Visiting Detectives & Guest Writers

Guest Writer, Scott Graham “Research, Research, Research, Write, Write, Write”

If there are no paragraph separations in this article, please double-click on the title and they will appear.  🙂

Many of you will recognize Scott Graham in connection with our (now retired) website, Nightstand Book Reviews, where I reviewed several books in his always terrific National Park Mystery Series. With book #10 coming out soon and another one being written now, he kindly agreed to pause his writing schedule and reveal how he gets it all done.

 

 

Scott Graham

author of the National Park Mystery Series

 

I once asked an oil-painter friend of mine how he knew when he was finished with a painting.

“I know I’m done,” he told me, “when someone sneaks up behind me, hits me over the head with a hammer, and yanks my paintbrush from my hand.”

For me, the same is basically true when it comes to researching and writing my National Park Mysteries. Which is to say, if it were up to me, I’d never be done with either.

I always visit for several days the national park in which the mystery I’m about to write is set. I talk with park employees and visit the sites in the park where the action in the book will take place. Immediately afterward, with the park’s sights, smells, and sounds firmly in mind, I start writing.

My off-site research takes over at that point, as I turn to the internet to answer the many questions that crop up as I write, write, write, and rewrite and rewrite some more.

Until, that is, ‘someone’ forces me to press send on my manuscript. That ‘someone’ is the calendar.

For the last decade, I’ve written and published one National Park Mystery per year, with the goal of building an audience for my work through the annual release of my books. The yearly deadline has served its purpose well. The audience for my books has grown steadily over the last ten years, with sales of the books in my series doubling in just the last year alone.

The deadline serves me well for another reason, too. It forces me to finish my books when, if left to my own devices, I’d never finish them. Instead, if given the opportunity, I’d happily edit and rewrite forever, because both are fun and much easier than writing a first draft. But my annual deadline forces me to dive into telling a whole new story from scratch the minute I press send on my last book. And each time I set sail on a new tale, I recall all over again why I love storytelling so much.

 

My latest National Park Mystery, Great Sand Dunes Massacre, No. 10 in my National Park Mystery Series published by Torrey House Press  (torreyhouse.org), is releasing June 2, 2026, wherever books are sold and in all formats—book, ebook, and audiobook.

In Great Sand Dunes Massacre, a macabre death at the exact moment archaeologist Chuck Bender makes a baffling discovery in Great Sand Dunes National Park sends Chuck racing to solve the vexing riddle behind the find. After a second bizarre death in the park, will Chuck unravel the clues before his daughter Rosie and others fall victim to the killer’s vengeful wrath?

I loved researching and writing Great Sand Dunes Massacre, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. As for me, I’ve happily moved on to researching and writing DYING IN ZION, No. 11 in my series. When it comes out in 2027, I hope you’ll like it, too.

—-

Scott Graham (scottfranklingraham.com) is the National Outdoor Book Award-winning author of the National Park Mystery Series published by Torrey House Press. Scott is an avid outdoorsman and public lands advocate who lives in southwest Colorado.

In addition to his mysteries, Scott is the author of five nonfiction books. He has worked as a reporter, editor, disk jockey, city councilor, and coal-shoveling fireman on the steam-powered Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  

~~~~~~~~~~

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, here are some thoughts  about the first four books:

The National Park Mystery Series features contract archaeologist Chuck Bender, Chuck’s paramedic wife, Janelle Ortega, and Chuck’s stepdaughters. The contract work moves Chuck Bender and the family to different parks each summer vacation, setting the scene for stories dealing with environmental, political, and social justice issues.

The series began in the Grand Canyon with “Canyon Sacrifice,” a resounding success as a debut novel. A kidnapping and a murder place the family in harm’s way on the Bender honeymoon camping trip as Chuck navigates parenthood and spousal responsibilities for the first time. Readers will be mesmerized by Graham’s imageries of the Grand Canyon and the achievements/artifacts of the ancient Anasazi Indians that Bender discovered on an earlier contract dig. Prepare to be swept into the world of outdoor recreation and the wonders of archeology in the West.

Book #2, “Mountain Rampage,” moves Bender and the family to Rocky Mountain National Park where he runs a college archeology field school. The book takes place over a three-day period, with murder and mayhem that involves his brother-in-law and false accusations, and plenty of adventure to go around.

“Yellowstone Standoff,” set in Yellowstone National Park, has a hair-raising premise with rogue wolves, grizzlies, and a murdered researcher. As always, Graham delivers breathtaking descriptions of the wild and puts the reader in the middle of the terrifying action. An exciting page-turner.

Book #4, “Yosemite Fall,” brings Janelle and the older daughter more to the forefront of the multi-layered storylines, with a rock-climbing competition, a deadly reunion, and a contract to solve a 150-year-old mystery as the backdrop. Janelle and Chuck are the suspects in a present-day murder, and once again, the national park is a character in the book.

Enjoy!

*Photo and posters provided by Scott Graham  🙂
*Click on the BOLD Graham book titles, etc. for more information.

 

 

 

 

Guest Writer, Scott Graham “Research, Research, Research, Write, Write, Write” Read More »

Guest Writer, Tom Rizzo “Gunmen on Gunfighting”

If  there are no paragraph separations in this article, please double-click on the title and they will appear.  🙂

Kerrian’s Notebook has explored the world of guns and ammo in several articles, through the eyes of law enforcement officers, professionals in firearms training, as well recreational gunowners. Members of each of those groups have expressed clear opinions to me as to the serious nature of what happens when handguns and long guns are fired. So, when gun use is misrepresented on the small or large screens, lots of head-shaking occurs and outright laughter echoes across the county.

Tom Rizzo, specializing in Western fact and fiction during the 1800s, and occasional contributor to Kerrian’s Notebook, recently published an article featuring the viewpoints of famous gunfighters of the Old West. He graciously agreed to share that fascinating article with us.  

“Gunmen on Gunfighting”
– Accuracy is Final –

By Guest Writer Tom Rizzo

Most Old West gunmen—law keepers and lawbreakers—would agree that accuracy trumped speed in gunfighting.

WYATT EARP

Legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, who spent several decades on the American frontier, formed strong opinions and observations about gunfighting.

Earp emphasized accuracy over speed and favored a deliberate, slow shot in a high-stress, rapid situation.

_______

BAT MASTERSON

Bat Masterson, Earp’s close friend, developed his own precise ranking of survival skills. At the top of the list was mental focus, the ability to stay cool and make split-second decisions, especially while being shot at.

Masterson also prioritized deliberation, accuracy, and speed.

_______

WILD BILL HICKOK

Wild Bill Hickok’s advice centered on the psychological and mechanical reality of combat. He also emphasized accuracy, emphasizing that a rushed shot was a fatal mistake.

“Take your time,” advised Hickok. Rushing, he said, leads to missing, “which only gives your opponent more time to aim and kill you.”

Hickok also believed in being bold, decisive, and aggressive. He was also a master of knowing the effective range of his pistols, famously killing Dave Tutt from roughly 75 yards away—a distance most gunmen wouldn’t even attempt with a revolver. 

_______

JOHN WESLEY HARDIN

John Wesley Hardin, for the most part, led a more violent life than Earp, Masterson, and Hickock. He focused on preparation and technical advantages.

Above all, Hardin relied on accuracy. Witnesses often told of Hardin shooting others through the eye, in the head, or in the center of the body.

Hardin, like Hickok, also possessed an acute awareness of the range of pistol fire. Hardin preferred close-quarters gunfights to long-range exchanges.

          Hardin preferred carrying multiple weapons, including famously sewing holders into his vest with the butts pointing inward for a faster “cross-draw.”

_______

Legendary lawman Wyatt Earp mocked the image of two men standing in the middle of the street, a gun in each hand, held close to their hips, “both spitting smoke together.” He described it as nothing more than “the picture of a fool, or a fake.”  

He once told author Stuart N. Lake that those who saw themselves as “two-gun men” never fired both guns at the same time.

“Some men could shoot equally well with either hand and in a gunplay might alternate their fire; others exhausted the loads from the gun on the right or the left . . . then shifted the reserve weapon to the natural shooting hand . . . “

According to Earp, “such a move—the border shift—could be made faster than the eye could follow by a top-notch gun-thrower, but if the man were as good as that, the shift would seldom be required.”

Earp expressed contempt for the idea that anyone would attempt to bluff another person with a gun. “When a gunfighter reached for his forty-five, every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting as speedily and as accurately as possible, to making his first shot the last of the fight.

“He had to think of his gun solely as something with which to kill another before he himself could be killed.”

         He also spoke of notches on guns. “I never knew a man who amounted to anything to notch his gun with credits, as they were called, for men he had killed,” said Earp.

“Outlaws, gunmen of the wild crew who killed for the sake of brag, followed this custom. I have worked with most of the noted peace officers …  (who) have handled their weapons many times, but never knew any of them to carry a notched gun.”

(Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal) is available in paperback and as an audio program.)

         While some people celebrated the fast draw, real Old West gunmen relied on deception, superior firepower, and a cold calculation of odds. They chose weapons based on reliability and “stopping power,” and often abandoned the revolver when things got serious. 

A lawman’s weapon of choice, for the most part, was the shotgun, especially for close-range survival.

Others preferred the Winchester Model 1873, often referred to as The Gun that Won the West, because it often used the same .44-40 cartridges as a gunman’s revolver, simplifying ammunition needs.

Outlaw Jesse James favored the S&W Schofield. Its “top-break” design allowed a rider to eject all empty shells and reload much faster than a standard Colt. 

_______

The key to surviving the life of a gunman often depended on not taking unnecessary risks and avoiding face-to-face confrontations. Gunfights were terrifying. Fair fights were rare. A gunman’s goal was to “get the drop” on an opponent—a concept that resulted in something akin to murder or assassination rather than a duel.

-0-
Many thanks for sharing, Tom!  🙂

“A passion for 19th century American history, Tom’s novels include elements of historical fact. His writing journey has taken him from radio and television news reporting to The Associated Press, where he worked as a correspondent, followed by several years in advertising and public relations.”

Please visit the informative and entertaining tomrizzo.com for more information about Tom, his work, and the Old West.

 

Order: “Last Stand at Bitter Creek”

 

 

 

 

Guest Writer, Tom Rizzo “Gunmen on Gunfighting” Read More »

Visiting Detective Quinn Sterling “Murder in Craven County”

Our recent travels took us to the Low Country of the Carolinas – Craven County, South Carolina, to be exact. It’s common knowledge that Low Country seafood is straight up delicious, but we had not realized that pecans are a fairly big deal there as well.

 

We drove around a bit, exploring the area, and after one long stretch of fencing, passed a large gated entrance to a grove of pecan trees: STERLING BANKS. Sadly, it was closed to the public. Oh, well, no pecan grove tour or pecan store for us. But, dessert centered mind that I have, I now had a yen for pecan pie, or cobbler, or butter pecan ice cream. Sheila mentioned that she was suddenly hungry, so the search was on for a place to eat.

 

Do you like diners? Or pubs? Or bars? We definitely do. Turns out that Craven County is home to Jackson Hole, diner by day, and pub/bar by night. We pulled into the nearly full parking lot, always a good indication mid-week that the food is good. The waitress seated us near the back and we checked out the menu. The usual diner fare of meatloaf, burgers, fries, shakes, and …. Bingo! Pecan desserts of every kind I’d ever heard of and some I hadn’t. I grinned when the waitress returned to get our order. I tapped on the dessert section, then asked if the pecans came from the grove up the road.

 

“Yes, sir. Fresh as yesterday’s crop.” She smiled and turned a bit to point with her pencil at a woman seated a couple of booths away. “She’s the new owner of the farm. Quinn Sterling.”

 

This trip just got even more interesting. You know how Sheila and I keep running into detectives on the road? I couldn’t resist. “She doesn’t happen to be a detective, does she?” laughing as I said it.

 

Talk about jaws dropping. With hands on both hips, the waitress gaped and said, “How could you possibly know that?”

 

Both Sheila and I nearly sprayed her with the sweet tea we had been drinking. “Wild guess! Plus, I’m law enforcement – on medical leave – and I can usually spot people in my line of work.”

 

“Technically, she’s a P.I., but would you like to meet her? Sometimes she meets clients right in  that booth at night, but she’s only here for lunch today.”

 

The waitress went over to Sterling and they exchanged whispers and glances at us. Then the waitress passed along an invitation for us to join the pecan farm owner/P.I. We introduced ourselves and settled into the large leather covered booth, more than ready to hear her story.

 

“Quinn Sterling is a lanky, towering red-head, and heiress to Craven County’s 3,000-acre pecan enterprise, Sterling Banks . . . the last heir of the oldest family of the oldest county in the state of South Carolina . . . and a private investigator. She wouldn’t have been either if someone hadn’t murdered her father.

 

She never envisioned becoming a PI. As a teen, she and her childhood friend, Tyson, imagined working as deputies for her sheriff uncle, solving fictitious crime amongst the pecan groves, sometimes with burlap capes, sometimes with stick guns, using the nuts as bullets. Then for a year out of high school, they fulfilled their dreams by joining the sheriff’s office, with grand aspirations of keeping the county free of sordid characters. But her father, Graham, had bigger plans for his daughter, and pushed her to college where she held dual majors of business and criminal justice, the latter to spite him. When the FBI snatched her up, Quinn thought she’d gone to heaven.

 

Then came the call. Someone killed her father and almost killed Jule, the farm’s caretaker and mother-figure to Quinn. In the blur of funeral and the slow reality of inheriting the pecan enterprise, Quinn came face-to-face with a new reality. Her uncle admitted he couldn’t find the murderer, had no idea whom to suspect, and Quinn was suddenly running the farm. Unable to let loose of her father’s unsolved murder, Quinn left the Bureau to manage Sterling Banks, doing PI work on the side to scratch that itch.

 

Six years after Graham’s death, the murder remained a mystery, Quinn’s relationship with her uncle a raw sore. Then a fellow PI was found murdered in Craven County, and the daughter of a Charleston real estate mogul hired her to take his place hunting for her missing beau.

 

Nobody was who they appeared to be, but Craven is Quinn’s county, and with an inept uncle at the helm, Quinn felt the responsibility was hers to solve the case. But when the case crossed onto Sterling Banks, it sucked in both of her childhood friends, Deputy Tyson Jackson and Jules’ son Jonah Proveaux, the current pecan farm caretaker. Quinn drew deeply upon her legacy and her training, to dig into crimes current and past, sometimes capitalizing on her uncle and the financial, historical, and impressive power of the Sterling Banks name to discover why people had been Murdered in Craven.

In another case, Quinn learned just how toxic school board politics could be, when she was hired by a board member to deal with domestic issues, and dealings with the Board got nasty. An impromptu drop-in at a board meeting threw Quinn for a loop when she found Sterling Banks’ foreman, Jonah Proveaux, battling against them over land for an elementary school. Land of an 80-year-old neighbor that adjoined Quinn’s farm.

 

Politics quickly turned to greed, greed to arson, and arson to murder, with family pitted against family, neighbor against neighbor, as property Burned in Craven. When violence escalated against her and her own, Quinn decided she knew more than the law when it came to finding answers and making people pay, and she took actions accordingly. The county turned divisive over how much development was good development, and how much is plain crooked and deadly.”

 

Sheila and I sat riveted to our seats long after the last bite of pie and ice cream disappeared. What stories that woman could tell!

 

But, to find out who did what to whom and why, you’ll have to read the books.  😉

“Murdered in Craven” and “Burned in Craven” are out now and “Craven County Line” launched in October, 2025. Many thanks to Hope for visiting us and giving us a sneak peek into the series!
Order here.

 

    Order here.

 

 

Order here.

Hope Clark

The Carolina Slade Mysteries, Bell Bridge Books
The Edisto Island Mysteries, Bell Bridge Books www.chopeclark.com
-and-
Editor, FundsforWriters, www.fundsforwriters.com

Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers

 


*All photos courtesy of C. Hope Clark

 

 

Visiting Detective Quinn Sterling “Murder in Craven County” Read More »

Scroll to Top