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Multi-volume, cozy mystery author, Mary Lu Scholl introduces us to the second book in the Nature Coast Calamities series, “Big Foot and The Bentley”: "There are more things..." Life in Citrus County Florida, on the Nature Coast has Bernie scratching his head. There's no shortage of mysteries and an occasional murder. Bernie is Irish, and the mythology seems to have followed him. With the help of his brother and friends, he encounters Big Foot. Or does he? This is a man's Cozy mystery - A Brozie - and will have you chuckling all afternoon. I have enjoyed several of Scholl's books and this is no exception. I quite like it. She has some of the people from another series in this story, yet she keeps the focus comfortably on Bernie and his brother, Ralph. They get along like most siblings. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I heard many tales about Big Foot, AKA Sasquatch. Even the few hints and incidental encounters add intrigue to this story. A Bentley is a luxurious car and the mystery surrounding it makes this story even more fun. I think you will love this story as much as I did. Enjoy! You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Foot-Bentley-Nature-Calamities-ebook You can follow the author: https://twitter.com/MaryLScholl1 https://maryluscholl.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/maryluschollauthor/ My review of the fourth book in the Nature Coast Calamities, "Pu'ka and the Pirates": www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/puka-and-the-pirates My review of the first book of the Trailer Park Travails series, “Camper Catastrophe”: https://www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/camper-catastrophe-by-mary-lu-scholl My review of the second book of the Trailer Park Travails series, “Mobile Mayhem”: Mobile Mayhem: Book Two of Trailer Park Travails by Mary Lu Scholl - Word Refiner My review of the third book of the Trailer Park Travails series, “Birds, Bees and RVs”: https://www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/birds-bees-and-rvs-by-mary-lu-scholl My review of the fourth book of the Trailer Park Travails series, “Trailer Trauma”: https://www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/trailer-trauma-trailer-park-travails-book-4 My review of the ninth book of the Trailer Park Travails series, "Fatal Philandering": www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/fatal-philandering My review of "Rhiannon: Lady Leprechaun" is here: www.wordrefiner.com/book-reviews/rhiannon-lady-leprechaun Tags: cozy, murder, mystery, Florida, pets, dog, cat, neighbors, fiction, action Copyright © 2022 Mark L. Schultz except for the author’s introduction
54 Comments
Mary Lu Scholl
9/12/2022 02:09:29 pm
Thank you so much for your kind words!
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Mark
9/12/2022 03:05:21 pm
Welcome back to the Word Refiner channel, Mary. I have reviewed several of your cozy mysteries as our visitors can tell from the list just above. In that series, your protagonist is a grumpy, old woman named Patty. This new series is a departure from your previous series.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/12/2022 03:24:28 pm
I read a lot... The last couple of years I've read mostly cozy mysteries to keep up with trends. It's disconcerting how much they blend together. I wanted to be different.
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Mark
9/12/2022 05:57:53 pm
I agree with your idea about 'brozy' I think it works well. I can't think of any cozy mysteries with male protagonists. I am sure you have read far more widely in that genre than I have. I like the term you have coined; it works well for me.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/12/2022 06:25:09 pm
Well, since I have your vote, that makes two of us and you're now my campaign manager!
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Mark
9/12/2022 07:12:58 pm
A leprechaun? No. I don't recall a mention of the wee folk. Is the leprechaun teaming up with big foot for some tag-team wrestling?
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/12/2022 08:28:19 pm
Definitely think dialogue is easiest. With dialogue and words at your disposal you can create a back story, you can delineate the present or propose the future. Cadence, vocabulary, as well as content can introduce a stereotypical character in just one sentence!
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Mark
9/13/2022 07:01:49 am
Many authors agree with you about dialogue. Much of the action occurs in dialogue. Important information can be shared in dialogue without sounding too much like an info dump.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/13/2022 09:38:01 am
Swype lets you run your finger over the keyboard to tag letters without having to tap each one. Faster, less accurate, more artistic?
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Mark
9/13/2022 01:31:48 pm
That Swype app sounds interesting. God knows I can barely type two words without having to fix at least one of them.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/13/2022 02:10:28 pm
I rarely know who's going to get killed when I start out. Circumstances just seem to point out someone who has a variety of people with a grudge against them. They all have to have opportunity as well as motive. Once I've disclosed all of that, I have to start eliminating them. That often means going back and changing, or adding to, or deleting details. Once I'm down to one perpetrator in my mind, I have to set up a final conflict, hopefully not giving it away too badly ahead of time. The final conflict often takes me almost as long as the rest of the book. Knowing my characters, the dialogue just flows and takes the story with it. Ending it is tough.
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Mark
9/13/2022 02:25:16 pm
I have interviewed a number of authors who say they write the story to discover how it ends. I think that is true for a lot of pantsers. You must be a pantser rather than a plotter. I find it interesting that you don't know who is going to die when you start writing.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/13/2022 04:16:58 pm
This series, I hit the idea and promptly went out to learn about 'manly' things. I interviewed a boat captain, a fishing guide, found a book on regulations, talked to a rodeo organizer (that will come up in the future.) I went to two different car clubs to talk about cars, repair, sales, etc. I joined a big foot website. I researched leprechauns. I am researching mermaids (I live in manatee country.) I will take other activities as they come. I don't like golf or football, so Bernie probably will not, either.
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Mark
9/13/2022 06:18:40 pm
I didn't know there was a rule book for men. I want to see a copy of that, it probably has lots of spelling errors. ;-)
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/13/2022 08:32:19 pm
Wow! Versatile is your middle name! I absolutely love the guitar building idea! Walking is good and easily incorporated. I like the bug identification; I've already established he's afraid of snakes (okay, wary.) Your knowledge of photographic accoutrements is impressive - life-long passion? I could work knife-throwing in...
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Mark
9/14/2022 07:11:08 am
My bio-dad was a professional photographer. I learned a great deal from him in my college years. Knife throwing might be a good idea. His parents were divorced and he ran away to join a circus as a teenager.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/14/2022 07:32:00 am
I'll look up Mike Hall! Incidentally, my musician husband ran off and joined the circus when he was twelve. They didn't actually let him "join," just let him go with them for a few weeks until a cook took pity on him and bought him a bus ticket home.
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Mark
9/14/2022 09:36:44 am
My little brother did the same thing after high school. He stayed on for a number of years and ran a lot of different games on the sideshow.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/14/2022 12:41:29 pm
My first answer is yes, I have first-readers who are happy to give me opinions. Unfortunately they are family or friends who would tell me they loved it if I misspelled every word, made up characters at the end, killed everyone they liked, and called it sweet romance. That's good, because they love me. Bad, because it's not very useful. Plus, my spelling, grammar and vocabulary are better than most. Frustrating when it comes to Scrabble, good when proofreading.
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Mark
9/14/2022 02:37:29 pm
It sounds like you are a little short on beta readers. Click on the three dots under my banner picture on my Twitter page. Click on lists when the menu drops down, one of the lists is for beta readers, check their requirements carefully. You could also trade beta reading with another writer in your genre, though you might already have that process started.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/14/2022 08:17:41 pm
It has never occurred to me to have more than one draft available. I save the newest one 'on top' each time.
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Mark
9/15/2022 08:27:36 am
I think waiting to engage your beta readers after the editing and rewriting are done is a good idea. At that point, you have solved the glaring errors. That is a good time for fresh eyes on the manuscript.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/15/2022 09:16:33 am
I usually create an ebook version anyway, so I paste a picture of the cover to the first page and send it that way.
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Mark
9/15/2022 12:20:37 pm
Including the cover is a good idea.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/15/2022 01:08:43 pm
My mommy gets a book! My sister gets a book! The one author that read mine, I read hers as well, but she has moved on to painting. (A loss to readers for sure) The other woman that used to read mine is married to one of the most brilliant men I know. He took up writing as a project to prove to himself he could write to market with instant income. And he did. Two books later he was bored and began sculpting with a metal-clay of some kind. Then he took up camping. They lived on a boat for a while. Now I don't know what he's doing... (California)
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Mark
9/15/2022 05:04:32 pm
That guy is amazing. It sounds like he needs multiple outlets for his creative energy.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/15/2022 06:20:19 pm
We have physical meetings now. We didn't for a year or more. Then we required maasks and lost at least one member in protest.
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Mark
9/15/2022 07:00:51 pm
In-person meetings are nice. I didn't realize how much I missed meeting and talking with people, even the really annoying ones, until the restrictions were loosened. Now I treasure those times.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/15/2022 08:15:42 pm
It's a themed book - adventures on the nature coast. As a prompt, if needed, there was a lead in regarding a natural arch and a graveyard. Most of the submissions are 'other.' For example a day on the river, the makings of a captain of a fishing boat in the early 1900s, a ghost story at a museum, the problems of a boat being a money-pit... A story about Rosie the Manatee...
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Mark
9/16/2022 08:31:35 am
Those stories sound good. I think you made the right choice for the right reason.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/16/2022 10:56:46 am
It will be printed, yes. The contributors each get several copies; one to keep, more to sell. A couple of the places I'm selling - we will also sell them. No idea what the price will be (or printing costs.) No further plan past that. I mind editing or compilation, but will leave the rest to the others.
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Mark
9/16/2022 11:28:11 am
That sounds good. Print on demand, POD, has come a long way. Printing costs have always been a problem for traditional publishers. If they know their markets well, they can make a pretty good estimate of how many books will sell. Then they order a bigger run to lower the cost per copy, knowing that some of those copies will likely sell for much less than retail. If they overestimate the print run a lot, then the secondary market will buy them for pennies on the dollar. Some wholesalers, such as Big Bad Wolf, hold huge sales of English language books overseas and sell hundreds of thousands of books, sometimes millions, in the course of a ten- or twenty-day event.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/16/2022 02:53:24 pm
Growing up, I was ALWAYS the new kid and the class nerd, teachers' pet. That meant when I was bored (a lot) I would ask for extra credit assignments. Usually this meant reports or essays. Words bought me positive reinforcement. English classes were aced. Poetry (epic poems)(anonymous poetry puzzles) short stories... Fake news (sand worms - think Arrakis - causing sink holes.) I wrote letters to the editor. I wrote to the government in Tijuana with suggestions to improve their roads (in Spanish.) They were polite. I studied up on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and wrote new hiring protocols based on it. Was told it was unconstitutional to know that much about your employees. (Really? Unconstitutional?)
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Mark
9/16/2022 05:14:25 pm
Poetry, sand worms, Tijuana and the MMPI! What a fun selection! Words are not just your friend they are your closest relatives it seems! Knowing the right words make a lot of difference. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, you can baffle them with polysyllabic bullshit.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/16/2022 05:36:58 pm
Love that - I never inserted the polysyllabic - you can bet I will now!
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Mark
9/16/2022 06:52:42 pm
Both are good pieces of advice. So many do quit too soon. Yes, research will fill in major gaps and imagination can provide the color and texture necessary for a good story. Much of what we know about ourselves, and others transcends time and space. We humans have not changed much at all, only our tools and our toys.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/17/2022 11:35:21 am
Good questions. There's a lot of emphasis on quantity in some genres. I admit I feel the pressure to produce.
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Mark
9/17/2022 12:34:30 pm
Having more than one book available to buy is a good idea. The more books the better and multiple series is better still. A lot of people seem to like knowing that if they love the first book there are more to read.
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Mary L Scholl
9/17/2022 12:44:03 pm
Family drama. Cannot be humorous with drama around me. Unfortunately I have a couple of people... If I continue to write everyone dies.
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Mark
9/17/2022 02:27:05 pm
I think every author would agree with you about family drama. Family is the one place, above all else, where we are supposed to feel safe. If something upsets that applecart, we are thrown into survival mode. There is no room for anything else when survival mode has been activated until we feel safe.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/17/2022 03:51:22 pm
An issue for me, maybe not other people, is good and evil. Murder is wrong. It's extreme. I struggle to believe in evil, however. You've read enough of my books to know that there is always a reason for my murders. Jealousy pushed to an extreme. Desperation at losing an identity you have created for yourself. Misplaced compassion. Accidental. I try to show the picture from the other side, not add an excuse, but at least a reason the character finds all-consuming. In that way, I carry the non-gory, non-sexy, no bad language to an ultimate cozy with no evil. That way a reader can safely identify with whatever character they want. They can laugh and not feel guilty. Does any of that make sense? I do have to be in the right frame of mind to do that (going back to your last questions.)
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Mark
9/17/2022 06:40:17 pm
I like that. Your characters are real and fully dimensional. I believe that a well-written antagonist thinks he or she is the hero in the story. I understand that. relaxation is key for the muse to flow.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/17/2022 07:10:25 pm
The last couple of years, of course, I have read mostly cozies. In the past, however, I read horror, medical and political drama. I grew up with science fiction. Everything from Podkayne of Mars to Dune. Fantasy, like Piers Anthony was a favorite. Tolkien. Silverberg. Then there was Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, Marble.
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Mark
9/17/2022 08:50:56 pm
Science fiction is my favorite genre and fantasy is a close second. I read almost all of Herbert's Dune books. I lost interest after reading what his son wrote to continue the series. It wasn't the same. I was introduced to Tolkien's LOTR series and The Hobbit in junior high. I loved the high fantasy. I read the series 3 times before I graduated from high school. During my college years, I discovered C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and read several other books by him. He wrote a sci-fi series called Out of the Silent Planet. I loved it and discovered that Lewis had patterned his protagonist after his good friend, JRRT.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/18/2022 05:58:35 am
I really think all experiences improve someone's writing. With constraints of time, money and obligation, second-hand experiences, while less complete, still are valuable. When the author of the experience includes personal observation, it also provides alternate realities to choose from. I tend to use my own experiences, since even with faulty recall they would be more complete. I've been lucky enough to have lived several "lives."
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Mark
9/18/2022 07:46:19 am
I agree with you, every experience contributes something to the vast body of knowledge an author holds within. Good or bad, all experiences are a part of who we are. Almost all experiences are common to at least a few people and most are shared by all people. Just as our blood vessels bring nutrition to every cell in our body those common experiences bind all humans into one family.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/18/2022 07:17:31 pm
Wow. I almost cried when you included me in "well written."
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Mark
9/18/2022 07:43:01 pm
I enjoy your books a lot. I like McCaffrey quite a bit. I read at least 4 volumes of Dragon Riders of Pern. Time traveling dragons was a marvelous device. I may have read the others a few decades ago, I don't recall.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/18/2022 09:16:29 pm
I think someone needs to experience (to some degree) what they write about. I have been a caregiver to people who have suffered. I loved them, so I suffered as well.
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Mark
9/19/2022 07:30:27 am
I think we all experience suffering. It is a common factor in the human experience just like death and taxes. If we are smart, we learn from our mistakes and suffering is minimal but most of us aren't wise enough to learn from our mistakes much less the mistakes of others. So, we suffer a lot. Not all of our suffering is due to our choices, sometimes we suffer due to the choices of others. Another example of how closely we are all linked in the human family.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/19/2022 03:42:27 pm
The best investments I've made in my writing is advertising (including, here, new covers, because they're the first impression in an ad).
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Mark
9/19/2022 04:13:42 pm
Covers are crucial. Some authors put up a new cover at least once a year to stimulate interest and find the style that works the best. We have been cautioned most of our lives to not judge a book by its cover; I think that applies to most things except books. We do decide whether or not to look at a blurb or tagline based on the title first and the cover second. With a million or more books published each year, readers have no choice but to scan quickly until something catches their eye. I do it, you do it, we all do it.
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Mary Lu Scholl
9/19/2022 05:46:26 pm
Who would play Patty? Me. Betty White. Judy Dench. Jamie Lee Curtis... If you know any of them put a bug in their ear...
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Mark
9/19/2022 06:12:25 pm
All are good choices to play Patty!
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Who am I?An avid reader, typobuster, and the Hyper-Speller. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. Archives
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"I'm very pleased with all your efforts. Twitter promotion and proofreading were beyond what I expected with a book review. Your suggestions throughout the process of refining both books helped me immensely. I look forward to working with you again." A.E.H Veenman “Dial QR for Murder” and “Prepped for the Kill”
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