Teaching a Fiction Writing Class

I’m enjoying the opportunity of teaching a fiction writing class for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at California State University Long Beach. This class meets once a week for eight weeks with attendees being age fifty or over.

The class offered me a chance to organize what I’ve learned in writing fiction novels over the last eighteen years, beginning in 2001 when I made the decision to prepare myself to retire into writing. I have taught course while in business and as an adjunct at the University of Colorado, as well as at writers conferences.

All the attendees at this OLLI course are there because of an interest in fiction writing and the desire to learn more about the process of writing and getting published. We are half way through the course, and at each session I’m bombarded with excellent questions.

Speaking at Libraries

Since returning to Southern California in 2015, I have been invited to give author presentations at a number of libraries. This has included Iacoboni Library in Lakewood, Michelle Obama Library in Long Beach, El Segundo Library, the library at Leisure World in Seal Beach, Friends of the Costa Mesa Library, Pomona Library, Glendale Library, Fountain Valley Library, Seal Beach Library, and Cypress Library. I have events scheduled through Westminster Library and Anaheim Library.

I also attend books clubs at two local libraries.

Libraries provide an important and needed service for our communities. I always enjoy meeting readers when I do library events.

Writing Series, Sequels or Standalones

When I started writing, I didn’t give any consideration to writing a series or a standalone. As I got into writing my first published novel, Retirement Homes Are Murder, I started thinking beyond the first book. Eventually, this ended up being a six book series. Once I made the decision to view this as a series, I sketched out additional locations and plots for the protagonist, Paul Jacobson.

Since then I have also written and had published a number of standalone books. I also gave thought to what I might do if I decided to continue with the same protagonist. At this point in my writing journey I have sixteen published books with another due out in November, 2019.

Of these two, are sequels. My most recently published mystery novel, Paradise Court, is a sequel to Court Trouble. These are both sports mysteries featuring the sports of platform tennis and pickleball, sports I have played. Coming out next month is The Front Wing, a sequel to The Back Wing, a paranormal geezer-lit mystery taking place in a retirement community with very unusual residents.

 

 

Writing Paranormal Geezer-lit Mystery Novels

My first published books were the Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery series featuring an octogenarian with short-term memory loss. My agent at the time suggested I explore paranormal mysteries so I wrote and had published The V V Agency that features a shape-shifting private investigator. Next, I decided to combine geezer-lit and paranormal with The Back Wing, a mystery that takes place in a retirement home with very extraordinary residents. After a number of other published mystery novels, I’m back with a sequel titled, The Front Wing.

In The Front Wing, a Harold and Bella paranormal geezer-lit mystery, people on a waiting list to get into the Front Wing of a retirement community have accidents and are killed. Harold McCaffrey marshals the special abilities of his unusual friends including aging witches, vampires, werewolves and shape-shifters to solve the mystery. And don’t believe the myth that vampires don’t age. They get older, move into retirement homes, lose their teeth and gum people on the throat, The Front Wing will be published in November by Encircle Publications.

 

 

Sisters in Crime Presentation

Sisters in Crime is one of the mystery writer organizations I belong to. I joined when living in Colorado and am now a member of the Los Angeles chapter, being a sibling in crime.

I'll be giving a presentation, "Becoming an author has no expiration date" on Sunday, Oct. 6, at the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime at the South Pasadena Library at 2:30 PM. This is about my experience starting to write later in life and writing about older characters.