The Ties of Time

The Ties of Time A Kelly Watson Mystery  is the newest title in my Kelly Watson series. 

I had a story starter prompt, kind of, had written 6 pages up to basically where the "bookstore" was no longer but got stuck as I didn't really have any direction of where the story was going, what the mystery actually was or even why the bookstore (which after brainstorming with my really good friend, Anita, last night is no longer really a bookstore) was there one minute and not the next. 

Lana has been urging me to get to writing on this story, not for the story itself but to get back into writing.  Yesterday before leaving for the monthly Sisters in Crime meeting, Lana and I were chatting.  She had given me a little insight Wednesday night of what the girls found at the site that was a store but is no longer.  A piece of wood.  So yesterday during our chat, she asked me "What do the girls find under the wood?"  and listed a half dozen or more possibilities, then stating the possibilities were endless.  I wrote down the suggestions she made on the printed pages of the story to take to the SinC meeting for Anita's reading.  I'm glad I did because after the meeting we did some serious brainstorming and came up with The Ties of Time.  I now know exactly what the mystery is, who is involved and where the mystery ends up.

I can tell you this about the story:  It is actually a murder mystery (which came about secondarily); it involves ghosts, twisted relationships, skeletons in the closet, and even a bit of time travel for Kelly or really more use of her "witchy powers".  Solving the murder actually led to two other murders in the past which turn out to be books 3 and 4 in the series.  There are 11 characters involved in this story of which several will show up in the next two books, thus the premise of books 3 and 4 are in motion already with book 3 a better inkling of the "ties" of time and other things.  All I can tell you about book 4 is they are going to solve the last related murder to the other two but they need to solve the first two before getting to third one.  After book 4 is finished, I think I will consider the series complete as I didn't start out writing murder mysteries and after the third murder is solved, there shouldn't be any more skeletons in the closet that need telling.  If there are any more Kelly mysteries after book 4, then it is likely they will be basic mysteries and not involve murders as I really don't have any more characters that have been murdered and in a town as small as Iva, SC, is there aren't enough people around to have them getting killed off.  Besides, we don't really want Kelly involved in too many murders before she reaches the age of 16 anyways. 

The Ties of Time is actually going to tie three mysteries together over the course of time but there are other reasons for the title, which I can't reveal at this moment, but trust me the ties are there.  I look forward to really getting the story written now with publication to follow within a few months.  I've set a deadline of having the story written by the end of August (that is basically a 6-week timeframe), with editing and revising probably for the middle of October as I will probably start on book 3, the second murder, in the series before jumping into the edits immediately, and then we will go from there.

More when I can  - see you all in the postings - E :)