Ghosts for Mardi Gras!

Giulia Driscoll used to say running a detective agency was the busiest job she’d ever had. Then the ghosts showed up, and she figured now she’s the busiest ever. This of course challenged the Universe to say, “Hold my beer.”

Today she’s running the agency, sleuthing on behalf of the ghosts, and being the mother of a two-month-old. At last she understands those 5-Hour Energy commercials.

The Universe then dropped two clients in her lap for Mardi Gras: a family greedy to find hidden money and the son of her least-favorite person, Ken Kanning of The Scoop. The positive: a date night! The not-so-positive: it’s a working date night. Driscoll Investigations is joining the big Mardi Gras costume charity gala to search for potential thieves. Kanning Junior will be at the party showing off his tame ghost. 

The Scoop, a few hundred drunk revelers, a mercenary family, and a ghost who isn’t as tame as the kid thinks. What could possibly go wrong? 

Did someone just hear the Universe say, “Hold my beer”? 

Branding, Lawyers, and Coining words

In 2010, I landed my first book deal for Force of Habit, the very first Giulia Falcone mystery (she wasn’t married yet). Several characters played MMORPGs, about which I knew zilch. No problem: I asked a knowledgeable co-worker: What’s the biggest MMORPG? He said instantly: World of Warcraft.

 I dived into the research. I learned the characters, the gameplay, the realms, the powers—everything I needed to make the gaming scenes believable.

 Then my editor called me and said I couldn’t use any World of Warcraft-specific names or attributes. Lawyers, she said.

 I rolled up my sleeves and changed EVERYTHING. The game became “Battle Planet.” (I’ll pause while y’all groan.) Hey, it took care of the issue. I used generic character types. I pulled character names from ancient Sumerian myths. (I’m a RIOT at parties, let me tell you.)

 My changes passed the publisher’s legal team. We were good to go!

 Something else has always interested me about this book. The crazy stalker gets Giulia into her sights and sends her a Barbie doll dressed for a porn shoot. I even have someone call it “slut barbie” in the book. That passed legal inspection just fine.

 Fast-forward to my newest Giulia book, Better than Nun. The MacGuffin in the book is an idea given to me by a stranger in the hotel lobby during the Malice Domestic conference. I loved the idea and squirreled it away until I crafted a plot for it. It’s also a very well known brand name for a kids’ toy.

 I knew I had to come up with something. That something was a precocious eleven-year-old who liked to build things. For his science fair, he built his own version of the toy. YouTube has its uses.

 The instant you read about the kid’s homemade toy, you’ll know exactly what it’s supposed to be. But you won’t read the actual name anywhere in the book. Muahahahaha!

 I’ve had to use branding in my career too. I write the light, funny Giulia Driscoll mysteries under my own name. as Kate Morgan I write horror and supernatural thrillers. I knew I’d made the right decision when I was talking to a group of older women about cozy mysteries. When I mentioned I also wrote horror, two of them actually stepped back from me.

 I write fiction, but every word of this post is fact. I think there’s a cliché about truth being stranger than fiction. Let me research that…