When we get Latin right in language, we sound smart (IMO). When we get it wrong … we sound very World War II (eleven).

So here’s a quick, ad hoc refresher and a few favorites you probably use.

Ad hoc was the original word-of-mouth for this post. I found it used in Operation Pineapple Express by Lt. Col. Scott Mann. I read it for the next Nicky Matthews mystery, Sacred Ghosts—remember, Franco Martinez is an Army vet. They created ad hoc committees targeting the extraction of former comrades and their families in Afghanistan.

But what does that actually mean?

“Ad hoc” translates to “for this.” It’s something created for a single, specific purpose—like that committee thrown together to deal with this crisis or this problem and its specifics. It’s not permanent. It’s the “duct tape” of Latin, the bandage that you eventually rip off. It’s not something that is usually meant to last.

A couple of Latin “twins” that people mix up all the time:

• e.g. is exempli gratia, “for example.” You use it when you’re throwing out samples from a larger set—e.g., mystery, thriller, or rom-com.

  • FYI, gratia means “grace,” so shouldn’t this phrase be example grace?

  • Gratia plena: “Full of grace”.

  • Sola gratia: “by grace alone”.

• i.e. is id est, “that is” or “in other words.” It’s for clarifying or restating: i.e., you’re not allowed to panic about this until after coffee.

  • “id” is actually a pronoun meaning “it,” so “it is”?

Writers sometimes use these phrases because they know what they mean without actually knowing what they mean. That can be good … or bad. Whatever you choose, don’t confuse your reader.

• De facto means “in practice.” It’s what actually happens, whether or not it’s official.

  • My critique partner is a de facto story whisperer and can find all those little holes that I somehow missed in my 34+ revisions.

• Status quo is “the state in which”—or the current situation.

  • When we say “let’s not mess with the status quo,” we’re really saying “please don’t poke at the fragile Jenga tower that’s barely standing.”

Others are about intention and exchanges:

• Bona fide means “in good faith,” which we now use as “genuine” or “authentic.” A bona fide fan isn’t pretending—they’re all in.

  • I like to say bone-a fee-day out loud.

• Quid pro quo is Renaissance Latin(?) for “something for something,” a trade with expectations on both sides: like “I’ll promote your book if you promote mine.”

  • Quid is Latin for “what.”

  • Pro translates to “for,” “on behalf of,” or “in place of.”

  • Quo means “where.” But I think that’s Latin Latin—not Renaissance Latin.

And then there are the little spice words we sprinkle into sentences:

• Per se means “by itself.” It’s not the deadline, per se, that’s killing me—it’s the three beta (Greek) reads that found a bunch of problems in the manuscript.

• Vice versa is “the other way around,” our shorthand for flipping two things: We help each other. She tells me when my writing sucks, and vice versa.

I guess using these tiny Latin phrases depends on what you are writing—maybe a legal thriller? Or how about a comedic legal thriller?

“Your Honor, prima facie this is a de minimis matter, and while the ratio decidendi in Smith may, ipso facto, seem in pari materia, res ipsa loquitur that my client—acting bona fide and certainly not in flagrante delicto—lacks the requisite mens rea, so if the State persists in limine rather than entering a nolle prosequi, I may be compelled, sine qua non, to seek habeas corpus and pursue this pro bono amicus curiae crusade all the way to a petition for certiorari, inter alia.”

Or perhaps a medical drama soap opera, and let’s not forget what we borrow from Greek, French, and German, as well as Latin:

“His myocardium is a drama queen,” the doctor said. “Prima facie panic attack, but the res ipsa—the sweat, the clutching—whispers infarct.”

“Or,” the nurse replied, “it whispers too many Red Bulls and both the wife and girlfriend in the waiting room. That’s de minimis cardiology, Herr Doktor.”

“Bona fide symptoms, ma chère,” he insisted. “My mens rea is pure.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your Latin is malpractice per se. Order the labs before I chart diagnosis: ego inflatus.”

He smirked. “That’s not all that’s inflatus right now. Ipso facto, I adore you.”

Yeah, don’t do that.

♣️

If your romance tastes run hotter than spicy, you’ll devour these delicious, scorching hot shorts in the Big Bad Book of Bedtime Stories. With a tempting variety of pairings, settings, and tropes, each standalone delivers the heat. Enjoy them in any order—savor them solo or share the pleasure.

Volume 1 includes:

Eggplant Night

Dirty Dishes

Teacher Pet

Third Time’s the Charm

Just don’t be surprised if you end up reading them all.

Big Bad Book of Bedtime Stories

I’ve been drifting closer and closer to horror in my writing, which shocks me. I hated the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and didn’t voluntarily watch a horror movie until I turned 50 (I was traumatized by The Blob (1958) when I was eight.)

But Horror calls to me, so I attended the panel Bumps in the Night: Writing Horror, Paranormal, and Supernatural, one of the variety of panels at the 2024 Killer Nashville conference. This nugget came from Chad Nichols, one of the panelists. He had analyzed horror books, movies, and TV shows and came up with a simple formula to keep in mind as you write horror:

The “monster” (think the Jaws (1975) shark or the clown in Stephen King’s It (1986)) is initially terrifying because they are still an unknown entity at the beginning of the story, playing into the classic horror trope that what we fear is the unknown.

You, as the reader or viewer, don’t know the rules of their world, the canon, the biology, setting, or the magic can be stretched to put the protagonists in mortal or, depending on your genre, immortal danger.

But as the reader travels through the pages of the story, they start to see the boundaries of the monster and its world. And with this understanding, their fear of the monster diminishes.

1. The old saw, familiarity breeds contempt, is front and center. The monster loses some of its sting (or bite or slash) once the hero or heroine gets an understanding of its world.

2. So how do you keep the reader engaged? As your story unfolds, make them care about the hero more and more and more.

I’ve plotted that out on this graph:

Here are some movie and book examples that follow the graph. All right, mostly movies.

• Ripley is determined to save Newt from the Alien (with acid saliva(!) in Aliens (1986), the BEST of that movie franchise. The stakes are RAISED through the roof, and you are rooting for the bad*ss mother in the end, even though the alien is protecting her offspring, too, by colonizing every human with her protomorph babies.

• In a really nice twist, David is both the Hero and the Monster in American Werewolf in London (1981). You so want him to win in the end. Alas.

• First off, don’t read Peter Benchley’s Jaws (1974). The movie is much, much better.

  • Brody is the everyman, and when he lifts his shirt to expose his appendix scar or utters, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” you are right there beside him thinking, “What the heck have I gotten myself into?”

  • Then there is the shark. Think of the primal fear of the first scene as the woman is hit by something below, her breath coming in panicked puffs, screaming in unimaginable pain and pure terror until she’s pulled beneath for the last time.

    • While watching this scene, I made the astute and balanced decision to never go into the ocean again.

  • By the time I reached the end of the movie, the whole theater was laughing when the large rubber prop jumped in the boat, its jaws bouncing, boing! boing! boing! up and down on Quint—a lot of it was to relieve the tension.

  • Jaws (1975) is the epitome of the graph that accompanies this article.

Honorable mentions:

• Tremors (1990) is a horror, comedy, action, thriller. It’s Jaws in the desert with a monster under the goll-durn ground, a great cast with great chemistry, and just watch it.

• Fright Night (1985) is ANOTHER horror, comedy, action movie with a huge added dose of campy makeup and props. A vampire moves in next door to Charlie, who starts to investigate when he notices women going in but never coming out of his new neighbor’s home. In the end, Charlie is willing to sacrifice himself to save his friends. Go, Charlie!

And remember, as you watch and read horror, and write your own tales of terror, the object of ANY story is to make your reader/viewer care so much about the hero/heroine and their stakes that they won’t take their eyes off the page/screen.

♣️

Keep the tension and worry rising!

Don’t make solving the mystery too easy—use your ‘villain’ to make it harder

By the middle of your story, your villain shouldn’t just sit there and hope the sleuth gets bored. This is the beat where the bad kid (or group) starts pushing back in SMART ways.

Read more

An ISBN is an International Standard Book Number, that identifies an individual literary work. Originally ten digits, the identifiers are thirteen digits since 2007. Encoded within is the country of the publisher, the title of the work, and a “check” digit that validates the code as being authentic.

Every format of your book will have a different ISBN.

You’ll likely have at least two formats of your book: ebook and paperback. Later, you may add an audiobook, a large-print edition, or even a special hardback edition with sprayed edges and a foiled cover.

Great, Jordyn. But Amazon gives me a free code. Why can’t I use that?

Short answer: You can, but you probably shouldn’t.

The key piece of data contained in the ISBN that you care about as a self-published author is the publisher. When you use a free Amazon or Barnes & Noble code, it’s not an ISBN. It’s an internal product tracking number that includes the format, title, etc. that the distributor (Amazon, BN) tracks in their internal systems.

So what?

Short answer: It doesn’t work for bookstores and libraries.

Let’s go back to your dream of bookstores or libraries displaying your brilliant printed works. To realize that dream, you’ll need your own codes because other bookstores—who are barely surviving in spite of the big online stores—don’t particularly want to order books from their competition. In fact, they aren’t using that resource to select books. They’re using the catalog Bowker provides, Books in Print ®(online as Bookwire), with all the books registered through their service. And they’re using the ISBN to track what books readers have requested and their own inventory. Also, ISBNs are, by definition, international.

So a bookstore in Italy, that wants to stock your Tuscan romance for their tourist traffic, can order the book by ISBN.

Perhaps you’re convinced you need an ISBN, but now you’re wondering if you have to buy them from Bowker.

Short answer: If you live in the U.S., yes.

Why?

If you purchase your number from anyone other than Bowker, THEY are the publisher of record for YOUR book. That’s contrary to the entire point of being self-published.

When you have ownership of the ISBN, you control the metadata associated with that number including: the cover, book description, author, contributors, etc. And you control the option to delist that book when you release a second edition (and assign a new ISBN).

Bowker will sell you single ISBNs, blocks of 10, or 100 or more. The cost per unit goes down significantly the more you buy. I recommend you buy the biggest block you can afford, preferably a pack of 100 if you plan to publish more than five books in ebook and paperback formats. Remember, each format gets its own number.

Next step—assign your ISBN in the My Identifiers part of the Bowker website.

The print option is fairly direct: Name of the book and blurb, author name and bio, genre and a few more tidbits, like the cover. Always add the cover as it shows in the catalog the bookstores and libraries are browsing.

The ebook can get a bit tricky because there are several options to select from.

Medium is obvious: ebook. Format is usually electronic book text because the reader downloads the text to their device. The ebook File Type is where you could run into some complications. Before Amazon went to epub only, they used the mobi format. So for any ebook you published, you likely had two formats. This meant you needed two ISBNs for every book before you got to paperback. Now that Amazon has moved to epub only, I recommend one ISBN specifying the epub format.

I use Vellum to generate my ebooks. You could DIY it, and possibly end up with more unique formats such as .pdf or even .docx. But if you’re using a formatting software (Atticus, Vellum) there’s no need to generate other formats to distribute to Amazon, Apple, BN, Draft2Digital, Google Play, or Kobo. They all take epub. Use one number for that format and save the other 99 ISBNs for something else.

The last tip I’ll share here is about publishing your paperbacks.

Even if your ebooks are exclusive with Amazon in their Kindle Unlimited program, your paperbacks can still be published and available wide through multiple distributers. But again, you’re a thrifty author, so you only want to use one ISBN. There is a way to make this magic happen.

First, publish your paperback on Amazon with your ISBN for your paperback format but don’t select Expanded Distribution.

Next, publish to Ingram Spark. They use expanded distribution by default with no method to opt out. And yes, you can use the same ISBN.

Finally, if you want to also have your paperback published with Barnes & Noble, publish your paperback using their free identifier.

Wait? What? Jordyn, you just spent 900 words telling me not to do this.

Ingram Spark has that can’t-be-turned-off distribution, right? So Barnes & Noble has access to your paperback through them. Therefore, you can’t use the same number as the product identifier to publish on their platform. But they seem to favor paperback books that are published directly to them. Translation: More BN customers will see your paperback if it’s direct. Bookstores and libraries can already find your book through Bowker and Ingram, so they aren’t looking on BN to get your book, only readers. It’s safe, in this case, to use the vendor identifier to list your paperback on their internal system.

Huge thanks to Erin Wright of Wide for the Win for breaking down paperback distribution toddler-style. If you’re an author and not a member of that Facebook group, please remedy that as soon as possible, or join the group on Circle.

♠️

References:

https://www.bowker.com/isbn-us

https://www.isbn.org/faqs_formats_reprints_editions

https://bookwire.bowker.com/Home

https://www.facebook.com/erin.wright.author/videos/1225986507870395/?idorvanity=556186621558858

When your detective says, “I’ll solve this,” the real fun starts—because early sleuthing is supposed to be a glorious mess. This is where your character tries things, fails—and keeps going anyway. Because sleuths:

• Notice what others miss

• Ask the right questions

• Use their brains, not just luck

• Never give up on solving the puzzle

Give them clues, but make them small … at first.

Read more

The Midpoint

Around the middle of your mystery, something big should happen that changes how your detective sees the whole case. This is the Midpoint—and it’s a great place to use a sidekick or sleuth team.

Read more

Beat 4 is where your story flips. Up until now, the mystery has been happening to your sleuth. In this beat, “Choosing to Investigate,” the story starts happening because of them.

This is a choosing moment.

Your main character decides, in some way, “I’m going to solve this.” That choice can be big and dramatic or small and quiet, but it has to be clear to the reader.

Usually, three things show up during the “choosing moment”:

• Pressure
  Other people might beg them to help: “You’re the only one who can figure this out.” Adults might warn them off: “Drop it. Let the school handle it.” Inside, their curiosity and sense of fairness are pushing: “This isn’t right. I have to do something.”

• Line in the sand
  There’s one scene where they cross from “maybe” to “yes.” They might promise a friend they’ll prove they’re innocent. They might refuse to let a teacher blame the wrong kid. They might sneak back into the gym or log into an account to check something, even after being told, “Stay out of it.”

• First plan
  Their plan doesn’t have to be smart or complicated. It just has to be a start: talk to three people, search the art room after school, look through old messages, rewatch a video, or make a list of suspects.

Your sleuth does not have to feel brave or ready.

They can be nervous, shaking, or sure they’ll mess everything up. What matters is that they act anyway.

Once this beat happens, “normal life” is officially behind them. Every chapter that follows comes from the investigation they chose to begin.

That choice is what makes them the hero of the mystery.

We have a writing mystery guide that can help!

Demystifying the Beats

After the “crime” explodes into your story, you can’t just slap up some caution tape and jump straight to the solution. Beat 3, “Reactions and Complications,” is where the people drama kicks in and turns one event into a full mystery.

First, show personal reactions

How does your detective actually feel about the crime? Are they shocked that something like this could happen:

• At their school?

• On the orbiting Space Port?

• At the campground?

• In the magical bookstop?

Are they secretly excited that a real mystery has finally arrived? Scared they’ll be blamed? Annoyed that this mess is going to ruin their weekend plans?

Let us (the reader) see whether they want to help, or would rather pretend nothing happened and stay out of trouble.

Next, show the social ripples

A mystery doesn’t just affect one person; it shakes the whole “pond.”

• How do teachers respond—strict, calm, panicked?

• What about parents, friends, the principal, or social media?

• Maybe the wrong kid gets blamed.

• Maybe rumors explode on group chats.

• Maybe adults try to cover it up and say, “Everything’s fine,” when obviously it isn’t.

Then, add early obstacles—ALWAYS add obstacles!

Something should make it harder to solve the problem right away. IMO, this is the KEY to good mysteries!

• A teacher might shut down questions.

• A key friend refuses to talk.

• A parent forbids your sleuth from getting involved.

• Important evidence could mysteriously “disappear,” or a video gets deleted.

These reactions and complications do two important jobs:

(1) They stop your story from being solved in one chapter, and (2) they show what’s really at stake.

If they decide to solve the crime, your detective might risk losing friends, getting in trouble, or giving up their free time. If they walk away, the wrong person could be punished—or the bad stuff could keep happening.

That tension is what pulls readers forward: we want to know not just who did it, but what your sleuth is willing to risk to find the truth. And that’s super important:

Why does your sleuth WANT and NEED to solve this case?

Are you looking for a guide to writing mysteries? We’ve written one!

Demystifying the Beats

Hurt Hound Hurls Holidays into Hullabaloo

Months have passed since Mikayla “Mike” Mitchel came to Daisy, TX, searching for clues about what really happened to her brother. But while her case has gone cold, her relationship with her high-handed heroic hunk, Ryder Ruiz, is heating up. He’s decided they should buy a home together. But she’s damn certain she still hates shopping, even for real estate.

After touring another hell-no house, they encounter an orphaned dog, whose owner appears to have been the victim of a hit-and-run. Mike is instantly half in love with the furball and adds a fenced yard to their list of must-haves. Ryder’s worried the pup may have ties to the military, preventing her adoption. Luckily, this latest body has nothing to do with Mike or her brother.

Or does it?

When secrets are exposed, it’s obvious Daisy has bigger problems than bad drivers and who’s cooking the holiday turkey. Mike’s dead-end investigation could really be a blind corner, and Ryder might not be able to help her navigate the turn.

Get it NOW!

Perfect for readers who love:

• Heroines who are funny, flawed, and fiercely determined

• Underestimated but unstoppable amateur sleuths

• Quirky small-town settings with big secrets

• Cinnamon roll heroes with a dominant side

• High-heat romance that’ll steam up your e-reader

• Mysteries that keep you guessing until the very end

Every mystery needs a big problem to solve. “Expose the Crime” is the moment when that problem shows up, and your characters can’t ignore it anymore.

Your “crime” doesn’t have to be murder or anything super dark.

It can be:

• A stolen championship trophy

• A missing class pet

• A hacked school account

• A ruined science fair project

• Something weird that clearly shouldn’t be there—like slime in every single locker

This beat has three important parts:

1. The event – What exactly happened? Say it clearly so readers know what needs to be fixed. “The principal’s golden whistle is gone,” or “Every basketball net in the gym has been cut to shreds.”

2. The questions – Who did this? How did they do it? Why would anyone want to? What will happen if nobody figures it out—no game, no field trip, someone gets expelled?

3. The shockwave – How does everyone react? Maybe kids freak out and or think it’s hilarious because the principal is a menace with that stupid whistle, maybe rumors explode on group chats, maybe teachers blame the wrong person, or the adults pretend it’s “no big deal” when everyone knows it is.

Sometimes your sleuth and the reader see the crime happen in real time—a shadowy figure dumping slime into lockers. Other times, they only see the mess later—like walking into homeroom and finding every desk flipped over(!) Both ways work, as long as this beat makes one thing crystal clear:

Here is the main mystery. This is the problem we have to solve.

By the end of Beat 2, your readers should know what went wrong, why it matters, and feel that itch in their brain that says, “Okay, now I have to know who did this.”

Would you like a mystery-writing guide? Check this out!

Demystifying the Beats

Mystery writers love clever detectives—but that doesn’t mean your sleuth should be good at everything. In fact, their “weakness” might be the secret weapon that solves the case.

Start by giving your sleuth a flaw that feels real. Not “they’re too perfect,” but something that actually causes problems. For example, they might be:

• Afraid of the dark

• Allergic to cats

• Terrible at lying

• Super shy

• Always follows the rules

At first, this makes life harder.

A kid who hates the dark does not want to sneak into the creepy basement. Someone who sneezes around cats can’t hang out long at the weird neighbor’s house or the town’s cat café. A terrible liar can’t bluff to get past a teacher or security guard.

Tip: The Set-up

Make sure early in your book that your sleuth’s weakness or flaw is “spotlighted.”

But in a good mystery, these “weaknesses” can flip into strengths.

• Afraid of the dark → They plan more carefully and listen harder, so they notice tiny sounds and details others miss.

• Cat allergy → Their sneezes prove someone is lying when they claim they were “never near the cat café.”

• Terrible liar → Everyone knows they can’t fake it, so their honesty makes them more believable.

• Rule‑follower → Because they know the rules so well, they spot the exact moment someone quietly broke one.

Tip: Pay-off

When you get stuck in your story, try this question: How could this flaw help solve the mystery? Maybe the shy kid overhears something because people forget they’re there. Maybe the rule‑follower realizes a sign was moved, or a form was faked.

Let your sleuth’s “weakness” cause trouble early on, then let it help crack the case at the end. That payoff makes your detective—and your story—way more satisfying to read.

Here’s a book that can help you with your mystery!

Demystifying the Beats

Before a mystery gets spooky or dangerous, readers need to meet the detective and see their everyday life. This first “beat” is called “Introduce Sleuth and the World,” and it’s all about showing normal life before everything goes wrong.

Start with time and place.

Where and when does your story happen? Is it a dusty New Mexico town today, a crowded space station in the year 3024, or a middle school in the 1980s with no phones at all? Give a few clear details—weather, clothes, technology, slang—so your reader can picture it.

Next, show connection.

And by connection, connection to the reader. A character/sleuth who is “perfect” is actually boring. Make sure you have a mixture of “good” and “bad” because this is what makes them feel real. We should see one strength and one flaw. Maybe your sleuth is brave but rushes into trouble. Maybe they’re shy but notice everything. Maybe they don’t listen because they think they know it all.

Then, hint at a special skill that will help with the mystery later.

You don’t have to say, “This will be important!” Just let us watch them do it. They might:

• Hear things other people talk over.

• Spot tiny details everyone else misses.

• Know science or history facts that other kids don’t.

You only need a short glimpse of “normal” before you shake it up with the problem or crime. Your sleuth could be shelving books in the library, standing in goal at soccer practice, running a snack stand, or playing an online game. By the end of this first scene, your reader should think, “I like this person. I get their world. Now I’m ready to see what goes wrong.”

Here’s a book that can help you write a mystery!

Demystifying the Beats

Are you an author? Are you just getting started, or do you have a dozen published books under your belt? Either way,

You really need this book.

Picture this: You’re about to hit publish when you find your backup file missing, your distributor account locked, and your inbox full of angry emails.

Or this: You wake up to find your book on a pirate site, your social media in flames, and your publisher threatening to pull your release.

These aren’t just nightmares—they’re everyday realities for authors.

But never fear. The Author Survival Guide is your new essential handbook for navigating the chaos of the writing life.

You've got this!

Written by a team of authors who’ve been there, done that, and lived to write about it, this book is your roadmap for disaster preparedness. You’ll get sassy, no-nonsense advice on everything within the four realms of an author–from tech meltdowns to legal battles, reputation management to real-life emergencies. With customizable templates, actionable strategies, and a healthy dose of humor, this guide will help you prepare and protect your writing career—no matter what hits the fan.

Get This Book!

As authors in a churning, chaotic publishing industry—both traditional and especially indie—we have disagreements about the use of AI in our writing. I’m not so worried about it because I (personally) don’t use it for “writing”. I write my story, then use it for revising—sharpening themes and addressing excess backstory and narrative. But I am very careful about letting AI take over (oh, and it tries) because I have in the past, and it was pointed out by a beta reader (Thank you, Anna!)

I also like to use it for a light-touch proof before I send it to my human editor and proofreader. And I really love one of the writer programs, PWA, for helping me with story structure and story beats. This program gives me a plotline—my Narrative Tension flow—like rising action and crisis/climax. It also points out places where I could “tighten” my structure/plot points during revision.

But more and more, writers and readers are “suspicious” about the use of AI on a grander level, and, sure enough, a tidal wave of AI “slop” is drowning out books written by real human voices. There’s even a logo authors can stamp on their books to tell the reader, Hey! This was written by a human, not a computer.

Where “perfect beats” look suspicious

When people talk about AI “tells” in fiction, they usually start with language or clichés, or what I call “franchising phrases, but there’s a quieter signal that’s beginning to attract attention. It’s the way some stories hit their structural beats with machine‑like precision. If you hand a capable AI model a template—like Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat, a 15‑ or 27‑beat grid—and tell it to “follow this,” it will tend to do so much more cleanly than most humans ever do in the wild. The result can be a narrative whose inciting incident, first plot point, midpoint reversal, and “dark night of the soul” land at unnervingly regular intervals in the word count, with each turning point articulated almost as if it knows it’s a turning point.

This is especially noticeable in short and medium‑length fiction, where there’s less room for coloring outside the lines. A 3,500‑word story that introduces its problem by paragraph three, pivots exactly at the halfway midpoint, and resolves everything in the last 10% with military adeptness might feel wonderfully efficient—or suspiciously too perfect. Humans can do this, of course, and good craft books encourage something like it, but most human drafts carry suggestions of the drafting struggle. Backstory and narrative are my dragons to slay, and over-describing a setting. Does the reader really need to know about the dainty lace draped over the back of a reading chair, or do I just want to use the word “antimacassar”? But what about a scene that runs a little long, a reaction beat that arrives a little late, a moment that breaks the formula in order to stay true to the character?

AI, when asked for “strong structure,” often over‑corrects toward visible bones. You’ll see beats that are not only in the right places but practically flagged red and flashing. For example, characters articulating their own low point:

Would she ever love him? He’d tried desperately to change but had failed because he hated to bathe. And then depression set in …

Explicit statements of theme at the midpoint:

He realized his past inability to confront his father about his terrible childhood was fading, but not yet completely gone. In fact, it seemed he was about halfway there …

Tidy echoes between opening and closing that feel placed rather than organically grown. In some cases, you can feel the ghost of the outline under the prose, as if someone copy‑pasted from a beat sheet and then filled in paragraphs.

BUT THIS CAN ALSO BE VERY HUMAN(!)

On its own, this “perfection in beats” is only a soft clue. Many human writers—especially those steeped in screenwriting and commercial genre craft—also aim for beat‑perfect work and sometimes hit it. Khan Academy’s PIXAR IN A BOX is actually used to teach this structural perfection. What makes “perfect beats” suspicious is not precision itself but precision combined with a lack of friction. Have all of the stubborn scenes that refuse to fit been cut? What about all those messy character emotions confuse a beat’s supposed purpose? When reading, you get no sense that the author ever had to choose between beautiful, structural elegance and the mess that’s left by the crappy first draft. It’s like the perfect model home without the comfortable dog smell in the sofa and that place on the wall where you measured your children’s growth every year.

It can all be very confusing, and right now it feels like Salem when people were yelling “witch” because that poor old widow owned a black cat.

So be careful who you accuse of being an AI author because AI has a way of listening and changing. Write your stories with or without help and find a way to get them to your readers. That’s job enough without the pitchforks and torches.

♣️

Beat 1: Introduce Sleuth and World

Your first beat isn’t the body. It’s the person who’s going to walk into that crime scene, and the world that makes their job harder.

“Introduce Sleuth and the World” means: show us your protagonist in their ordinary context, doing something that only they would do, inside a time and place that matters. Underneath this beat are three building blocks:

• Time and place: concrete signals of era, location, and tone (Victorian London vs. near‑future Mars police station).

• Compelling connection: a glimpse of strengths, flaws, and misbeliefs that make us care.

• Unique skillset: something that will later help them solve the crime (social savvy, forensics, specialized knowledge).

You only need a hint of normal before you disrupt it. A pastry chef sleuth icing cakes, a small‑town deputy on a routine traffic stop, a PI watching a cheating husband in the rain—any of these can carry the beat as long as we leave the scene thinking, “I get who this person is, and I’d follow them into trouble.”

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Cozy, hard-boiled, or historical…

Is writing your mystery novel a complete mystery?
Crafting a convincing mystery requires unique story beats—the keys to delivering a satisfying read.

This sassy chat (in book form), presented by award-winning authors, reveals the secrets to help you execute a story that works. You won’t be handcuffed to a formula. It’s a guideline for assembling clues, criminals, and conclusions in your unique, “perfectly-poisonous” blend.

Whether your book is a carefully plotted caper, a crime of opportunity, or something in between, join our covert operation as we demystify the mystery beats. ♠️ ❤️ ♣️ ♦️

Dear Red,

Somebody told me I have too much SAAS. I thought it was a compliment, but they said my SAAS could upend my writing career. What do they mean?

Sweetly —Annie Author

Dear Annie,

First of all, there is no such thing as too much SASS! There is, however a fairly large risk with too much SaaS or “Software as a Service.”

Let me explain. Back in the old days when we played Pac-Man at Pizza Hut, we received software on media like floppy disks and CD-ROMs. Even our access to the internet required an installed application. Because it was installed on our computer, we owned it. Bugs and all.

Software companies got tired of shipping media all over the world to update their software and fix their bugs. It was expensive. The software world shifted to downloading updates and downloading installation software. But the software was still installed on our hardware. If the company died and went away, our WordPerfect still Shift+F7’d just fine. But there was one little problem with this—technical support.

It was difficult to troubleshoot issues because of the vast variety of hardware and the uncertainty of exactly what patches/updates had been applied to the original version of the software. Were you on Quatro Pro 5.0 or Quatro Pro 5.1.13?

Like Superman coming to the rescue, along came SaaS. No longer would software be installed on the local machine. Now, with the double-click of an internet browser, users would connect to servers owned and operated by the software company. They would interact with a known version of the software, with known updates. And if something went catastrophically wrong, the company could slave drive the developers overnight and deploy a patch in the morning. No harm, no foul.

Sort of.

The risk of using Software as a Service, or SaaS, is that you, Annie Author, don’t control or own that software.

You rent it. If you don’t pay the rent, you don’t get to use the software.

If your data is stored on those servers (looking at you, Mr. Google-y Eyes) and they decide that what you write is offensive, you could lose your manuscript, or all your notes, etc.

“But,” you say, “I’m not technical, and I don’t want to install patch after patch to keep my software from transforming into a Franz Kafka giant bug and dying a slow death.”

I understand. There are two things you can do to protect yourself from failing software companies and overzealous censors.

1. First, always back up your data locally. Save a copy to your computer and to some kind of removable storage device you own.

2. And two, always save an archive copy in the most compatible format possible. Your manuscript in a .txt (text) file format is nearly universal or software agnostic. Your spreadsheet in a .csv (comma-separated value) can be read by many, many applications.

3. Lastly, if you’re loading your data to a website, like those fancy AI editors, consider what they could be doing with your data. Once you upload to their server, even if you “delete” that file, it doesn’t mean they don’t have it.

Stay sassy, Annie, but go easy on the SaaS.

Red ♠️

Dear Red,

I got some contest feedback saying that my point of view (POV) was all over the place and that I was head hopping, which, apparently, is a no-no. I’m so confused. What does all of this even mean? —Point of View Point of Order

Dear POVPOO,

First off, I’m sorry your sign-off made a weird acronym. Thanks for the giggle, though.

Secondly, you’re not alone. A lot of authors struggle with POV and head hopping. Let me do my best to break it down for you. (Note—this isn’t going to include “deep POV”, which I (Ryley) have as a whole section of an editing how-to.)

So, if you write fiction, you’re probably familiar with “first person POV” and “third person POV”.

An example of a sentence written in first person:

I took my dog to the park.

An example of a sentence written in third person:

Jenny took her dog to the park.

Second person is also a thing but not used as much. It feels more “choose your own adventure-y” and reads as though the author is describing what the reader did. Example:

You took your dog to the park.

Omniscient POV used to be more utilized as well (think: all-knowing author god) but it’s not as common.

Simple, right? Not always. And this isn’t the full story on POV.

Often, our work is in the POV of specific characters (let’s call them Jenny and Frank). A lot of authors, especially those who write romance, alternate chapters in the different protagonists’ POVs so the reader gets both sides of the story. As in, first you’re in Jenny’s head for a chapter, then you’re in Frank’s, then back to Jenny in the next one, etc.

There are plenty of books written in just one character’s POV too—a perfectly valid and enjoyable method—but you mentioned head hopping, so that’s where I’m going with this.

Sometimes an author needs to switch character POVs within a chapter. When it comes out of nowhere, and/or happens in the same paragraph, or something similar, it can be jarring. As a reader, I think, “Hey, we were in Jenny’s POV—how do we suddenly know what Frank is thinking?” This is head hopping and can be confusing to readers, making them take valuable brain power to figure out what’s going on in your story instead of gobbling up the smooth-flowing scenes.

But never fear! Changing the POV within a scene can be done without giving your readers whiplash. One way is to do a simple scene break. This is usually flagged by an asterisk or similar graphic, and signals to the reader that something is changing—maybe a different location or time jump, or a different character’s POV is taking over.

You can also signal this to the reader by doing the “tag, you’re it” method. You’re writing a scene and have the characters touch or physically interact somehow—the “touch” is the baton, and the POV is passed to the other character. Tag, you’re it!

This one can be kind of tough to envision, so here’s an example:

Jenny loved bringing her dog Sprinkles to the dog park. Watching Sprinkles run and play with the other dogs gave Jenny so much joy. One day, Jenny hadn’t even let Sprinkles off her leash before Sprinkles yanked Jenny’s arm and took off to play with her puppy friends. Jenny yelped and let go of the leash, but not before she bumped into a handsome stranger, knocking him over.

In all his years bringing his friendly lab Spike to the dog park, Frank had never been bowled over by a beautiful woman before, literally or figuratively. He helped untangle her from her dog’s leash before offering her a hand and pulling her up to her feet. Her cheeks flushed pink as she adorably stammered an apology and offered to treat him to ice cream.

I hope that clarifies POV a bit for you, POVPOO. Please let us know what you think.

Red ♦️

New Mexico is home to 23 federally recognized tribes, nations, and pueblos. This includes 19 Pueblos, the Navajo Nation (with substantial land in the state), and three Apache tribes:

• 19 Pueblos: Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo (Kewa), Taos, Tesuque, Zia, and Zuni.

• 3 Apache Tribes: Fort Sill Apache Tribe, Jicarilla Apache Nation, and Mescalero Apache Tribe.

• Navajo Nation: The eastern portion of the Navajo Nation lies in northwestern New Mexico.

• Sovereignty: All 23 are recognized as sovereign nations with their own governments and unique, ancient cultures.

My sister-in-law worked as a police officer on two New Mexico Pueblos west of Albuquerque. She would talk about the cultural aspects she encountered as an outsider, a non-native in a position that not only had to know the federal laws and regulations, but also Pueblo laws, regulations, and customs.

One thing she said to me made a huge impression: as an outsider, she was banned from certain ceremonies and from certain sacred places in homes or on the land. When I asked her how she felt about that, she was very pragmatic. These were their customs and traditions, and she respected that. I based my non-native police officer, Sergeant Nicky Matthews, on my sister-in-law and that specific statement. Respect for Native cultures and traditions.

These are police procedural, contemporary mysteries with some paranormal (that’s for another post!) They are written with the same heart and respect as my sister-in-law showed to the Pueblos where she worked. Many of her stories are woven in, as is my focus on science and, in this case, genetics.

Three of four books in this sub-group of the series are completed and published. I’m working on the fourth, then I will take the same characters in a different police procedural direction.

Hearts of the Missing is my debut mystery and a Tony Hillerman Prize winner. I hope you enjoy it.

Hearts of the Missing: READ NOW

Here’s the blurb, but there’s so much more!

Cozy, hard-boiled, or historical …

Is writing your mystery novel a complete mystery? Crafting a convincing mystery requires unique story beats - the keys to delivering a satisfying read.

This sassy chat (in book form) presented by award-winning authors reveals the secrets to help you execute a story that works. You won’t be handcuffed to a formula. It’s a guideline for assembling clues, criminals, and conclusions in your unique, “perfectly-poisonous” blend.

Whether your book is a carefully caper, a crime of opportunity, or something in between, join our covert operation as we demystify the mystery beats.

We break the acts (by Royal edict 🤣) into 4 parts and lay out the beats and how-tos with clear, straightforward information and timely examples. There are also some very important Dos and Don’ts you DON’T want to miss.

We also read and analyzed over 50 bestselling mysteries to mine these mystery beats, all because we wanted the best practice for our and your stories.

We hope you enjoy!

Read it Now