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Author Archives: Elaine Viets

About Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written 30 mysteries in four series, including 15 Dead-End Job mysteries. BRAIN STORM, her first Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery, is published as a trade paperback, e-book, and audio book. www.elaineviets.com

Poor Unappreciated Me

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By Elaine Viets

    Recently, a Very Important Person at Macmillian Publishers sent me a complimentary email. She’s a real senior editor at the British publisher. Modesty forbids me from using her name, so I’ll call her VIP.

 The VIP editor’s email was headlined, “Editorial Interest in Beach Blonde Betrayal.” (That’s my new mystery.)

          VIP was “immediately drawn to the combination of wit, suspense, and vivid South Florida atmosphere” in my most recent novel.

          She outlined the plot in detail and said it was an “entertaining mystery with plenty of momentum, while the quirky residents and local setting give the story a distinctive character.”

          Wow. Move over Kristin Hannah and Georges Simenon, here’s someone who understands the poetry of my soul.

          The VIP editor wanted to know the name of my agent. (In publishing speak, that means she’s serious.)

Then VIP said, “there may be scope for a broader discussion regarding potential fit within Macmillian’s adult mystery, crime, and cosy mystery publishing programs.”

I noticed she spelled “cosy” in the proper British style. This was looking better and better. VIP said she’d be delighted to hear from me.

Not as happy as I was to hear from her.

I’d always wanted to take a long cruise. I could see myself relaxing in the ship’s spa after lunch, then resting up before a lobster dinner, followed by champagne cocktails at bedtime. In the morning, I’d work on my next international bestseller in my balcony suite. Meanwhile, the VIP editor would fend off the movie and TV offers for my latest work.

I was about to make my cruise reservations when the last line of the email stopped me: The VIP editor finished her email, “Keep being awesome.”

What!? My dream cruise was shipwrecked. The champagne cocktails spilled down the drain and the lobster was an empty shell.

No editor, especially not a British editor, would tell a writer to “keep being awesome.” Not unless Prince William slapped me on the back and invited me for a beer at the palace.

Furthermore, this VIP used a gmail address, often a sign of a scam. She should have used her corporate address.

Since then, I’ve been deluged with emails about my mysteries.

Marketing directors begged for the opportunity to increase my sales, starting with lowering the prices of my mysteries. (Those are set by my publisher, thank you.)

Dubious book clubs wanted to recommended my books to their thousands of readers. (For a small fee.)

 Flattering emails invited me to be a guest on prestigious podcasts. No charge, of course, though they’d appreciate a “donation” to help pay for the sound engineer. (No thanks.)

One of my favorite radio shows, “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, invited me for an interview. I noticed the email for “Fresh Air” had an extra R. No Terry. No invite.

All of  these emails were AI scams. Writer Beware, the useful blog that helps writers navigate the darker corners of our industry, wrote “How Those Personalized Generative AI Scam Emails Are Built.” Check out the full article here: https://tinyurl.com/mr3c5ct4

These scams are surprisingly easy, Writer Beware’s Victoria-Strauss said. And common. My VIP editor routine has its own name.

“For the Editor Impersonation Scam, these emails use a real editor’s name and title,” Victoria-Strauss wrote. “But they often use a gmail address instead of the corporate address, and the scammers usually slip up some other way.”

 In my scam letter, they told me to “keep being awesome.”

These scam letters are extremely detailed. Not only do they include information about my book’s plot and characters, but my biography, sale rank on Amazon, and more. All that information can be picked off the internet.

“We still don’t know how the AI scams are structured or who runs them,” she said. “The payment and other data I’ve collected suggests that they mostly hail from West Africa, and there’s obviously some degree of centralization – the way the solicitations sort into distinct ‘types’ or categories suggests this (i.e., marketing, book club, impersonations of well-known authors, editors, agents, etc.).

“The one bright spot amid this scam tsunami is that familiarity breeds suspicion. . . . The scammers are still making money, though. The emails wouldn’t be flooding our inboxes if they weren’t. Be careful out there.”

          Since that email, I’ve been careful, resisting the siren song of those gushing letters.

Fortunately, I have a nice Nigerian prince to advise me.

***

Beach Bargain. Both my Florida Beach mysteries, “Sex and Death on the Beach” and “Beach Blonde Betrayal” are Kindle ebook deals. Click here: https://tinyurl.com/2uxyfa5d

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Who Are You Calling Old?

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By Elaine Viets
NOTE: This blog is an oldie but goodie.

What’s old?
That’s easy. Anyone ten years older than me.
Yes, that’s an old line, but we writers need to be careful who we call old.
In 2020, calling someone who is 60 “elderly” can anger your core readers.
It can even make readers laugh – at you.

Some readers snicker at Ellery Queen’s description of the “elderly” Inspector Queen who was “not yet 60.” The dynamic mystery writing duo were young whippersnappers of 29 when they created Inspector Queen.
To be fair, I thought 60 was ancient when I was in my 20s. Now, not so much.

Another longtime mystery reader said, “They Found Him Dead” by Georgette Heyer starts with a sixtieth birthday party for Silas Kane who is described as being “very old. As far as I can see, the book was published in 1937.”

How about Edmund Crispin’s “The Moving Toyshop” where the dead victim is described as “an elderly woman in her late 50s”?
What? That’s outrageous!
Except those books were published decades ago, and “old” in 1930 was a lot different than “old” in 1970 – or 2020.

Think back to your grandparents. In 1970, my beloved grandmother was an old woman at age 60. She had a big black purse (stuffed with photos of her grandchildren), sturdy shoes, crispy gray hair and a flour-sack figure. Granted, Grandma had a much harder life than I did, but people used to age faster than they do now.
The government says we’re old at 62. That’s when Americans can start collecting Social Security benefits – and haul them in for a long time. Social Security.gov says, “About one out of every three 65-year-olds today will live until at least age 90, and one out of seven will live until at least age 95.”
Sixty-five is the retirement age in the US, but many people that age still see themselves as young and vigorous.

So if you’re creating an older character for your novel, here are some things to consider:
Older people do not have equal protection under the law. If you have an older person who’s going to be assaulted, many jurisdictions have extra penalties for bashing seniors. In Massachusetts, a man was “arrested and charged with unarmed robbery, assault and battery on a person over the age of 60, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon (shod foot – aggravated) and mayhem.” In other words, he kicked an older person with his shoe. That’s something to consider when you have your bad guy attack an older person.
Seniors are often stereotyped as defenseless. But that ain’t necessarily so. An 88-year-old woman was assaulted and carjacked in a Walmat parking lot. She fought back with her cane and survived. “I’m a tough old broad,” she boasted.
And speaking of tough, how about the 82-year-old “award-winning female bodybuilder who turned the tables — literally — on a home intruder and beat him so badly after he broke into her house that he had to be taken to the hospital.” It’s true, and it happened in Rochester, New York. The bodybuilder broke a table over the creep – and she was just getting started.
Statistically, that Rochester Wonder Woman would be considered old, even by today’s new and improved standards.

So just how old do you want to make a senior character in your novel?
A CBS news story says, “Research from John Shoven, a prominent economics professor at Stanford University, suggests that if your chance of dying within the next year is 1 percent or less, you might be considered ‘middle aged.’”
Shoven has a chart that shows “the threshold for men transitioning beyond middle age increased from about age 44 in the 1920s to about 60 today.”

Oddly, 44 would be true “middle age.” Sixty may be the “new” middle age for men, but there are very few 120-year-olds roaming around.
Shoven says, “And finally, if your chance of dying within the next year is 4 percent or higher, you might be considered ‘very old’ or ‘elderly.’ . . . This threshold for men increased from about 65 in the 1920s to 76 today.” So men are “old” at 76.
“Shoven suggests that reduced mortality rates correlate roughly with improved health and vitality at all ages, and can be used as a proxy measure for aging.”
If you’re a woman, you’re even luckier – and younger. Consider this cheery news, ladies, from Shoven.
“By these measures, women today transition out of middle age around 65, a number that has increased from the late 40s in the 1920s. ‘Old’ for women today is about 73, which increased from the late 50s in the 1920s. And ‘very old’ today is about 80, an increase from about 67 in the 1920s.”
People don’t automatically get ‘old’ at 70. Wikipedia sums it up this way:
“Gerontologists have recognized the very different conditions that people experience as they grow older within the years defined as old age. In developed countries, most people in their 60s and early 70s are still fit, active, and able to care for themselves. However, after 75, they will become increasingly frail, a condition marked by serious mental and physical debilitation.”
That’s why my character Margery, in my Dead-End Job series, stays a perpetual 76. I can’t have her aging naturally, or she’ll be too old to go on adventures with Helen Hawthorne.
Personally, I like the question the sage Satchel Paige may or may not have asked:
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

***************************************************************************

Cozy lovers! Three of my Josie Marcus, mystery shopper mysteries are on sale throughout September. DYING IN STYLE, MURDER IS A PIECE OF CAKE, and AN UPLIFTING MURDER are $1.99 each this month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drinking Literary Poison

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By Elaine Viets

Summer comes with many temptations, from scanty clothes to rampant hormones. Moralists believe young women should be protected from them all.  But one summer temptation really riled preachers.

I’m talking about . . . beach books.

They especially upset a sourpuss named Rev. Thomas De Witt Talmage.  The Rev. T fulminated against beach books in 1876, cautioning his congregation, “Do not let the frogs and the lice of a corrupt printing press jump and crawl into your Saratoga trunk or White Mountain valise.” Beach books, the rev said, were “literary poison.”

“I really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year,” he said.

It would take ten months to plow through Talmage’s own tomes. Want to stretch out by the pool and read The Abomination of Modern Society? How about 500 Select Sermons?

Personally, I think Talmage was a tad jealous of beach books’ popularity.

      The young women of the 19th century sensibly ignored Talmage’s rants, and stuffed their vacation valises with summer reads. They sighed over Marion Harlan’s With the Best Intentions: A Midsummer Episode, set among the Gilded Age’s beautiful people.  And devoured  Laura Jean Libbey’s fiction about poor girls who worked to survive.

       Laura’s titles were real grabbers. A Dangerous Flirtation Or, Did Ida May Sin? And Miss Middleton’s Lover; Or Parted On Their Bridal Tour makes me want to slap on some sunscreen and start reading.

          These novels and other light summer reading are the descendants of today’s beach reads, though the term “beach reads” didn’t show up until the 1990s. Most of this information comes from Smithsonian Magazine.

          Beach reads were easy to pack and  hold. They were also a marketing scheme. July and August are traditionally the time when book sales drop. So clever publishers came up with books specially designed for vacations. The books were often set at resorts, and gave young middle class women tips on fashion and manners, in case they met a handsome young millionaire. In the beach books, these encounters usually ended in marriage.

          Exactly what is a beach book?

Blogger Victoria Wood has a good definition. She quotes the Macmillan Dictionary, which says a beach read is “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged but not so serious it will spoil your holiday.”

“I think that’s a good starting point,” she said, “but I’d add this: the best beach reads are immersive, entertaining, and just plain fun—whether or not you ever set foot on sand.”

Traces of the prune-faced Rev. T prevail. Many beach books are written –  and read – by women. Some are romances, others are thrillers or mysteries, and they can be scorned as frivolous. “Beach book” is sometimes used as an insult.

But beach books are a rite of summer. About Memorial Day, publications from the  New York Times to Booklist magazine trot out their beach reads, many with bright covers and snappy dialogue.

 Emily Henry boldly calls her beach romance Beach Read. It’s about a romance writer who no longer believes in love, and a literary writer stuck in a rut.

Kristin Hannah, who wrote The Women, about nurses who served in Vietnam, has the much lighter Summer Island.

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, spanned the summer season in 2022, with the hardcover released in April and the paperback in August.

And, if there’s room for me on this golden beach, I have two beach books: Sex and Death on the Beach (2025) and Beach Blonde Betrayal (2026).

 Both were released in July.

And my readers are extremely intelligent. Take that, Reverend Talmage.

What are your favorite beach reads, TKZers?

********************************************************************

My books are available at  most booksellers, including Amazon, Thriftbooks.com, and Left Bank Books in my hometown of St. Louis. Beach Blonde Betrayal (Florida Beach Mystery #2) | Left Bank Books

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Imposter Nurse

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By Elaine Viets

Florida is the land of scams. Some are cruel and some are bold, like the scammers who made fake phone calls that seemed to be from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. The crooks told people they had outstanding warrants or subpoenas and were facing criminal charges. To avoid arrest, the victims had to buy gift cards and read the gift card numbers to the scammers.

But one scam makes me sick.

The imposter nurse.

These are people pretending to be nurses. Like the Florida scammer who helped treat more than 4,400 patients. This fake nurse gave the hospital a license number, which matched a registered nurse with the same first name but a different last name. The scam nurse claimed she’d recently married and promised to give the hospital a copy of her marriage license. She slid by with that excuse until she was offered a promotion. The hospital did more checking and found out the woman didn’t have a valid license – for marriage or nursing. The sham nurse was fired, and then arrested. She faces a slew of felony charges.

I couldn’t resist using an imposter nurse in Beach Blonde Betrayal, my new Florida Beach mystery. In this novel, a fake nurse’s bumbling kills an innocent man.

         Beach Blonde Betrayal starts with a heroic rescue. A park employee saves the cat of a rich South Florida woman. The stubborn feline nearly became gator food until the man, armed only with a flimsy litter pick up tool, saves the cat from the jaws of an alligator. The daring rescue was witnessed by Norah McCarthy, the Florida woman who own the Florodora apartments, built in 1923 by her grandmother, a former showgirl.

The Florodora is a four-story white stucco creation with a red barrel-tile roof, built in the Spanish Colonial style that suits the subtropical climate.  Norah’s grandmother sang and danced in the 1920 Broadway musical, Florodora. Grandma met Johnny Harriman, and at 16 she eloped with the millionaire. She loved Johnny until the day he died.

Which was a year later.

Handsome, happy-go-lucky Johnny died in an accident involving a champagne bottle and a chandelier, leaving Norah’s Grandma a rich widow. She moved to Peerless Point and built the Florodora on a narrow strip of land between the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Grandma’s career as a showgirl was considered shocking, even though her costume was stunningly modest. She wore a ruffled Edwardian walking costume with long gloves, a picture hat, and a parasol. Never mind that the only bare skin was her face. She was on the stage, and that was so wicked her parents disowned her.

Grandma was scandalous enough to be an early Florida Woman. She rented to benign versions of the breed, and Norah honored that tradition.

The book also has plenty of Florida Men and Women. You’ve seen the headlines:

“Florida Man Broke into Random House, Ran Bath, Cooked Dinner to Avoid Going Home to Angry Wife.” He was a wimp compared to the Florida Woman who shoplifted “Seven Lobsters Down Her Pants.”

And here’s my personal favorite:  “Naked Florida Man Tries to Force His Way Into Home Thru Doggie Door.”

Then there was the Florida Man who claimed people were “eating his brains.” He hijacked an SUV and tore across a golf course, fishtailing on the fairway, plowing tire tracks into the sod, and jumping bunkers, spraying sand everywhere.

The chase ended in the most Florida way possible. The man was captured after he slammed his stolen vehicle into a nursing home. No one was hurt, though the golf course’s turf was badly torn up.

The Florodora residents are all a little, well, different. They include an artist, a glamorous ex-model who grows weed, a Shakespearian actor, a writer and an ex-cop in witness protection. One Florodora  resident finds a young woman strangled on the beach. She is the first of several victims, and life comes to a standstill in the beach town of Peerless Point. Worse, one of the Florodora residents is accused of murder. Norah is sure he’s innocent, and sets out to save him.

But back to those imposter nurses. That’s just Florida, right? They have nothing to do with the saner parts of the country.

Except many imposter nurses have sham sheepskins, issued in South Florida.

Turns out the feds shut down three bogus South Florida nursing schools that were selling diplomas and transcripts. The schools issued more than 7,600 fake nursing diplomas.

Seven thousand six hundred nurses around the country with fake credentials.

Nurses installing IV lines, dispensing medication, and changing dressings.

Think about it.

Or maybe not.

 

Beach Blonde Betrayal debuted Tuesday. Buy your copy here:

https://tinyurl.com/3pk7w3tw

 

When Love Goes Wrong

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By Elaine Viets

Romance scams are the cruelest fraud. Scammers steal  your savings, self-respect, sanity, even your life. These scams are mainstay of Victorian novels – but now they have a modern twist, thanks to AI, dating apps, WhatsApp, and fake social media.

Consider Anne, a fifty-something French woman duped out of $855,000 by a Brad Pitt impersonator. Anne got a message from someone claiming to be Brad’s mother. Then “Brad” himself contacted her and they were online friends for more than a year. The fake Brad said he needed money for cancer treatment because his accounts were frozen, thanks to his split from Angelina Jolie. Anne also received photos of Brad in the hospital — AI-generated, of course.

The game was up when Anne saw real photos of Brad with his new love, Ines de Ramon. Ines, who belongs to a rich Swiss family, had more than enough bucks to take care of Brad.

What did Anne get for her kindness? When her story broke, she was ridiculed until she was hospitalized for mental health problems.

Stranger still was the senior citizen who fell in love with a fake Elon Musk. You read that right. The dark-haired, dashing Elon Musk.

The fake Elon sent her cheesy texts asking, “Hey baby, how are you? What are you doing tonight, baby?” The scammer used – what else? – AI for Elon’s voice, and stole $600,000. Why the richest man in the world needed what amounted to pocket change for him wasn’t clear, but he left that woman cold, stony broke.

Men are victims, too. A Las Vegas woman scammed at least four elderly men, drugged them, and helped herself to their savings and Social Security. At least one man disappeared.

Naturally, I had to add a romance scam to my new mystery, BEACH BLONDE BETRAYAL. In my second Florida Beach Mystery, someone is strangling young blonde women in the sun-splashed town of Peerless Point. One of the eccentric residents of Norah McCarthy’s apartment house, the Florodora, finds a body on the beach. The fear grows when a local restaurant owner is found stabbed on Norah’s doorstep. Norah has to unravel fatal secrets and deadly plots.

Including a romance scam that leads to murder.

Romance scammers have a real talent for figuring out who is vulnerable. These are ways to spot them.

Romance scammers can’t meet you in person. No matter how much Elon Musk hungers for your touch, he’ll never stop by your home. Ditto for love sick Brad Pitt. The scammer will have some reason they can’t visit. They work on an oil rig in the North Sea,  a research station in Antarctica or they’re in the military and deployed to Iran. Some romance scammers travel constantly for business, but never to your hometown.

Romance scammers are extremely shy. They’ll never make a video call. If they send you a photo, they will be good-looking. Too good looking to be true. Check out their photo in one of the reverse image search engines, such as Tineye, and you’ll discover the photo belongs to a model or a free photo service.

Scammers are extremely attentive. Their emails overflow with love and flattery. They’ll confess, “I’ve never felt this way before” or “I can’t live without you.” Romance scammers will say you are kind, beautiful and most of all, generous.

Especially generous . .  . Soon the scammers will have a little money problem. Nothing serious, mind you, but could they borrow 50 bucks until their paycheck arrives? And would you send it by Zelle? Smart scammers will  pay back that money right away. A short time later, they’ll have a real emergency: their sweet old  mother is dying. Or the scammer has been diagnosed with a terrible illness. They need your money. Of course, you send it. And keep sending it. Maybe you even sell your house.

If you question why they need so much money, romance scammers will ask: “Don’t you trust me? How can you say that when I love you so much?”

If these scammers don’t have a serious illness or a sick old mother, they often have beautiful dreams for a future together. They’ll send photos of a vacation house in Hawaii, Key Largo, or Costa Rica where the two of you can marry and live happily ever after. If you’ll just wire the six-figure down payment. And the money for airfare.

Some scammers want to make you rich. They have a hot investment opportunity. Usually in cryptocurrency. All you have to do is wire them the money.

Money is the key to romance scammers. In 2025 it’s estimated they’ve duped Americans out of $1.5 billion dollars. That’s billion with a B. As in be careful.

“With elegance and wit, Viets weaves each of these colorful subplots into an appealing tapestry. The result is a genial cozy that’s ideal for summer reading.” – Publishers Weekly on Beach Blonde Betrayal.  Preorder your copy here: https://tinyurl.com/bdhx3k66

 

 

 

 

 

Beach Blonde Betrayal

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By Elaine Viets

Let me tell you about my new Florida mystery, Beach Blonde Betrayal.  Yes, I came up with that tongue-twister of a title, and I’m already tripping over it

The second book in my Florida Beach series explores some favorite themes: love, trust, and betrayal. Especially betrayal, by friends and lovers. Because this mystery is set in Florida, it’s chockfull of colorful characters.

It also has Florida Men, Florida Women and plenty of Florida weirdness. In fact, that’s how the mystery starts. Here’s a sneak preview of the first chapter:

Chapter 1 (excerpt)

Dean and I were debating our favorite subject: Florida weirdness. There was another murder, and it was gruesome, even for the Sunshine State.

I should know. I’m Norah McCarthy, a genuine Florida native, and I own the Florodora apartments. My apartment building is on the ocean in Peerless Point, halfway between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Thanks to the perfect weather, the beach was swarming with tourists, so we retreated inland. Today, Dean and I were crunching on the pea gravel path along a canal in Peerless Park.

Dean lives in the apartment next to mine. He’s not only my tenant. He’s my lover, boyfriend, whatever the word is now. Dean is a sunbaked golden brown, with broad shoulders and naturally streaked blond hair. Definitely a stud muffin.

I also admire his fine mind. But not this time. Now he was flat-out wrong.

“It’s disgusting,” Dean said. “She should have been taken away and shot.”

“She’s not to blame,” I said. “What she did was natural.”

“Eating her own children?” Dean said. “You think that’s natural? On Mother’s Day?”

“Alligators don’t celebrate Mother’s Day.”

The headline that shocked Dean was “Florida Gator Eats Offspring on Mother’s Day.” Some innocent tourists, expecting to see Disney moments on their Everglades tour, photographed the gruesome scene. They were stunned that the alligator would eat her kids in front of their kids.

 “It’s a metaphor for the whole state,” he said.

“I won’t argue with that,” I said.

“Nothing in Florida is normal,” he said.

With that, Dean was shoved out of the way by a muscular woman pushing a baby stroller that held a tiny Chihuahua. I never got used to people hauling dogs around in strollers.

“See?” he said. “Exhibit A just charged by.”

I felt I should defend my native state. “Did you get a close look at that poor dog? It was so old it had a white muzzle. Plus it had a bandage on its paw. The woman was being kind.”

“Not to me,” Dean said, rubbing his elbow where the dog woman had clipped him.

I playfully kissed his muscular arm, and he laughed.

It was a warm January afternoon, and I wore my favorite yellow sundress and had my long, dark hair up in a ponytail. Dean had on shorts and a stylish Hawaiian shirt embroidered on the pocket with a toucan sitting in a cocktail glass.

I much preferred the ocean to the canal. Florida canals ranged from floating trash dumps to sylvan scenes. This one was somewhere in between. Foam cups and chip bags floated along the weedy edge, which was lined with green scum.

Across the canal, I spotted a glamorous older woman in a red picture hat walking a black cat on a red leash. She had perfectly cut white hair and a stylish red pantsuit. She made age seem like an achievement.

I pointed at her. “See, Dean. Not everything in South Florida is crazy. Look at that woman walking her cat.”

The black cat with green eyes trotted along the canal path, then suddenly stopped, ears alert.

“Vanessa!” woman said. “Come along. Don’t dilly-dally.”

“There,” I said. “When’s the last time you heard someone say ‘dilly-dally’?”

With that, an alligator, evil and prehistoric, slid out of the scummy green water on the canal’s edge, and lumbered toward the woman and her cat. The gator’s gaping jaws revealed cruel yellow teeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Vanessa,” the woman shrieked, and yanked on the cat’s leash. The dark furball refused to move. It dug in, arched its back and hissed at the armored beast. The gator could swallow Vanessa in one bite.

“That alligator is going to attack,” I said.

“We can’t do anything,” Dean said. “The canal is too wide for us to cross.”

We watched helplessly, unable to stop the carnage.

Then out of nowhere, a man wearing the Day-Glo vest of a park employee and carrying a pointed metal-tipped trash stick ran straight for the gator and speared it in the eye. The gator bellowed and thrashed as the man stuck the gator in the other eye, and then jabbed the beast in its nostrils.

I winced. I had no sympathy for the gator, but the eye-jabbing made me queasy. Did the man blind the creature? I couldn’t tell. The gator backed off but stayed defiantly on the bank, holding its ground and thrashing its tail.

“Why isn’t the gator going back into the canal, where it would be safe, Dean?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, nothing in this state is normal.”

“Look!” I said. “A TV crew is taping the battle. And that’s Carol Berman.”

The petite brown-haired reporter was a south Florida star, and seemingly fearless. She approached the chaotic scene wearing open-toed sandals that I thought were way too close to the gator’s whipping tail and snapping jaws.

Now I heard the howl of police sirens, while the speared gator hissed and thrashed and the white-haired woman struggled to hang onto her squirming cat. Vanessa, determined to go after her attacker, lashed her tail and sent the woman’s hat sailing in to the canal.

Two police officers ran up, guns drawn, and shooed Carol and the woman away from the gator while the rescuer stood guard with his metal-tipped stick.

“Why doesn’t the cop shoot the gator, Dean?” I asked.

“Can’t,” Dean said. “The cop has to call SNAP.”

“The federal food assistance program?”

“Nope, SNAP, the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program.”

Fifteen minutes later, a gator trapper, dressed in camo, pulled up in a pickup. He jumped out and easily subdued the hissing alligator, quickly wrapping its jaws in silver duct tape. The park employee helped the trapper carry the struggling reptile to the trapper’s pickup.

Meanwhile, Carol, the perky TV reporter, was interviewing bystanders. We could hear her talking to Vanessa’s owner. I knew who she was as soon as I heard her name: Abigail Peachtree, one of the richest women in Florida.

“Vanessa is my child,” Abigail said. “I can’t thank this man enough for saving my baby.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” the cat rescuer said. His voice had a soft southern accent. He looked down at his boots and did everything but say, “Aw, shucks.”

Carol stuck a mic in the man’s face and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Gil Shecker,” he said. Gil was about five feet ten and wiry, with a dark shirt, worn jeans and boots that were down at the heels. His rough skin was burned deep red. Gil had hair like a handful of straw. Everything about him said “country.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Carol asked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I was picking up trash over there under those trees.” Gil waved an arm toward a cluster of palm trees. “And I heard the commotion. I saw that gator going for that lovely lady’s cat.”

I swear, Abigail simpered like a southern belle.

“I didn’t have a real weapon, but I had my stick, and it was nice and sharp. So I just rushed on over there and did what I had to do. It wasn’t no big deal.”

Abigail interrupted. “But it was. You saved us, and I’m so grateful.”

***

Did Gil really save Abigail? Or was the daring rescue a set-up? Why was the TV camera conveniently on the spot?

Abigail the heiress rewards Gil handsomely for saving her cat. That reward that leads to betrayal, a broken romance and murder.

 

Beach Blonde Betrayal will be published July 7 as a hardcover, audio book and ebook. Pre-order your copy  of this sun-soaked mystery from your favorite indie bookstore, including Left Bank Books in my hometown of St. Louis  https://tinyurl.com/44tt2pr9. Other outlets include  Amazon https://tinyurl.com/yc7h5vfy, and Thrift Books https://tinyurl.com/99hctxvs

Enjoy!

 

Name That Character!

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By Elaine Viets

My St. Louis high school class had at least three girls named Kathy, two Peggys, a Debbie, and a Connie. Among the boys were a pair of Tims, two or three Bobs, a Curt (or Kurt if he was from the German side of town) and at least one Dick. I don’t have to tell you why that last nickname declined in popularity, but Dick Nixon didn’t help.

These names marked my class indelibly as baby boomers. Now those names are rapidly losing popularity with new parents.

Gen Xers, the babies born between 1960 and 1980, have a boatload of  Amys, Jennifers, Elizas,  Angelas and Marks.

Gen Z parents prefer names on the mystical side, including Luna, Nova, Orion and Kai.

When you’re naming your characters, choosing an appropriate name will help age them properly. There are a zillion baby-naming websites (that’s an exact scientific figure). My favorite is nameberry.com, because it has so many helpful lists, including Victorian  baby names, trending baby names, and badass girl names, like Scarlett, Lilith, and Jupiter.

In novels with well-named characters, grandparents and great-grandparents will most likely have boomer names. Their children, the ones now driving the old folks to their doctor appointments, will probably have Gen-X names. And those parents may be wondering what the heck Kai means, and if it’s a boy’s name or a girl’s. (According to nameberry.com it’s gender-neutral, though most Kais are boys. Kai is a Hawaiian name usually associated with the sea.)

If you give your character an unfamiliar name, be sure to check its meaning. I like Mazikeen, but Neil Gaiman invented this name for a character in his comic book series, “The Sandman.” The name may have come from the Hebrew word “mazzikin,” which are supposedly small harmful spirits. In the TV series “Lucifer,” Mazikeen is a companion demon for Lucifer Morningstar. Mazikeen would be a good name for a minor villain, but probably not an ideal baby name.

Here are three names I’ll never use for major characters I like:

Ernie. One of the most popular boys’ names in 1948. Ernie Pyle was a heroic World War II correspondent killed in Japan. Unfortunately, a less-than-heroic Ernie lived next door to me when I was a kid, and I can’t erase his image. This Ernie was a flabby, pot-bellied old geezer with cigar ashes trailing down his wifebeater shirt. He was usually sozzled by dinnertime.

Sara and Emma. Sara is a much-loved Gen X name, and Emma is one of the most popular girls’ names in the US. But nothing can erase the images of the first Sara and Emma I knew: my terrifying great-aunts. By the time I came along, Sara and Emma were in their eighties, had thin white hair and sturdy black Enna Jettick shoes. They wore black dresses, steel-rimmed glasses and talked about their surgeries. They also had white chin whiskers, which I didn’t know ladies could get. Sara and Emma scared the daylights out of me. No matter how many talented, glamorous women are named Sara or Emma, they can’t overcome the image of those old women. Or their whiskers.

As for my name, Elaine, it’s French and Scottish, and means “bright, shining light,” though those two adjectives don’t apply to me before I have my tea. Elaine was in the Top 100 names in the early 1920s, and peaked at Number 42. Now, it may be making a comeback. Nameberry suggests that “parents looking for a more unusual name, try Yvaine.”

Don’t do it, Mom and Dad. You’ll condemn your girl to a lifetime of saying, “No, it’s Yvaine. That’s spelled Y, like in yacht. V, like in victor, not B as in boy. Then A. I. N as in normal . . .”

How do you name your characters?

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When You’re Happy and You Know It

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By Elaine Viets

 

What made you happy in the last 24 hours? What about the last three months?

OK, I’ll go first.

A surprise gift of orchids from a friend. And the silly antics of my cat Vanessa. Both made me happy in the last 24 hours. They’re pictured below.

In the last three months, the weekly phone calls from my cousin Lisa made me happy.

These questions are important not only for our well-being, but to understand how  writers create our characters. I read about happiness in a recent article in The Pudding, and if you don’t subscribe to this free newsletter, you’re definitely missing out on happiness.

Writer Alvin Chang’s Pudding article “mapped out 100,000 moments collected as part of a research project on what makes people happy. From sensory pleasure and serendipity to leisure and personal growth, he identified the major themes that emerge when we think about our most cherished moments.”

Here are few that may make you smile, especially the first one:

“My boss was away on business which made my workday very enjoyable and left me with a smile on my face all day.” Female, 36, married, parent

“I went to see my Grandma at the nursing home.” Male, 26, single

“My husband was ignoring me and I laid in bed thinking of funny words with the word ‘sass’ in them to describe him (like Sasquatch) – it amused me greatly.” Female, 26, parent

“I got to leave work early on Friday.” Female, 53, single, parent

“I took a day off to enjoy a nice day.” Male, 38, mot a parent

“Enjoyed a Hardboys Peach Country hard cider.” Male, 32, single, not a parent

“I made progress on some household projects.” Female, 22, married, not a parent

“I was able to stay home and work, while my brother-in-law picked up the kids from school by switching his schedule.” Female, 37, married, parent

Scientists used to believe that happiness was U-shaped. “We are happy when we’re young, less happy when we’re middle-aged and then happy again when we’re old.”

Chang mentioned a research article by Arthur Stone that surveyed people between 18 and 85. It said, “Stress and anger steeply declined from the early 20s, worry was elevated through middle age and then declined, and sadness was essentially flat.”

But hold on . . . that U-shape may no longer be true. Another story says, “Pooling Global Minds data across 44 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, over the period 2020–2025 we confirm that ill-being is no longer hump-shaped in age but now decreases in age.”

So the middle-age slump is out. The twenties are a rough time. The reason for this is sad: “the deterioration in young people’s mental health both absolutely and relative to older people.”

Once you get through your difficult 20s, your chances of happiness increase.

When Harvard researchers followed people for their entire lives, Alvin Chang wrote, “they found that good relationships were the most important thing for happy, healthy lives.” We need a “meaningful life with a sense of purpose.”

That makes sense. Except social media and smart phones have made us addicted to screens from a young age. “It’s taken a toll on how much time we spend with each other.”

Alvin Chang included a “happy map” with his article. Check it out here. https://pudding.cool/2026/02/happy-map/ he  says it’s “a mirror of the broken world we’ve built, as seen through our most cherished moments.”

What makes your characters happy?

Now in paperback: Sex and Death on the Beach, my new Florida beach mystery, is now in paperback. If you read it and like it, you’ll make me happy. https://tinyurl.com/3ut3chuu

 

 

Finding the Right Words

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By Elaine Viets

Like most writers, I love words. I like to read about them, learn new ones, find old ones. I enjoy puns and wordplay. Naturally, I depend on my dictionaries. But did you know these websites are crammed with extra information?

These days, dictionaries are much more than spelling and definitions.

Here are two of my favorite online sites.

Merriam-Webster dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/

This site usually has a topical essay about words.

After the untimely death of Catherine O’Hara, who left her mark on movies such as  Home Alone and TV’s Schitt’s Creek, Merriam-Webster had an essay on 16 words from Schitt’s Creek. The Canadian sitcom is about “the Roses, a rich family that loses its wealth and must temporarily move into a motel in a small town with the cheeky name of Schitt’s Creek,” Webster said. “By metrics of awards and international viewership, Schitt’s Creek became Canada’s most successful television series. Among the series’ memorable characters is Moira Rose, played by the late Catherine O’Hara, whose diction is, shall we say, a bit eccentric.”

One of the best words Moira used is bombilate, which means, “to buzz or drone.”

“The room is suddenly bombilating with anticipation,” Moira said.

Too bad her wonky usage of bombilate isn’t popular enough to make Webster’s. Other Moira words include Balaton, confabulate and dangersome.

I have problems sorting out affect and effect. I can’t keep those words straight. Or is it strait? Webster has this helpful article: “Affect vs. Effect and how to pick the right one.”

“The basic difference is this: affect is usually a verb, and effect is usually a noun,” Webster said. Much more useful than what my teachers told me: “An affect has an effect.” Huh?

Webster delves into the proper use of em-dashes, en-dashes and hyphens and has a list of top word look-ups. Here’s one: Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.  That’s a lake, and it’s in the US, not Wales. The lake has the longest place name in our country. There are various stories about the name’s origin, but one says the name is Native American and commemorates an 18th-century fishing treaty. It’s jokingly translated as: “You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fishes in the middle.” The lake is in Webster, Mass., and many just call it Lake Webster.

Webster (the dictionary) has a helpful section on slang and trending words.

Know what a fridge cigarette is? “A cold, refreshing and addictive soft drink.” Gruzz is an older person. (I hope that one doesn’t catch on.) An almond mom is “a mother who pushes her daughter to be skinny, through diet.” Note that the term refers to daughters, not sons, enforcing expectations that women have to be thin. Bed rotting mean staying in bed all day. Zaddy is an attractive older man. There are more, lots more slang words Webster is watching. They’re fun to explore.

Webster also features words with tricky pronunciations, including ragout.  Don’t embarrass yourself by calling that meaty stew rag-out. It’s ra-GOO.

Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford English Dictionary

My publisher, Severn House in London, uses the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. It’s a little more staid that its American cousin, Merriam-Webster, but I love the research for its Word Stories.

Here’s part of the story of glamor. Excuse me, glamour.

“The schoolroom, verb tables, and Latin class seem about as far removed from our current notion of glamour as it’s possible to get,” the OED said. But grammar and glamour  “were originally the same word.”

Dull, dusty grammar “first came into English from French with the meaning ‘learning or scholarship concerning a language’, and particularly, ‘a book which contains this knowledge’. The word soon extended to the principles of any kind of learning, and to books setting out such principles.”

Grammar took a turn into the occult, and words related to grammar began to refer to “knowledge of or expertise in magic and astrology, or to manuals for invoking demons and performing general sorcery.” These words included “gramarye and grimoire . . . and, finally, glamour.”

“Since glamour entered the language it’s taken on quite the life of its own.” It’s given us “glamour puss, (a glamorous or attractive person), glamazon, (a tall, glamorous, and powerful woman), and glampsite, (a campsite for glamping – the more luxurious way to camp).”

You can subscribe to the OED, but if you can’t afford a hundred bucks, you can still look up words for free, and enjoy word lists, world English, and the history of English.

Wordsmith Tom Stoppard wrote, “I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

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What a Difference a Word Makes

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By Elaine Viets

When I taught English as a second language, one of my favorite students was a young man I’ll call Sam. Sam was 18, from South Korea. Smart and hard-working, Sam was brushing up on his English that summer before he went to college in the US. Sam had applied to several universities, many of them distinctly second-rate.

“Why didn’t you apply to any Ivy League schools?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “I couldn’t get in. I spent my senior year in high school screwing.”

“What??” Sam didn’t talk like that. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t work hard and I got bad grades.”

“That means you spent your senior year screwing AROUND,” I  said, and gave him a quick course in American idioms.

I hope my students learned from me, but I definitely learned from them. English is a complex, expressive and extremely difficult language, fraught with pitfalls.  Consider the South American banker who told me, “My wife and I fled our country naked.”

“Naked?” I asked. “You weren’t wearing clothes?”

“Of course we were,” he said. “But we couldn’t take anything with us.”

Turned out he was using an idiom from his country. “Right. In the US, we’d say, ‘You left with nothing but the clothes on your backs.’”

In the words of Bill Bryson, “Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.” (If you haven’t read Bryson’s Mother Tongue, you’re missing a linguistic treat.)

Teaching articles, those pesky three words, “a,” “an” and “the,” is another misery. Try explaining that these two sentences mean basically the same thing:

There is little traffic at 4 a.m.

There is a little traffic at 4 a.m.

And don’t forget regionalisms (why is a carbonated drink “pop” in parts of the country and “soda” in others?), and accents.

A Japanese businessman said he was worried about going to South Carolina. He told me, “I can’t understand what the people there are saying.”

“That’s OK,” I told him. “None of us can.”

But before you get too smug, native speakers, tell me which of these ten words is misspelled:

mahagony

embarassed

sherriff

fourty-four

supercede

graffitti

rhythum

syrep

abdomenal

concensus

 

Answer: They all are.

Now in paperback: Sex and Death on the Beach, my new Florida beach mystery, is now in paperback. Check out it out here. https://tinyurl.com/3ut3chuu