Authors are choosing more often to self publish. A key indicator in 2024 trends is the uptick in self publishing which outstripped traditional publishing for the first time. This self publishing market is experiencing a 17% annual growth rate. Compare that to the 1% growth rate of the traditional publishing market.
Even The Pulitzer Prize and British Book Awards are now open to self published books. Sorry, The New York Times bestseller list still requires a traditional publishing process. But for us, the serious self publishing authors, this means there are far more opportunities for recognition.
I was initially dismayed by the amount of work in the more interactive process of book cover math, developmental and format editing and the sheer enormity of how to tackle social media marketing. Nonetheless, the upside of self publishing vs traditional publishing has definite advantages. For instance, self publishing is far faster and easier. Self published authors also score a much bigger chunk of the book royalties. According to the Alliance of Independent Authors, more than 2,000 authors earned over $100,000 in royalties in 2022 and the earnings continue to increase!
Corporate conglomerates are not the exclusive source of good storytelling and great reads. As we start another year of authoring and book marketing, I chose three self published selections to share with you and hope you’ll read at least one. They stood out from the long list of bestselling self published books 0f 2024.
Chicago surgeon Emily Hartford has never quite shaken off the dust of her hometown in Michigan. She may be a professional success and have a princely boyfriend in the Windy City, but she can’t seem to let go of being “the coroner’s daughter” from Freeport.
She finds herself pulled back to her hometown when Jeremiah—the eleven-year-old son of her best friend, Jo—goes missing on the frigid shores of Lake Michigan. Emily solidifies her role as the coroner’s daughter when she puzzles out a madman’s chilling machinations. Risking everything dear to her, Emily is determined to go the icy distance and end his killing spree.
My Take: This book was my favorite – good suspense and chilling insight into a maniacal criminal mind.
FBI Agent Ella Dark, 29, is given her big chance to achieve her life’s dream: to join the Behavioral Crimes Unit. Ella’s hidden obsession of gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers has led to her being singled out for her brilliant mind, and invited to join the big leagues.
Ella finds herself in a cat and mouse chase with no way out, and she must wonder if she is hunting—or the one who is hunted….
My Take: If you love the hairpin turns in a life-threatening crime chase, you are going to find it here! Girl Unseen is book #23 in a series by bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose book, Once Gone has received over 20,000 five-star reviews and ratings.
The Longest Goodbye is the ninth in Hannah’s UK series featuring DCI Kate Daniels. Kate tackles a complex case while navigating an on-again, off-again relationship with criminal profiler Jo Soulsby. Three years prior, Kate investigated the murder of a police officer but the perpetrators were never brought to justice. Now, the suspects have been murdered. Seeking resolution will force Kate to confront her mistakes in the original investigation and put her career and her team’s lives on the line.
My Take: Nobody has better Crime Fiction than the Brits! Witness the popularity of Veraand Shetland – both stellar tv series. Mari Hannah’s work is now under development for UK television and streaming. You don’t want to miss this one.
Valerie Webster spent a career in law enforcement and national security technologies. She is the author of the Rita Mars Thriller series: Driven and Objects of Desire. Book three, The Book of Revelation is due out in the fall of 2025.
December 30, 2024 I had the great good fortune to learn of and read Stephen Saletan’s memoir, To the Midnight Sun: A Story of Revolution, Exile and Return. The prose is sparkling and engaging. It deftly captures the dreamy attraction of the young Stephen to his grandmother’s recounting of her role in the Russian revolution, his family’s life in dangerous times, their escape to safety. It was Stephen’s grandmother who maintained the bond of relationships and culture in a new country. She worked tirelessly to maintain connections with family remaining in Russia so that a sense of wholeness survived the political upheaval and the scattering of individuals across the world. I loved this book. Even if you are not a fugitive from political unrest, this work will engage you as to the nature of family, how we preserve our sense of self and heritage in uncertain times.
Halloween. The TV is re-selling Freddy Krueger and Michael Meyers. We think of full moons and the mythical dangers of vampires and werewolves. Makes me think of the factors that make horror stories the most frightening. For most it is not the imaginary creatures. It’s not the improbable Texas Chainsaw guy.
The most terrifying, the very essence of horror is not the bogeyman. It is the stories about ordinary people, ordinary objects that turn sinister and lethal that scare us the most. We expect everyday life to create stability, a sense of normalcy. We find safety and comfort in the routine of our life. It is when the familiar becomes malevolent that we experience real terror.
So why I am telling you these things? I am preparing you as I recommend one of the most compelling reads I have ever completed. The Barn by Wright Thompson features a simple wooden structure in Sunflower County Mississippi. An old seed storage barn. Unpainted. Worn. Could anything be less threatening? And yet –
In 1955, this unremarkable structure housed the torture and murder of fourteen-year-old Emmitt Till. Visiting from Chicago, the young black boy was the target of a white woman’s accusation that set off his murder. Two white men dragged Emmitt into that innocuous building. They beat him into an unrecognizable mass. They dragged him to the Tallahatchie River and shot him in the head. They tied a 75-lb cotton gin wheel to his neck and threw his body into the river to hide their deed.
From that point runs a stream of lies, a coverup, a protection of others involved. But the truth would not be hidden and Till’s own mother, in raw grief, demanded her son’s casket be open to “let the world see.” That barn still stands, unmarked and unremarkable. It is the monumental cache of a true horror story and a nation’s shame.
While I read The Barn, I thought of the hate, running like a poisoned river, beneath our social foundation. True, there have been strides made and laws passed. Yet, even so many years after this atrocity, that current of evil continues to run deep in this country. Masked by a veneer of political correctness we may have given ourselves permission to believe was no more. But at no time in my memory has that hate risen to the level it achieves today. I think of the school massacres, the grocery store killings and the house of worship murders.
The true horror of ordinary things turning evil is that it forces us to confront the fragility of our reality. What could be more ordinary than your child attending school, your going to the grocery store or attending your place of worship. The mundane becomes monstrous, not because it has changed in any obvious way, but because it has hidden depths of danger we never suspected. This type of horror thrives on making us feel vulnerable in the places and with the things that are supposed to offer us comfort, leaving us to question the very nature of the world around us.
The Barn rips back the veil. We see the perpetrators seeking to undermine the institutions we believe in. We feel that cold shiver of fear that our faith might be unfounded. We feel exposed, alone and vulnerable.
The power hungry wish to scare us into believing that they alone can protect us from the imaginary monsters they have assembled – much like Frankenstein’s creature. We cannot let fear steal our reason but we can stand together. We will “let the world see” we will not be overcome.
I encourage you to read The Barn. It is a cautionary tale about the endurance of evil and our part in combatting it through the preservation of memory and our responsibility to fight against it.
In a 2003 interview this is what Carol O’Connell had to say about her character, Mallory: ”The way her character is,” O’Connell said by phone from her home in New York, ”Is in that line from James Joyce’s ”Ulysses” — I’m sure you’ll remember when Bloom is downstairs, looking at his wife’s cat — the cat is also a metaphor for the wife: ”Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.”
The chilling descriptors above set the tone in O’Connell’s Blind Sight. A blind child and a Catholic nun disappear from a city sidewalk in plain sight of onlookers. There, then gone—vanished in seconds.
Detective Kathy Mallory and the NYPD’s Special Crimes Unit enter the investigation when the nun’s body is found with three other corpses in varying stages of decomposition left on the lawn of Gracie Mansion, home to the mayor of New York City. Sister Michael was the last to die. The child, Jonah Quill, is still missing.
Unknown to the police, that blind boy is with a stone killer. Though he has unexpected resources of his own, his rescuers have no suspect, no useful evidence, and no clue — except for Detective Mallory’s suspicions of things not said and her penchant for getting to the truth beneath lies.
Carol O’Connell has penned a thriller of singular intensity. At times the plot switched back and forth, making the read a bit confusing. O’Connell also introduced a number of characters early; this gives the reader pause to try and sort who’s who. Nonetheless readers are rewarded by Mallory’s logic and relentless pursuit.
Mallory takes the lead on this case. Unlike her fellow detectives, Mallory is not bound by the limits of the typical. Her intuitions and her street smarts are unique tools. Mallory is spot on and, as always, she keeps her SCU colleagues in the dark as she hunts.
There are many instances of “blind” in this thriller. O’Connell thoroughly captures the world of the physically blind in her portrayal of Jonah, the kidnapped boy, where reliance on other senses is critical for survival. But the police are blind as well – few clues, few suspects, and few opportunities to connect the dots.
As for Mallory, she seems blind to the human aspect of the crime. We bear witness to how Mallory armors herself to create that façade. Deep in her psyche, she carries the eternal flame of love and compassion even if she wishes to hide and protect that vulnerable part of herself.
Blind Sight is well worth the read. Stick with the maze of a start because the ending will blow you away.
Sharon Kriegisch is a psychological thriller fan, a beta reader/editor and successful entrepreneur
How do we begin our life as a writer? For Michael Connelly, it was the work of Raymond Chandler; it fired the forge from which Harry Bosch was drawn. For Sara Peretsky, it was about proving that women writers’ plots and prose could be as muscular as the likes of Hammett and Spillane.
For Christopher Fowler, it was trying his hand at a genre that he adored. He loved the writing as much as the reading. From his trial shot of a single book to a lifetime of creation, Fowler secured his place in the body of crime fiction works.
Christopher Fowler, author of Britain’s Bryant & May series of detective novels, has died at the age of 69. He fought the good fight after having been diagnosed with cancer three years ago.
Christopher was best known for his Bryant & May thrillers, featuring veteran detectives solving unusual crimes in London from the second world war to the present day. The series kicked off with Full Dark House in 2003, and 17 more novels followed, most recently London Bridge Is Falling Down, published in 2021.
Christopher was the winner of the Edge Hill Prize, (for excellence in a published single authored short story collection), the Last Laugh prize (for best humorous crime novel first published in the United Kingdom), the inaugural Green Carnation Award (award for best fiction and memoirs by gay men), the E-Dunnit Award (best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format in the British Isles) and the CWA 2015 Dagger In The Library (for a body of work by an established writer of crime fiction or non-fiction who has long been popular with borrowers from libraries). His crime fiction was superior and quality intensified as he aged.
Christopher Fowler wrote until he could not, sharing: “It’s very hard to write now without falling asleep or forgetting what I was going to say. All fun things have to come to an end. I love you all. Except for that horrible old troll – are there any other kind? There, now you have a smidgen of extra time on your hands, go have fun … and read a book.”
And now is a good time for you to discover Fowler’s works, if you aren’t familiar (I get no remuneration when you click a link and purchase). What you will get though is a thrilling chase through unusual crimes in unusual times. The usual buddy cops motif is turned upside down with gay detective partners who work in – wait for it – the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Fowler’s series is fun. Go to Amazon and find yourself in London, in the 40’s, in the life. You will sit up all night. You will not be able to put his books down.
We at Sisters in Crime are bursting with pride that Colorado Chapter President, Rhonda Blackhurst, has won the Excellence in Arts Award – Master of Literary Arts from the Brighton Cultural Arts Commission. Congratulations, Rhonda!
She started her first novel writing over 30 years ago. Rhonda always loved reading a good mystery, and that became the genre in which she chose to write.
Like the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie, Rhonda authors “cozy mysteries” which she describes as mysteries “one would feel comfortable having one’s grandmother read with no gratuitous sex or violence.”
Thus far, Rhonda has had ten books published: seven in the Melanie Hogan cozy mystery series, a short story, two romantic suspense novels Finding Abby and Abby’s Redemption, a standalone called The Inheritance and a non-fiction story.
She is currently working on a series called The Spirit Lake Mysteries as well as a mystery short story “From the Darkness.” Rhonda created a publishing company, Lighthouse, that has a cover designer, an editor, a formatter, as well as beta readers. She attends many writing workshops and enjoys book signings and talks.
Because of Brighton’s vibrant and growing cultural arts community, the Cultural Arts Commission created the Excellence Awards to celebrate individuals and groups within Brighton who are cultural arts champions.
These champions were recognized with the Excellence in Arts Awards on February 9 at Eagle View Adult Center.
Valerie Webster and Driven: A Rita Mars Thriller in the spotlight via Author of the Day interview.
Make your next book club event an author event with a writer who’s lived the cases, developed the crime fighting technologies. Contact Valerie Webster today.
