Tilting at Windmills
When Kate discovers that her ex-husband has bought a print of her favorite painting just to spite her, her best friend, Roz, talks her into a little soul-cleansing breaking & entering.
“…a lot of mayhem, and two absolutely delightful characters who cause it…” – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Pick up your own copy of Fiction River: Dark & Deadly Passions from your favorite online retailer.
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Memory Lane
Since I was collecting short stories, I thought it might be fun to gather up some of my non-mystery shorts. Memory Lane contains a handful of historical short stories, written when I learned about some past event and wanted… more.
Memory Lane includes:
Memory at Lascaux
Stolen Moments
El Tío Supay
The Last Sigh of the Moor
The Unflattering Portrait of Jiang Zhaojun
Fences
Memory Lane
Available in print and ebook from your favorite retailer:
https://books2read.com/LaurynC-MemoryLane
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Secrets and Lies
Just for kicks, I thought I’d gather up a few of my short mysteries and put them into a collection for you.
Secrets and Lies includes:
Lemonade and Larceny
A Little Casual Blackmail
The Goddess Killer
The Man in the Gabardine Suit
Mistletoe and Murder
Secrets and Lies
Available in print and ebook from your favorite retailer:
https://books2read.com/LaurynC-SecretsLies
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The Goddess Killer
Conversations around our family dinner table are often loud, filled with a lot of laughter and more than their share of inappropriate remarks – such as the one in which our adult children speculated which of them was the parents’ favorite, and which would be sacrificed first in a zombie apocalypse.
It was a short leap from there to writing the story of a man faced with choosing which of the women in his life – his mother, his wife, or his daughter – he loves the best.
Pick up your own copy of Fiction River: Feel the Love from your favorite online retailer.
The Man in the Gabardine Suit
The old Simon & Garfunkel song, America, is one of my favorites; but for years I’ve wondered about “the man in the gabardine suit” who is briefly mentioned in the third verse. Who was he? Why was he on that bus? What was his story? And since the song wasn’t going to answer those questions, I decided to answer them myself – and to honor the original inspiration by setting the story on that Greyhound bus…
Mark Leslie, one of the editors of Fiction River: Editor Saves had this to say about the story:
“When an author can not only make an insightful reference to a tune, but also weave it into a complete and intriguing story, I’m cheering from the front row. There is a cleverness to this tale that goes well behind the delightful while injecting tongue-in-cheek references to classic spy tropes. Christopher’s tale is simple, yet startlingly complex and she pulls it off as adeptly and as poetically as a folk song from a duo from Queens New York.”
Pick up your own copy of Fiction River: Editor Saves from your favorite online retailer.
Best Served… Salted
Most of my mysteries are moody and suspenseful, but when I sat down to dish out a little justice for this anthology, I found I wanted a lighter touch. Best Served… Salted flowed from my fingertips like salt from the shaker!
In her introduction to the story, editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch very kindly said:
Lauryn Christopher knows I’m not fond of cozy and soft-boiled mysteries. Yet she keeps writing them for me, and I keep buying them… Why do I do that? Because, as Lauryn knows, I’m a sucker for a well-done short story of any genre.
If I were editing a volume of cozy and soft-boiled mysteries, I would have led with “Best Served…Salted”… We need to look at the side of justice that can make us smile.
Kris’ comments certainly made me smile!
There’s a lot of wisdom in the advice to “write what you know” – and having grown up with five brothers and their associated friends… well, let’s just say that I drew on a great deal of personal experience in writing this story, and can say, for the record, that the recipes have all been tested, their effects validated, and a certain group of young gentlemen got exactly the come-uppance they deserved!
Pick up your own copy of Fiction River: Justice from your favorite online retailer.
Mistletoe and Murder
Christmas is a time of delight, fun, merriment, and also a time of mystery – and the invitation to write a holiday mystery for the Very Mysterious Christmas collection was a holiday gift I was delighted to unwrap.
Mistletoe and Murder is my own take on a locked-room mystery.
When the members of a wealthy, highly dysfunctional family are snowed-in at their country estate over a tense, holiday weekend, tempers flare, secrets are revealed, and someone’s bound to die…
Investigate the mysterious side of Christmas with these 15 tales of mystery and suspense. From detectives to elves, superheroes to bounty hunters, sheriffs to ghosts, explore these stories that delight and surprise!
Pick up your own Very Mysterious Christmas at your favorite online retailer!
The Well
What are you afraid of? Death, poverty, debilitating illness, pain, creepy-crawly insects, being attacked on a dark stretch of sidewalk… When editor Mark Leslie issued his challenge for us to reach into ourselves, find our fears, and put them on the page, none of those came to mind. Instead, it was the fear of losing one’s sense of self to the darkness of emotional abuse – and then seeing the abuser turn their attention toward innocent children.
People aren’t always what they seem, and realizing that can often bring pain and heartache. And, at its darkest, emotional abuse can lead you to doubt yourself and shake your own grasp on reality.
Spousal abuse isn’t always visible in cuts, bruises and broken limbs. A deeper, sometimes more traumatic abuse than cuts, that bruises much deeper, is the way that a person can be undermined, can be made to believe that they are worthless, useless, and deserving of the way they are being mistreated.
I know too many people who have been down that dark path, who have lost themselves to it, and rejected that story idea as too dark, too personal, too painful to try to capture in a work of fiction. So I scoured the internet for other topics that would meet the anthology’s requirements, but every alternate idea I came up with seemed like a cop-out…
I admit it – the very thought of writing The Well tied my stomach up in knots. And once the idea had caught me, it wouldn’t let me go until I finally faced my own fears and simply wrote it. I’m glad I did. It was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever written, and probably one of the most important.
In his introduction to the story, editor Mark Leslie says:
“…This story exudes both a disturbing darkness and a heart and passion against virtually unbeatable odds to escape the fear, the terror, the madness of the darkness the narrator is enveloped in….”
I wrote The Well for all those who have struggled as victims of emotional abuse. It is my deepest wish that you find way back from the fear and pain, whether through counseling, finding a new avocation, or just holding on to those who are precious to you, and that you are able to find the strength to climb up out of the well and into the light.
Fiction River: Feel the Fear is available in both print and ebook formats from Amazon, and as an ebook from Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and a number of other online vendors.
Finally, as Fiction River series editor, Kristine Kathryn Rusch says in her introduction to the anthology:
Turn on all the lights. Cover yourself with a nice warm blanket. Make sure you’re not alone in the house.
And, from the safety of your own reading chair, enjoy feeling the fear.
Backstage Pass
a Hit Lady for Hire short story
Your favorite Hit Lady for Hire is back, with a new (short) adventure!
A secret audit of an off-Broadway theater takes Meg to the Big Apple for what should have been an easy-money job.
While prepared to act the part of an investor to ferret out who’s cooking the books, Meg hadn’t expected to get caught up in the darker drama playing out backstage…
Backstage Pass is just one of the many stories in Crimes, Capers, and Rule-Breakers – a collection of twenty short stories featuring thieves and miscreants on their criminal adventures! From burglars to assassins, grifters to con artists, these are mysteries from the other side, from the criminal point-of-view.
So be on the lookout! Crimes, Capers, and Rule-Breakers is available in your favorite ebook format through BundleRabbit.com. Hop on over today!
Lemonade and Larceny
I am so excited to announce my first cozy short story
When a silly law forbids Effie Birmingham from practicing her trade as a psychic, she feels obliged to break it…!
Lemonade and Larceny, is a lighthearted, cozy caper, set in 1950s Huntington, West Virginia. It was such a fun story to write – and I’m truly excited that it’s finally available for you to read!
Fiction River: Editor’s Choice is an eclectic collection of stories from multiple genres. I’m delighted that Lemonade and Larceny was selected to be a part of it.
You can pick up a copy of Fiction River: Editor’s Choice in ebook for Kobo, Nook, or Kindle, from other retailers, or in Paperback.
(Tip – if you buy the paperback version, it comes with a coupon code you can use to get a free Kobo copy – so you can have a beautiful version for your shelves and one to read on your free Kobo phone app. What a deal!)
The Last Sigh of the Moor
I love historical fiction – stories that connect me to a historical place and time and letting me see and experience it through the eyes of a character I can care about. But I’ve hesitated about trying my hand at writing historical fiction. I’m not a historian, and found the idea of writing a story based in a historical period rather daunting.
So when I attended a short story workshop, and the first assignment given by the instructor, my friend, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, was to write a story set in a historical period about which we had a reasonable level of knowledge, I hesitated – but only for a moment, because you don’t tell Kris ‘no’ when she’s given you an assignment – and then I dove in. After all, refining my short-story skills, and learning from a master such as Kris was why I’d signed up for the workshop.
There is a place, outside the walls of Granada, and in the shadow of the mighty Alhambra, where history tells us the city’s last caliph turned and wept at the sight of his beautiful, lost city… and, perhaps, at the loss of the friend who betrayed her.
Not only was this story a lot easier to write than I thought it would be, but once I let myself get past the “I’m not a historian” worries, and just let what I already knew about the period (the fall of Granada, Spain), supplemented with a little supporting research, guide me, the story almost told itself – and you can’t ask for more than that!
Available on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords
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