So, I’m supposed to tell you something about me. Hmm, you won’t believe it but this is the tricky part of being a fiction writer. I spend my days making up stuff about people I made up in the first place. I then tangle their lives all together and kill a few of them off to keep you turning pages.
Before I became a writer full time, I have to admit that I paid very little attention to the authors who wrote the books I love and adore. Of course, I could pick out the authors’ names on their book jackets but I didn’t really care too much about who they were, what they liked for breakfast, or even if they had a favorite character they liked to write about the most. I just read for the sheer joy of reading. But now? Well, I’m much more curious and since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are too.
Here goes…but fair warning, you may find it all incredibly boring.
I grew up on a cattle ranch in central Washington; bucking bales, riding horses, showing sheep, and rodeoing until I went off to college. I had a fantastic English Lit teacher in high school that really embedded a love of reading and literature. A secret part of me always wanted to be a writer, and I had many false starts at short stories and novels, but there was that dreaded voice in the back of my mind, “You can’t make a living as a writer.” I’ll stop right here and tell you…DO NOT listen to that voice! If you want to be a writer, Keep Writing! If you want to be an artist, Keep Creating! A singer? Keep Singing! Whatever it is you want, Keep Doing It!
But I digress. After getting my degree in Communications (which I figured was sort of writing), it was the typical story of the small town girl making her way to the glitz and glitter of the big city (no, Seattle, not NYC). I quickly found out just how much this small town girl hated the big city, hated the traffic, hated working in PR, and hated what I was promoting. So, I picked up and moved to the Oregon coast where I worked any job I could find; wine shop, gift shop, candy store, art gallery—you name it—I worked in it. All of which you will see glimpses of in my fictitious town of Cove Beach when you read Deadly Yours.
But all the while my days off were spent hiking, bird watching, and exploring. I liked those days off so much that I went back to college to study Wildlife Management and returned to the Oregon coast. For the next several years, I worked on the beach as a rocky intertidal interpreter. I know all of you are thinking, she got to work on the beach? How cool! And it was beyond cool, but remember I worked on the north Oregon coast, not southern California. Very few of those days were spent in t-shirts and shorts, most included a fleece, rain gear, rubber boots, and every once in a while hip waders.
Since those wonderful, albeit rainy, beach days, I have done a variety of things which is what happens when you don’t know exactly what you want to be when you grow up. You’ll see down in my Author bio that I woke up on my fiftieth birthday with an idea and a determination to finally get going. This sudden flash of an idea had happened many times over those fifty years but I always thought, “Meh, I’ll get back to it.” Well, something happens when you turn fifty. You realize there are probably more days behind you than ahead of you—even though both my grandma and her sister lived over 100 years!—and if you don’t get going it’s never going to happen.
I also received some incredible advice when I was about halfway through finishing my first manuscript. You know, that ah ha! moment that really lights a fire under your rear end? I caught an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis. At this point I was ready to quit and toss the whole thing in the trash. No, really, I was and then I heard these words from Curtis when she was asked why she (now in her 60s) keeps going with all the causes and projects in her life. Here’s what she said, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”
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Title: Deadly Yours
Author: Cyndi L. Stuart
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Book Blurb:
This Killer Won’t Let You Run Away!
A letter, sealed with blood red wax, arrives in a small coastal town. Samantha’s hopes of a new, quiet life are shattered. The killer is back. Like years before, the crime scenes mimic classic mysteries Samantha once taught in her English Lit class—The Art of Detection. Is one murder staged from an Ellery Queen novel? P.D. James? Sherlock Holmes? Maybe more!
Five years ago, strangers died. This time—friends. As the body count climbs, this menace must be found or the killings may never stop. What’s hidden in the tiny details? Why is the killer taunting her? As the killer closes in, does she once again cut and run or stand and fight? What will Sam risk to bring this nightmare to an end?
Excerpt:
A young, tall officer paced in front of a large whiteboard as he made notes and pinned up photos. A photo of a sea chest caught Samantha’s attention. Her head spun to the next picture which showed the same chest with a body inside. The note alongside the image read, “killed by a sharp weapon—run through trunk into body.” Her eyes scanned the top of the board and then stopped on the photo and the words written below—Victim Robert Brignone.
Samantha shoved herself away from the counter and ran back into the conference room. She wrenched the door wide open, raced inside, and slammed it shut. The three investigators huddled around the letter on the table, stared up in alarm.
“Was that trunk found in a museum?” Sam demanded.
Detective Jessica Noguchi’s face looked confused. “What trunk?”
“The body in the trunk!” Sam shouted and pointed to the room behind her. “On the whiteboard. Was it found in a museum?”
Jessica squinted through the window to the squad room and then her eyes darted back to Sam. Oh, crap! She’s seen the incident board.
Before Jess could respond, Criminal Profiler, Colin Davies, stood up. “No, not in a museum exactly, but...”
The pitch of her voice rose. She turned toward Colin. “Then…a-a-a party? Was there a party in the room with the ch-ch-ch-chest?”
Colin answered again. “Yes. He was found in an old sea trunk two days after a party at his home.”
Sam’s next words came out as a whisper. “It’s the killer.”
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)
Author Biography:
Cyndi didn’t start out life as a mystery writer. But one day something unexpected happened—she became a woman of a certain age.
“What in the world are you waiting for?” said the voice in her head as she woke up on her fiftieth birthday. “That novel isn’t going to write itself! And YOU, sweet pea, are NOT getting any younger.”
So, after years spent as a naturalist on the north Oregon coast and PNW garden speaker, Cyndi dusted off her old Comm degree, left technical writing behind and got to work on short stories, flash fiction, and personal essays. But in secret she tapped away on her first mystery novel, Deadly Yours, which has now been published by The Wild Rose Press.
The challenge of creating stories from her own imagination, current events, history, and things she might have overheard at the local coffee shop is what makes her happy and where her passion for writing began. She now lives on a small island in the south Puget Sound area of Washington state. When not reading, writing, or procrastinating, Cyndi can be found hiking, biking, or swimming in the local lakes, streams, and even in the cold waters of the sound itself.
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