in to offer assistance.
In any story that relies on action sequences, it’s important for the reader to be able to visualize the scene in which action is taking place. In the above sequence and others like it (including sex scenes) I had to keep stopping and going back to revise my take on what was happening because I was supplying all the details.
And finally, the reason I wanted to read the book was because of Savich and Sherlock but they were rarely in it. The main relationship tension was between the new characters Ramsey, Molly and Emma whom, I gather, got their own series. Though they are the focus, left unresolved, after drawing attention to it repeatedly, was Molly’s sense that Ramsey married her because he had become attached to her little girl, Emma. I totally get her uncertainty, under the circumstances, but it was disappointing not to have Ramsey set her straight, given how many times it came up.
I probably will try more of Coulter’s detective fiction, but not just now. Or I may just go back to enjoying her gothics.
I’m celebrating the February 11 release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. Over in Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 if you purchase it directly from bookviewcafe.com.
“What’d he look like?” “Like I could tell from that distance?” I kept my narrowed eyes on her face. She closed her eyes. “Dark hair, I think. He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses. Uh . . . well-tanned or dark-skinned. Slender. Tallish.” “Ish?” “Around five-ten, five-eleven.” A titan in my little universe. “If you are being stalked, you need to tell someone. Besides me. Preferably your boss . . . or the police.” “And if I’m not, I look like I’m paranoid. Not good for my professional credibility.” I suddenly felt much less impotent than I had about two minutes earlier. “All right. The first thing we need to do is establish the existence and identity of the stalker.” “And how do I do that?” “We, Rose. We.” She smiled. The first genuine Rose Delgado smile I’d seen for weeks. “How?” I pulled my lucky Caddie wire out of the side pocket of my gym bag and twisted it around my wrist. “We turn the tables on him.”
Excerpt From: The Antiquities Hunter, a Gina Miyoko Mystery by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
I did something really cool a while back. I went to a seminar sponsored by Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an organization I joined after the publication of my first Gina Miyoko Mystery, THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (from Pegasus Crime). The seminar was entitled Finding Evidence: CSI vs. Real-Life Forensics.
This was a day-long affair on on how real Crime Scene Investigations differ from the Hollywood versions we all know and love. It was fascinating, dare I say riveting. I still haven’t typed up all my notes.
There were about 30 mystery writers at the free event (which included a delightful lunch) and filled the community room at Diablo Valley College to capacity. A life-size cutout of Edgar Allan Poe presided over the talks, which were given by Julie Jaecksch, a retired crime scene investigator from Oakland PD, and Oakland District Attorney Michael O’Connor.
They did not disappoint. We received a host of useful and fascinating information about how real CSIs operate. Julie detailed evidence collection processes and flow-charted the process of how evidence makes its way through the various working groups to finally be used to crack a case and/or prosecute a crime. She spoke about the many ways evidence can be mishandled, and how a CSI coming across a key piece of evidence can cause the big break in a case. She gave an example of a case she personally solved by choosing to fingerprint an item others had overlooked as being unlikely to yield evidence.
I bet you want to know that that was, huh? It was a coffee cup that had been sitting on a ledge above a rape victim’s bed. Logic dictated that the fingerprints on it would be the victim’s. Julie dusted the cup for prints anyway and found that the prints on the cup belonged to the rapist. Yessiree, Bob. That guy was so supremely confident (read: obtuse) that he got himself a cuppa and enjoyed it at some point during the commission of a crime.
Mike used the Golden State Rapist case to walk us through how the forensics teams, detectives and DA’s office cooperated in the solving of the crime. This was a case in the 90s involving an ex-police officer who ultimately raped 50 women and killed a dozen people. The DA enlightened all of us as to how real courtrooms operate in contrast to how they’re portrayed on Law & Order. They are far more … well, orderly, and rarely hang on a single piece of OMG evidence.
Can you imagine any happier bunch of people than a couple of experts talking about the work they loved (and hated) and two dozen or so writers scribbling away in their notebooks, iPads and computers? (I was one of the notebook scribblers; I’m taking my laptop, Monroe, with me next time.) This was mystery writer heaven. Research junkie Nirvana. It was chocolate, baby. It was better than chocolate—it was bangers and mash, cottage pie and a good pub curry all rolled into one.
During his talk, Mike O’Connor discussed the real-world dark side to Hollywood’s fixation with law and order. The way that forensics is portrayed in both fiction shows and (allegedly) true crime shows is not quite the way the real world works. Hollywood’s portrayal of both CSI and courtroom drama have made the jobs of both CSIs and prosecutors—more difficult.
How so? Evidence, especially that collected by crime scene investigators, is usually ”quiet” and incremental rather than immediate and explosive. It builds up layer by layer and requires that the CSI establish connections between the various layers. It also requires that the jurors have the mental acuity and patience to understand those connections. Without the capacity to comprehend how each new layer changes the ultimate whole, juries may acquit simply because they fail to see the final picture the evidence paints. If it doesn’t make you gasp, it can’t be THAT important, right?
Prosecutors now routinely encounter juries so jaundiced by TV shows that many have started asking prospective jurors if they watch CSI shows during the jury selection process.
CSI shows also affect how savvy criminals commit their crimes by tailoring them to outwit the sort of investigations they see on TV—which may include tech not really available to Law Enforcement. Of course, it’s also caused some criminals who showed extraordinary care in one aspect of a crime to completely bungle something else. One perpetrator took the expedient of using duct tape both in the murder of his victim, and in faking his own attempted murder. He forgot one of the very qualities of the stuff that makes it a useful restraint: everything sticks to it, from fibers to skin cells. The murderer was literally exposed by a roll of tape.
All I can say is MWA-Ha-Ha!
oOo
If you like mystery and high adventure, check out THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER, from Pegasus Crime. It’s available in hardback and eBook from your favorite bookstores and is coming out in February in trade paperback. And to read about how my diminutive detective became a PI, check out my novelette, TINKERBELL ON WALKABOUT—available from Book View Cafe and Amazon!
Before I had quite finished writing the manuscript that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime 2018), I penned detective Gina Miyoko’s genesis story, Tinkerbell on Walkabout, and posted it as a novelette on Book View Cafe.
Some of Gina’s backstory changed in the writing of the novel, so I reworked parts of the novelette, re-imagined the cover to be more in line with the one Pegasus gave to the novel and re-released it in anticipation of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER’s trade paperback release in February.
The novel is also available in eBook format from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and just about any other online outlet.
If you want to know how Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko came to be a private eye, Tinkerbell on Walkabout (also available from Amazon), is my telling of that harrowing tale.
I’ll let you in on a secret: The original working title of my Gina novel was TINKERBELL AND THE FOURTH GOD FROM THE LEFT, which is a reference to an important work of ancient art Gina comes across in her adventure down among the Mayan ruins. Yeah, I can totally see how hard that would be to squeeze onto the cover of a book.
I am tickled pumpkin by this review from Booklist that I just received this morning from my delightful publisher.
Booklist says:
An entertaining debut introducing PI Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko. At five foot nine and 94 pounds, she is a Harley-riding, San Francisco Bay houseboat–dwelling powerhouse who is met with frank amazement by most people. When her best friend, Rose, an undercover Park Service agent, is gravely injured, Gina takes her place, going undercover in Mexico in the company of archaeologist Cruz Veras, a Mexican Indiana Jones, to ferret out who is trafficking in looted artifacts. The gamin-like Gina adopts a teasingly glamorous persona looking to spend, spend, spend, and attracts a mysterious antiquities dealer in Cancun. She ultimately ends up, after an unexpected betrayal, trapped in the pitch-black guts of a Mayan temple where she must fight for her life, armed only with her wits and an odd assortment of lucky charms. Gina is a unique series lead, but she sweeps across the pages like an adrenalin-fueled soul sister of Janet Evanovich’s flamboyant characters, presented in an equally biting and outrageous narrative that turns on a dime. A promising start to an exciting new series with plenty of crossover YA appeal. — Jane Murphy, Booklist
Wow! “Adrenalin-fueled soul sister of Janet Evanovich’s flamboyant characters . . . .” I am thrilled. Thank you, Jane Murphy for such a terrific review—and thank you, Pegasus, for taking a chance with my diminutive detective.
Every private eye needs a cool ride to get them around. In THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER, Gina Miyoko’s cool ride is Boris, the Harley. Boris is a Cherry Red, 1983 Super Glide II.
Pretty, huh? Boris has been known to go through carburetors, so Gina keeps a spare on hand at all times and picks up refurbished ones whenever the opportunity arises.
She talks to Boris on occasion and has been known to speculate that if a person’s home has domovoi (which is a Russian word for the spirit of a house), perhaps vehicles have some sort of similar spirit—a Harleyvoi, or maybe a motovoi.
If you asked her point blank she’d tell you that was ridiculous, of course. ”I’m a pragmatist,” she’d say. “It’s Mom who believes all those old wives’ tales from the Motherland.”
Gina’s mom, Nadia, is a professor of folklore and religious history in the cultural anthropology department at San Francisco State University. I’ll write more about Nadia in the future, but suffice it to say, she also sees herself as a pragmatist … which she feels is ample explanation for why she occasionally blesses Boris with the contents of a bottle of Holy Water that she keeps in her refrigerator, carefully labeled, ”Holy Water: Do Not Drink.”
I’ve never sat down and counted all of my ghostwriting/editing clients. Every once in a while, when I go in to clean up my file folders, I realize that I’ve had more than I thought and that I’ve actually forgotten about some of them. Some I work with once and that’s that; some I’ve been working with for years. A lot of them, in one way or another, came to me from one of several editorial services I’ve done work for—companies who, in turn, came to me through a wonderful (but, alas, deceased) freelance resource called Freelance Daily.
The clients that puzzle me most stand at two ends of a spectrum. At one end are talented people who have no desire or who lack the confidence to take the next step toward getting published. At the other are people with little or no writing talent, a seeming inability to understand how either the writing craft or publishing works, and the ambition and sheer moxie to believe that they can be or are writers just as good as Ray Bradbury or Shirley Jackson or Umberto Eco (you may add your favorites to the list).
Take the fellow who wrote a brilliant murder mystery set in the dotcom boom and bust then hired me to edit it. He decided to self-publish despite my strong belief that the book—which was 200,000 words in length and riveting through just about every one of them as far as I was concerned—could be a bombshell. His reason for self-publishing: he was unwilling to let anyone else control any aspect of his work. Having read the book—which was autobiographical in part (he really did write what he knew)—I understood the impulse. Still . . .
Then there was the fellow who penned rough drafts of one novel after another set in different time periods and who hired me to rewrite them. He had a few issues that . . . well, let me share a handful. Continue reading
I have been a full time writer since 2005. During that time, I’ve penned eight original or shared-world novels, had five of them published, with my first mystery-crime novel due out in October 2018, and am working on a ninth book (well, and a tenth and an eleventh . . . you get the picture.)
That activity not withstanding, at least half of my income in a given year comes from work I do that 1) may never see print and 2) doesn’t have my name on it and which I did not count in the above paragraph.
You see, I am a ghostwriter and an editor in addition to publishing under my own byline. When I tell people this, they usually assume that I ghostwrite biographies or autobiographies or memoirs. I have done all three things. I’ve also ghostwritten or edited how-to books, self-help books and exposés. I’ve written about business, fashion, religion, and the Mafia all on behalf of clients who wanted to tell their story or sell an idea or right a wrong.
But most of what flows from my invisible pen has been fiction. This revelation inevitably leads to the question (delivered in a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding tone of voice): Who hires a ghostwriter for fiction?Continue reading
I did my first reading from THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER at BayCon in San Mateo over the Memorial Day Weekend and discovered a couple of things.
One is that there is a lot of crossover between the readership of SF & F and Mystery & Crime novels. When I announced the book release (remember October!) I saw folks excitedly writing down the information about the book—which is available for pre-order on Amazon right this very moment!
The other thing is that the novel works out loud! People laughed in all the right places, looked concerned for my plucky heroine as appropriate, and generally gave me their full attention and immediate feedback. Warmed the cockles of this writer’s heart. I suppose I do not need to tell you that I was tickled . . . well, pumpkin, since I dislike pink.
I plan to read from the book again at WesterCon and possibly WorldCon if I am so privileged as to have a reading.
