A.R. Simmons's Blog: Musings and Mutterings

After a period of flagging energy via Covid, (I am and have kept up with my vaccines) I am writing regularly again. I urge all my fellow authors and readers to take advantage of the availability of both the corona virus and flu vaccines.

For the information of those interested in the Richard Carter series, I am 150 or so pages into the latest novel MISSING PAGES. Like all the latest books, it features female deputy Kit. In fact, it concentrates on her. Go back to JOURNEY MAN and follow her through the last few novels if you wish to enjoy the upcoming book more fully.

More later.

Cold Tears



Although this is the second book in the Richard Carter series, it was the fourth one written, and the first set in the Ozarks. I moved Richard directly into Hawthorn County from Michigan. (If you read Bonne Femme, you understand the reason for the move.) However, after two novels set there, I realized that the move to the hill country was not seamless. So I wrote Cold Tears as a bridge to take the Carters from Breton County, Michigan to Hawthorn County Missouri, and to take Richard from pardoned felon to rural deputy sheriff. The Carters also had emotional and marital problems to resolve. Cold Tears gave me the opportunity tie up loose ends and settle them (emotionally and physically) in the place where they begin gathering a non-traditional extended family.

Another way this book was out of place was that it was published third instead of second as it should have been. This was unavoidable due to contractual problems which are best not discussed. Suffice it to say, things were resolved in time for me to publish shortly after Canaan Camp.

This novel was great fun to write, and I hope you will enjoy reading it. I got attached to another character, a strong young woman. I must confess that I am partial to powerful female characters.

My Inheritance: A Love of Reading

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved reading. I pity the people who don’t. As spring comes around, I think once again of the ones who gave that to me, Mom and Dad. My father was a country boy whose highest academic achievement was passing the County 8th grade graduation test. He did that twice, once as a 7th grader. Despite going no further in school, he became one of the smartest and most knowledgeable men I knew. He always read the newspaper and watched the news on TV. He also loved novels, from Zane Grey to Erle Stanley Gardner to James Michener.

My mother, a girl from Chicago, went two grades further in school than my father, but didn’t graduate from high school. When they got married, they moved to Missouri to live on my grandparents' small farm. She didn’t read much, and it angered her that Dad spent so much time reading. One spring, she happened upon a humorous book based on the experiences of a newlywed trying to acclimate to life on a small chicken farm operated by her husband’s family. It struck a chord. Betty MacDonald’s “The Egg and I*” was the first book she ever completed, the first of many. My mother became, like my father, an avid reader.





Each spring, Mom celebrated her love of reading by re-reading “The Egg and I.” I hope that each of you find that kind of joy in reading.













(*Some of you, the older ones, may be familiar with two of the characters from MacDonald’s book: Ma and Pa Kettle.)

I'm Deputy Cicely “Kit” Kittredge of the Hawthorn County Sheriff's Department. I came to Blue Creek in JOURNEY MAN and am featured in the three following stories (so far). Get to know me with a free ebook from 2/19/22 to 2/23/22.

ERASED, a stand-alone mystery suspense novel (Richard Carter #14) is now available on Amazon as Kindle book and paperback.

amazon.com/-/e/B00DWAU8T8

It features Deputy Cicely "Kit" Kittredge. (the fourth novel she has been in since moving to Hawthorn County.)

ERASED



Watch on my Amazon page for previous novels offered for a limited time free in Kindle format.

See what other Goodreads readers have to say about a book in the series. Then maybe write your own opinion?

Pick and click a book for particulars: Blurb, Review, Etc


Bonne Femme: The Richard Carter Novels Book 1

Cold Tears

Canaan Camp

Secret Song

The King Snake

Devilry

Call Her Sabine

Road Shrines

Cold Fury

The Daughter

Journey Man

Devil's Run

The Playpretty

Click Here: ERASED





At long last!

Richard Carter #14

A mystery with a hells-a-poppin plot.

Evolution of the Series

BONNE FEMME (RC #1) came from a question I posed to ponder: Can trust betrayed ever be regained? It was written and abandoned while I worked other stories. When I returned to it after eight years, I saw that although it was a difficult plot to sell, the characters were strong and intriguing. Nevertheless, the book required major surgery to remove extraneous details, anecdotes, asides, and a plethora of purple prose.

The premise was good, but the plot difficult to believe, mainly because my female lead was far too strong and intelligent to ever do anything but detest my male lead. Then I came across these wonderful lines from Mark Twain:

Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. Life consists mainly of the storm of thoughts forever blowing through one's mind.

With that in mind, the characters and their dilemma become frighteningly believable.

Richard, Jill, and Mic became so real that I heard their dialog before I wrote it. I found that I didn't want their story to end, so I moved them from Michigan to my native Ozarks. In a sense, I took them home with me. This was the genesis of the Richard Carter/Blue Creek series.

Reader, Can you leave a review (just your honest thoughts)?



Bonne Femme: The Richard Carter Novels Book 1

A once busy corner in Birch Tree, MO.































Going to a small town can be a trip into our cultural past. Look at this Coke ad painted on the brick wall in downtown Birch Tree, Missouri. In my section of the Ozarks, there are many backwater villages that were once more vibrant. Life back then was much more local than it is today. Every “Main Street” was lined with merchant’s shops selling goods and services that are now bought at the chain discount store out on the highway or perhaps in a neighboring town. Once the “Farm to Market” roads (paved in the early part of the last century to “ . . . get Missouri out of the mud”) carried agricultural products to the town and shoppers to downtown (on Friday or Saturday) to buy the few dry goods and groceries needed to supplement what was produced on the homestead farm. Perhaps a trip to the shoe repair place was needed to re-sole a pair of work boots or Sunday-go-to-meeting dress shoes. Maybe there was a trip to the two-seat barber shop. The downtown was a going thing, and definitely a place to window shop, perhaps at the local Woolworth, Ben Franklin, or Newberry’s.

I remember people seriously discussing whether or not the new-fangled shopping center that was going in at my town would “go over.” Go over it did, driving one of the earliest nails in the coffin of old town. I think the thing that really did it in, however, was the production of better automobiles and the rising expectations of the younger generations. The intensely local way of life with all its close-knit and traditional ways died a natural death with the arrival of mass media, reliable personal transportation, and the decreasing viability of the small family farm. There was also the ages old story of changing trade routes. When passenger trains were no longer a primary means of transportation, the local depot either closed or only opened for a few stops a week.

There’s no going back to a simpler time, and I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be all that simple anyway. We are products of our own time, and that’s where we fit. Truth to tell, there never was a “golden age.” The past is a wonderful place to visit because it tells us where we came from. But we can’t live there even if we want to.
The next time your travels lead you to one of these small towns, take the time to look around and imagine what it was like for the people who built and inhabited it. It may tell you a story worth the contemplation.

On the weekend of Dec 11-12, 2021 The first three novels in the Richard Carter series will be free on Amazon (as e-books).

These are the necessary prequels to the Blue Creek novels of the Richard Carter mystery/suspense series: They take Richard from amateur sleuth to nominal criminalist.

BONNE FEMME
COLD TEARS
CANAAN CAMP



Bonne Femme: The Richard Carter Novels Book 1



To take advantage of the offer, go to :

https://www.amazon.com/AR-Simmons/e/B...