Plans Best Laid
March 30, 2025 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as crime fiction, short fiction
The conversations murmuring around her provided white noise for Erica as she sat at her laptop in the busy coffeeshop. One more chapter to finish. Then a scrap of an exchange broke through her deep concentration.
“He’d kill us if he had the chance.”
She glanced up, her eyes focusing on the photo of a sailboat framed on the wall, trying to hear what the couple said. From their voices, it was a man and a woman. They were at the table immediately behind her.
“We’ve got to do it.” The woman spoke calmly, as though they were discussing vacation get-away plans.
“When?”
The roar of the latte-maker drowned out any response from the woman. Erica shifted in her seat, feigning a look in her backpack in order to see the couple. Just a quick glance, nothing to let them know she’d overheard. Both in their mid-thirties. The woman pretty in an old-fashioned way, with dark, sculpted curls that tucked under at her neck. The man with a hint of chisel in his features, white-blond, short-cropped hair.
Erica pulled out a notebook she didn’t need to make it clear she had purpose to dig into her bag. The machine noise stopped abruptly, leaving only the gentle background jazz piped over the shop’s speakers.
With her back once again to the couple, she pretended to write.
“Do you think he knows we’re here?”
The man laughed. “Almost certainly.”
“But he can’t hear us—” The woman sounded alarmed.
“No, of course not.” The man seemed to realize his seatmate’s concern. “That’s why we chose this place. You can relax.” Erica imagined him patting the woman’s hand to comfort her.
The counter machine again kicked into action, once more damping all conversations. Squealing, a tot ran past the table, with the mother close behind.
Erica chewed on her lip. Were they planning a crime? Or just kvetching over the woman’s ex, who just happened to be violent? What should she do?
Slipping out her wallet, she rose to order another espresso. That would give her a chance to see them clearly, to make a mental note of their appearance in case she needed to report them … later.
On the way back to her table, she scrutinized the couple but kept her gaze wandering, as though she were lost in her thoughts. Which was why she failed to see the tot’s small toy on the floor. Tripping on it, Erica threw up her hands and the coffee splashed on the man’s face and down his blue polo.
“Gah,” he said, reaching for napkins to dry himself. The woman dabbed at his shirt with more napkins.
“I’m so sorry,” Erica said. So much for stealth. “I’ll go get paper towels.”
“We’re fine,” the man said. “Don’t worry about it. We were just leaving.”
They both stood. A shop server arrived with more towels and sopped up some of the liquid from the tabletop.
“Sure I can’t buy you another round?” Erica said, searching for something more to say.
The woman shook her head. “We’ve been here too long, I think.” She was studying Erica’s face. Perhaps to memorize it for later retribution.
“Well, if you change your mind …” Erica left the words hanging. “About your plans,” she wanted to add.
The man stopped his turn toward the exit and looked back at her. “We won’t.”
[Inspired by the 1974 film The Conversation]
Stories by Dianna Sinovic
Death Opens a Window Book Tour & Guest Post
June 16, 2021 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Guest Posts, Rabt Book Tours tagged as Award Winning Author, crime fiction, Death Opens A Window, Mikel J Wilson, Mourning Dove Mysteries, mystery, RABTBookTours
Mourning Dove Mysteries, Book 2
Mystery, Crime Fiction, LGBTQ
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Date Published: Oct 19, 2019
Purchase Links
BEST eBOOK SUSPENSE/THRILLER – New Apple Book Awards
BEST COVER OVERALL – New Apple Book Awards
The Mourning Dove Mysteries series includes:
3. A LIGHT TO KILL BY (coming August 3–preorder available)
Emory Rome is back in DEATH OPENS A WINDOW, Book 2 of the Mourning Dove Mysteries and the follow-up to the international bestseller MURDER ON THE LAKE OF FIRE.
As he struggles with the consequences of his last case, Emory must unravel the inexplicable death of a federal employee in a Knoxville high-rise. But while the reticent investigator is mired in a deep pool of suspects – from an old mountain witch to the powerful Tennessee Valley Authority – he misses a greater danger creeping from the shadows. The man in the ski mask returns to reveal himself, and the shocking crime of someone close is unearthed.
About the Author
Award-winning mystery author Mikel J. Wilson draws on his Southern roots for the international bestselling Mourning Dove Mysteries, a series of novels featuring bizarre murders in the Smoky Mountains region of Tennessee. Wilson adheres to a “no guns or knives” policy for the instigating murders in the series.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mikel J. Wilson
- I was a licensed skydiver. I went to skydiving school in California City and would jump out of an Otter or Cessna over the Mojave Desert, which was especially stunning from 12,000 feet. I stopped jumping when I moved to San Diego.
- I insert subtle cameos into my books of characters from other, unrelated books I’ve written. For example, I have August Briar from Sedona: The Lost Vortex talking on the phone to Jeff Woodard from my Mourning Dove Mysteries series, and I have the other end of the conversation in Murder on the Lake of Fire, which came out six years later.
- I appeared as an extra on Will & Grace during the first season – in the “Alley Cats” episode, bowling beside the two leads.
- I’m a Southerner who has never drank even a sip of tea – sweet or unsweetened. I gave this same quirk to Emory Rome in my Mourning Dove Mysteries series.
- I spent two weeks alone camping and hiking in Sedona, seeking redirection for my life, and I came back with the inspiration for my first published book, Sedona: The Lost Vortex, which reinvigorated my passion for writing.
- When I was 19, I hopped on a Greyhound bus from Nashville to Los Angeles with $100 in my pocket and without knowing anyone there. I ended up homeless on the streets of Hollywood for a couple of months, but I persevered and have lived in Southern California ever since.
- In my 20s, I was a bartender at Studio One, which, at the time, was the largest LGBTQ+ nightclub in Los Angeles.
- I took Latin in high school and was president of the Latin Club, so I was especially thrilled to have a book-signing event in Rome for the launch of Murder on the Lake of Fire’s Italian version, Omicidio sul Lago di Fuoco.
- I proposed to my husband at Machu Picchu, finding out afterwards the particular spot is called the Palace of the Princess.
- I’m a UFO buff, and I was a huge fan of Chariots of the Gods when I was a kid. I finally met author Erich von Däniken at a “Contact in the Desert” event in 2019 and got a picture with him, which was majorly exciting for me.
Excerpt
Death Opens a Window
Mikel J. Wilson
At thirty-two stories, the Godfrey Tower jutted from the Knoxville skyline like a shark fin in the Tennessee River. Unseen through the frameless exterior walls of silvery, reflective glass, a young woman on the twenty-ninth floor sat with a phone held to her ear, pretending to be on a business call as she stared out the floor-to-ceiling window behind her desk. While her colleagues busied themselves on phones or computers at the dozens of cubicles throughout the large, open office space, Angie was not contributing to the organization’s productivity.
If she had looked down and across the street, the attractive brunette would’ve seen the unremarkable roof of the area’s next-tallest building fourteen floors below her. Instead she focused on the unobstructed view of downtown and the hazy, snow-peaked mountains beyond. She imagined herself hiking below the snowline with her new lumbersexual boyfriend and lying with him on a blanket before a tantric campfire. Angie could almost hear the crackling wood, until she realized the sound was coming from behind her.
She turned her chair around to see her boss tapping her desk with his pen. The hoary goat of a man stared her down, his pinched eyes straining to scold her through spotted glasses. “You’re having a rather one-sided conversation.”
Angie held up a silencing finger to her boss and made up something to say to her imaginary caller. “Thank you so much for your feedback, Mr. Watkins. We always appreciate hearing about good customer service, and I’ll be sure to pass along your kudos. Okay. Take care now.” She hung up the phone and greeted her boss with a smile. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear what you said.” She mimed a talking mouth with her hand. “He was talking my ear off.”
Mr. Ramsey, however, did not return her smile. In fact, a look of horror sprinted across his face as something behind her snatched his attention. Before Angie could turn around to see what it was, she heard a great shattering, followed by the pelting of glass on her back and right cheek.
A dark-haired man in a brown suit flew through the window headfirst and thudded faceup onto the floor beside her. The impact against the man’s back shoved the air from his lungs. He gurgled as he struggled to regain his breath – although no one could hear it over the screams of Angie and several of her co-workers. Shards of glass protruded from his head and neck, one at the base of an erratic fountain of blood that sprang from his carotid artery.
Angie, now shocked into silence, tore her eyes from the dying man and toward the broken window through which she had daydreamed just a moment earlier. Oblivious to the blood trickling from the small cuts on her own face, she took a step toward the large hole the man’s body had punched into the glass wall. She poked her head outside and looked all around.
Her boss grabbed her and pulled her away from the precarious opening. “Angie, what are you doing? It’s not safe!”
The young woman turned a confused face to him. “Where did he come from?”
Co-Creating Characters by Will Zeilinger and Janet Elizabeth Lynn
July 3, 2018 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as co-writing, crime fiction, mysteries, writing partners
CO-CREATING CHARACTERS
by
Will Zeilinger
Question from a guest at one of our recent book events: “You two write crime fiction but how do you come up with some of your characters? Are they like, people you know—people like me?”
We get asked that question more often than you’d think, and the answer is that creating characters is probably one of the aspects of a story we spend the most time discussing.
Since we are co-writing the fifth book in the Skylar Drake Mysteries, our main characters are pretty much fleshed out. In each story, we reveal a little more about their personalities and histories. But these were developed before we ever wrote a word.
We made a profile of each character which included their backgrounds, their physical description, their likes and dislikes, and added any little quirks they might have. Please understand when we say quirks, we’re not mocking or making fun of a person’s physical or mental challenges, rather, some of the people we’ve known are downright weird.
This is the same process we’ve used for new characters in subsequent stories. Some of the “quirky” traits are more pronounced in some characters than in others, to the point that we always seem to find a character for our story who is plainly odd.
As to whether our characters are disguised versions of real people—We’d have to say, no. Not really. We like to “people watch” at malls, concerts, airports, the checkout line, at church and even in our writers’ groups.
When we were both working full-time, we found a never-ending supply of personalities and quirks in the people we worked with every day.
For instance, one of us worked with a person who would sit at lunch and eat in a circular pattern around his plate – usually clockwise. If you asked him a question or distracted him in any way, he would stop and return to the top or “12 o’clock” position on his plate and start over. This person had a management position but clearly qualified as quirky. We haven’t used this quirk yet, nor the one of the woman who would not eat or drink anything purple.
We’ve even drawn on classmates from childhood, high school or those we’d met on a few of our first minimum-wage jobs.
From our discreet observations, we write character sketches, talk about them and morph them into a unique personality.
These “people watching” experiences for character development also lead us to great conversational snippets that we use in some of our dialog. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You can’t write this stuff.” And in truth, sometimes great characters or dialog falls into our lap.
In our fourth co-written mystery, Slick Deal, you’ll see how Skylar Drake and Casey Dolan react with quirky characters to work out the murder. With our fifth Skylar Drake Mystery in the works, we are still discussing and creating characters for his latest adventure—and yes…we are still married!
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