Myster We Write Blog Tour - Madison Johns

As a child, Madison Johns preferred to distance herself from other children her age, and had been described as a dreamer. Even as a small child, she remembers staying awake many a night fighting dragons, whisked away to foreign lands, or meeting the man of her dreams.

She was a voracious reader of historical romance in her teen years and has always wished to one day journey to England, France, Ireland, and Scotland.

The writing bug bit her at the age of 44 and she pounded out three books since that time. As the publishing climate changed she took a risk and decided to self publish, first a collection of two horror short stories geared for YA, Coffin Tales Season of Death.

Madison's caring nature had led her to work in the healthcare field, where she was employed as a nursing care assistant at a nursing home, and it was there that she was inspired to write her first mystery, Armed and Outrageous, introducing amateur detective Agnes Barton. The book depicts two elderly ladies digging up clues with enough laugh out loud antics to make James Bond blush.

Excerpt:

In this opening scene Agnes Barton stops by Eleanor Mason’s house who happens to be her partner in crime throughout the book.

“Why in the world, Eleanor, would you leave your door unlocked?”

Eleanor turned around with an indignant expression on her face. Her large frame squeezed into a matching mustard colored shirt and Capri pants. On her feet, she wore white flip-flops. I couldn’t understand how she could walk in the blasted things. Eleanor had blue eyes that simply danced, and her well-wrinkled skin was covered with large moles, as if collecting them. Her thin, gray hair was curled today...her hair appointment had been only yesterday. When she laughed, which she did often—her whole belly shook.

“Why would I lock the door? I knew you’d be coming straight here after getting the paper. How is Roy this morning?” She giggled and tried unsuccessfully to stop.

“You’re the one that has eyes for him, not me, Eleanor.”

“Really? Do you think he would be interested?” Her eyes bobbed and danced suggestively.

Ignoring her chatter, I held up the newspaper and handed it to Eleanor to read. She carried it to one of her white wicker chairs and sat reading the article before handing it back to me.

“It said the same thing on the news this morning. The girl’s father is on his way here too,” Eleanor said, putting her hand against her mouth as if someone else could hear her. “Word is that he is staying at Robinson’s Manor while he’s here.”

“Put your hand down, and start acting serious for once. How in the world does he think he can get in there? They are always booked this time of year.”

“There is one suite that is always empty. I heard they remodeled it real quick like just to accommodate him.”

“Certainly not … the suite?”

“One and the same.”

“The suite where Mrs. Robinson was raped and murdered in?” I couldn’t believe it. “Nobody in their right mind would want to stay in—that room. Maybe he doesn’t know.”

“Beats me, but word is he wants to be close to the place where his daughter went missing.”

I cleared my throat. “Where exactly would that be, Eleanor?”

“I was hoping you would ask. Not far from Quick Stop. It was the party store she was going to on Tuesday.”

                                                 *

Armed and Outrageous is available on Amazon.

Madison says, "I will be giving away a free copy of Armed and Outrageous on every blog stop based on the comments. If you already have the book why not give your free copy to a friend!"

Mystery We Write Blog Tour - Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley is the author of the novels Conquering Venus and Remain In Light, which was a 2012 finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. His poetry collections include Better To Travel, Slow To Burn and After the Poison and the forthcoming Render. Kelley is also the author of the eBook short story collection, Kiss Shot. A recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award, Deep South Festival of Writers Award and Goodreads Poetry Award, Kelley’s poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world. He lives in Atlanta, GA. For more information, visit www.collinkelley.com, find him on Facebook at CollinKelleyWriter or follow him on Twitter @collinkelley.

Conquering Venus and Remain In Light are available in ebook and trade paperback formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Smashwords and through your favourite local bookstore.

Prologue: The Reflecting Hands

For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. – Rilke

In his dreams he can remember her name. From the shadowy first glimpses when she was peripheral, on the edge of a crowd or morphing into a friend or family member, to the day the plane lifted off from Memphis Airport bound for London and her face and body finally synchronized in mid-flight slumber. Upon waking, her image remains sharp and clear, but her name slips into the ether of his subconscious.

She is older, but stunning, like a French movie star; her mouth down-turned at the corners, dark eyes, hair long and blonde. She has a place now, too, not just random locations in unrelated dreams, but a balcony over a street. She appears, a palm raised in what seems like greeting, until she begins tracing her life line, a delicate finger circling the pad under her thumb, the mound of Venus. I don’t know what you mean, -----, he says with frustration. She smiles and rests her hands on the railing, their whiteness shocking against the black metal, and on the back of her left hand, between the thumb and index finger, is a tattoo of small interlocking crosses. He knows this marking, knows it like the back of his own hand, because in the summer of 1995 as Martin Page stares at himself in the mirror of his London hotel room, he can see the same tattoo inked into his skin – a South American symbol meaning “equal but opposite” – and her name is on the tip of his tongue.

1. The Dreaming

Martin sat at a dressing table in the Metropole hotel on London’s Edgware Road. He was twenty-two that year, but looked older. Tiny lines were forming around his eyes, while closer inspection revealed the beginning of a furrow in his brow. His skin was unblemished and pale, like so many blondes, eyes large and blue. Not fat or thin, just in between. When people noticed the tattoo there was a momentary pause, a summing up of character, a re-assessment. They would notice he wore all black, that his eyes were often hidden behind bangs, that he spoke with a calm, detached voice. But their gaze would eventually flicker back to his left hand. Peter had the same tattoo when he was alive; inked in the same spot on the same day as Martin’s, when they decided they were familiars. At his parents’ insistence, the mortician covered Peter’s tattoo with make-up, so that when his hands were crossed over his heart in the long coffin, it would be as if those dark lines never existed. As if Martin never existed.

Earlier in the evening, Martin went downstairs to the large indoor swimming pool. He lost his way in the maze of hallways, and then emerged into a glass corridor that overlooked the pool below. He saw David McLaren alone in the pool doing laps. David was eighteen, athletic, tan and aware of his looks. When David began his backstroke, he caught a glimpse of Martin looking down at him and felt a chill pass through him in the warm water. Like the first time they met, like he had suddenly caught his breath. But Martin did not see this moment of panic, for he was in the elevator, filled with both a dread and excitement he had not felt in years. When Martin came into the poolroom, David swam to the edge and smiled up at him.

            “Why don’t you come in?” David asked.

            “No, we have to be ready for dinner in an hour,” Martin said.

            “Stop playing chaperone. Leave that to Lady Diane. Loosen up.”

            David climbed out of the pool. The water ran down his lithe body, making his bathing suit cling to his narrow hips. David stood there running his hands through his wet, dark hair. Martin and David stared at each other. They had been in similar situations before, when something unspoken was palpable, a third person whispering, but the words were unclear.

            “Let me make you as wet as I am,” David said opening his arm, water glistening.

             Too late for that, Martin thought, sidestepping David, who laughed as he grabbed a towel and walked toward the changing room.

             Back in his room, Martin remembered the evening four months ago that Diane Jacobs, his best friend, called and said she had been asked by her principal to fill in as chaperone for a group of students from the high school where she taught English on their graduation trip abroad. We need another chaperone, she said, I can finagle it so you can go. She badgered him into saying yes – it’s cheap and we’ll be there for over three weeks and they swore to God the hotels would be decent – and, after relenting, he went to bed and the woman, whose name he could almost recall, made her first appearance.

            Martin sat at the mirror, as if in a trance, and for the third time since he arrived in London, he could see her in the reflection, as if the glass did not exist. There were dark circles around her eyes, highlighted by her pale skin, and she wore her hair pulled back away from her face. The hands, in which she cradled her chin, showed her true age, and there was the tattoo…

            There was a knock on the door. Both Martin and the woman in the mirror turned to acknowledge it. For a moment, Martin stared at the door.

           “I’m coming. Just a second.”

           Martin stood up and moved toward the door. He took a deep breath and went out into the hallway where Diane, David and the others were waiting.

            In the mirror, the woman turned back to look at herself, unsure of what she had heard or where it came from. Her trance broken, yet feeling that something was in motion, the fluidity of time and space. She reached out and put her palm against the mirror. Over her shoulder, the reflection of her own city, its distant cacophony of traffic and voices like a second heartbeat slightly out of sync. There was a name on the tip of her tongue, had been for months, and an image becoming clearer by the moment. She tapped on the glass, intoning the mantra she used in place of the name that only came to her in dreams, sending it like a beacon into the unknown: Paris, Paris, Paris.

Collin will giveaway an eBook edition of each of his novels, Conquering Venus and Remain In Light, via Smashwords to a lucky winner. The eBooks will be available for download in multi-formats including versions for the Kindle, Nook and other devices. Make sure to leave a comment and Collin will randomly draw a winner, which will be announced at his Modern Confessional blog (www.collinkelley.com) on Dec. 12.