Today Karen Shughart author of Murder in the Cemetery, An Edmund DeCleryk mystery is joining us at Ascroft, eh?
Welcome Karen. Why don’t I turn the floor over to you:
As amazing as it seems, I actually like that you are seriously interested in and fine and awesome with whatever I said to you in my last email. Seriously. I love that you don’t freak out when I include nonsense in them. LOL. And that you don’t think I’m ridiculous. Whatever. I like your funny responses and hope you don’t think I’m an idiot or stupid by saying this. You are really nice, and I very much want you to continue to be very happy.
If you’re completely puzzled after reading the above paragraph, I don’t blame you. I admit, I’m the guilty one. It’s terrible, and I wrote it, but there was a method to my madness. Read further, and I’ll explain.
I worked for more than a year writing the second book in the Edmund DeCleryk series, Murder in the Cemetery. After several drafts, I was ready to edit and polish the copy, which for me was the most difficult part. When I started writing the book, I wrote down everything I could think of that would create and enhance the plot. After I was relatively satisfied with what I’d created, my next step was to look for inconsistencies. For example, in book one, Murder in the Museum, one of the characters and his wife had recently welcomed their second grandchild. A year-and-half later, in this second book, the grandchild was in kindergarten. Whoops!
As I continued to read through the book, I became aware of extraneous narrative. Annie, wife of Ed and a sleuth in her own right, provides an intern who is working on a project for her with contact information for her friend, Charles, who had a large role in book one and expertise in the field the intern is researching. As much as I wanted him to reappear in book two, I realized that the intern didn’t need Charles’ help and never would. Goodbye, Charles.
I’m pretty good at spelling, grammar and punctuation. I won a spelling bee at my school when I was nine or ten. I was also an English teacher, for gosh sake. That said, I always find errors. Sometimes my brain works faster than my fingers as they pound away at the keyboard; I make mistakes. During that phase in the book I read carefully and very slowly; I don’t want my publisher to think I am illiterate or careless, heaven forbid.
Now we come to the reason for the paragraph at the beginning of this blog. Almost every word is one that’s overused. I know from experience that it’s easy to include them. Sometimes, we get attached to certain phrases or want to pad the word count. Sometimes it’s completely unintentional. If we want our writing to flow, if we want it to look professional, these must be either be winnowed down or deleted. At least most of them.
Using computer software, I can search my document for a certain word, and it’s highlighted every time it appears. It’s frustrating because sometimes the computer can’t distinguish the as in was from the word as. Still, it’s a good tool. It takes time, but once I identified these overused words in the book, I was able to rewrite sentences that were original, creative. And, hopefully for you, the reader, much more compelling.
Thanks for sharing this with us, Karen. Readers can learn more about Karen and her writing by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn and Hometown Reads/Rochester Reads pages. You can also follow her blog.
The novel is available online at the following retailers:
Amazon Paperback – Amazon Kindle
About Karen Shughart: Karen studied English Literature at S.U.N.Y Buffalo, received a B.A. in Comprehensive Literature from the University of Pittsburgh and completed graduate courses in English from Shippensburg University. In addition to Murder in the Cemetery (book two of the Edmund DeCleryk Cozy mystery series), she is also the author of Murder in the Museum (book one of the series), two non-fiction books and has worked as an editor, publicist, photographer, journalist, teacher and non-profit executive. Before moving to a small village on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, Karen and her husband resided in south central Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg.
TT: The idea for this mystery stems from my love of watching paranormal investigators on the Travel Channel and constantly asking myself, is they for real? I have a passage in the book where the ghost hunters have garbled background noise and attribute to a full-blown sentence. Yeah, right. I believe in the paranormal because I’ve lived in a couple of haunted houses, but that doesn’t mean I’m a patsy for every “investigator” with an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) recorder.
About Teresa Trent: Teresa writes cozy mysteries that take place in small towns in Texas. The Piney Woods Series came to be because her older brother worked in the hotel industry for over twenty years and would relate all the things and people he had experienced. Because Teresa loves history and a little bit of the paranormal, the Tunie Hotel was born! Teresa is also the author of the Pecan Bayou Cozy Mystery Series.
ARK: It came to me when I was on safari, having dinner with a guide and fellow travelers. I was surprised why escorts were needed on the lodge’s grounds at night. From there, the idea was born for a murder on a safari. (You have to read the book to find out why escorts are needed!)
About A. R. Kennedy: She lives in Long Beach, New York, with her two pups. She works hard to put food on the floor for them. As her favorite T-shirt says, ‘I work so my dog can have a better life’. She’s an avid traveler. But don’t worry. While she’s away, her parents dote on their grand-puppies even more than she does. Her writing is a combination of her love of travel, animals, and the journey we all take to find ourselves.
AW: I love thrift shops! You can always find something unusual, rare, or unique. Occassionally, I also find a thing or two that makes me ask: What is this? Maybe it’s something magical. And maybe there are customers out there who know just what to do with these magical items.
About Astoria Wright: She is a cozy fantasy author and a poet who is inspired by rainy days, good books, and positive people. She is often found sitting by a window or in her backyard sipping tea or coffee and writing or reading cozy mysteries, fantasy novels, or poetry. Join her mailing list at 
Roberta is a flawed yet sympathetic character. She is both cynic and romantic, jaded and enthusiastic, willfully ignorant and prescient. My goal was to create an unlikeable character, one who is self-absorbed and angry, and then transform her into someone we can all identify with. To accomplish this, I employed classic fairy tales, which are rich in symbols and archetypes. Insight into the meanings of these tropes and classic roles allows the reader to understand the tales, and therefore life, on a deeper level.
About Phyllis M. Newman: Phyllis is a native southerner. Born in New Orleans, she spent formative years in Florida, Iowa, Mississippi, and on a dairy farm in Ross County, Ohio. After a long career in finance and human resources at The Ohio State University, she turned her attention to writing fiction. She published a noir mystery, “Kat’s Eye” in 2015, a Gothic mystery, “The Vanished Bride of Northfield House” in 2018, and the suspense thriller “Clearing in the Woods” in 2019. Today she lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and three perpetually unimpressed cats, none of whom venture far from home.
NJC: Easter Hair Hunt is #16 in the Bad Hair Day Mysteries. Hairstylist Marla Vail solves crimes in sultry South Florida in this series that Publishers Weekly calls “fast-paced and jaunty.” Besides the 16 full-length novels, this series includes a short story, novella, and cookbook.
About Nancy J. Cohen: Nancy writes the Bad Hair Day Mysteries featuring South Florida hairstylist Marla Vail. Titles in this series have been named Best Cozy Mystery by Suspense Magazine, won a Readers’ Favorite gold medal and a RONE Award, earned first place in the Chanticleer International Book Awards and third place in the Arizona Literary Awards. Nancy’s instructional guide, Writing the Cozy Mystery, was nominated for an Agatha Award, earned first place in the Royal Palm Literary Awards and the TopShelf Magazine Book Awards, and won a gold medal in the President’s Book Awards. A featured speaker at libraries, conferences, and community events, Nancy is a past president of Florida Romance Writers and Mystery Writers of America Florida Chapter. She is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, & Poets. When not busy writing, she enjoys cooking, fine dining, cruising, and visiting Disney World.
I’m Sophie Kimball, a forty-something bookkeeper/accountant, but everyone calls me Phee. I never intended to become an amateur sleuth but what can you expect when you work for an investigative agency in Glendale, Arizona? Most of the time I find myself in my mother’s retirement community of Sun City West, Arizona, tracking down clues for unsolved murders. In DRESSED UP 4 MURDER, my mother’s dog, Streetman, a neurotic little Chiweenie, finds a dead body under the tarp that covered her neighbor’s grill. Needless to say, barbequing is now on hold until the murderer can be caught.
authored the Sophie Kimball Mysteries (Kensington), The Wine Trail Mysteries (Kensington Lyrical Underground), and the Marcie Rayner Mysteries (Camel). In addition, Ann has nine published YA time travel mysteries under her own name.
SE: The series is called The Barking Mad Mystery series because my rescue puppy Bailey insisted on having a starring role, even if he goes undercover and changes his name. The series is about a US Atlanta cop that comes to live in a small English village and becomes a community based police sergeant. He’s expecting lost dogs and bake sales but he’s immediately embroiled in murder and mayhem.
About Scarlett English: She is a crazy cat lady who likes solving mysteries. Or actually, make that a dog lady. Much to her chagrin, the police have never sought to consult her, which is why there seems to be so much unsolved crime. Especially—surprisingly enough—in the small English village where she lives. So, armed with curiosity, a penchant for taking in strays, a love of homemade wine and a good gossip, she puts her detecting talents to good use murdering her imaginary friends and neighbors and solving the cases one story at a time.
At the start of MURDER MAKES SCENTS, Stella points out that her mother, Millie, seeks adventure by travelling world, whereas Nantucket is always enough to keep her on her toes. How right she is!
About Christin Brecher: Christin was born and raised in NYC, where her family and many childhood friends still reside. As such, she feels she is as much of a small-town girl as any. The idea to write the Nantucket Candle Maker series sprang from her life-long connection to the small island off the coast of Massachusetts. Spending summers there as a child, Christin read from her family’s library of mystery novels, after which she began to imagine stories inspired by the island’s whaling heyday, its notoriously foggy nights, and during long bike rides to the beach. After many years in marketing for the publishing industry, followed by years raising her children, Murder’s No Votive Confidence is Christin’s debut novel.
I took over a part of the writer’s brain. I’ve been festering there for a while, but I knew it was time for me to have my say. As for the Kebab Kitchen series, I’ve evolved a lot over the course of the books.
About Tina Kashian: Tina is a bestselling author, an attorney, and a mechanical engineer whose love of reading for pleasure helped her get through years of academia. Tina spent her childhood summers at the Jersey shore building sandcastles, boogie boarding, and riding the boardwalk Ferris wheel. She also grew up in the restaurant business, as her Armenian parents owned a restaurant for thirty years. Tina’s books have been Barnes & Noble top picks, and the first book in her Kebab Kitchen Mediterranean mystery series, Hummus and Homicide, spent six weeks on the B&N bestseller list. Please visit her website at 
