The Surest Poison's Jaz LeMieux Talks

The Surest Poison's Jaz LeMieux Talks

The Surest Poison, first book in the Sid Chance PI series, involves Sid’s efforts to locate the man responsible for a toxic chemical dump behind a plant near a small town west of Nashville. I wrote this for another blog shortly after the book came out. I think it's still just as relevant now, particularly if you're new to the series. In The Surest Poison, the current owner of the toxic dump area faces the costly cleanup of the mess caused by a previous occupant years ago. Three seemingly unrelated murders occur as Sid is tailed and threatened. When his part-time associate, Jasmine LeMieux, offers her help, she is awakened by an explosion behind her mansion. A lot of readers tell me they like Jaz better than Sid. She's quite a character. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Chester: Would you state your full name and occupation?
Jaz: What is this? Are you trying to play detective?

Chester: Just answer the question, please.
Jaz: Oh, all right. I’ll play along. My name is Jasmine LeMieux, a.k.a. Jaz, and I’m chairman of the board for Welcome Home Stores, a chain of truck stops headquartered in Nashville. I’m also a newly-minted—licensed, that is—private investigator.

Chester: And a very attractive one at age forty-five.
Jaz: Thanks, I guess, but you didn’t have to go into that age business. A lady needs to keep a few secrets.

Chester: Sorry about that. I hear you’re working with another local PI named Sid Chance. Is that correct?
Jaz: I wouldn’t call it working, exactly. It’s more like a lark to me. It’s a chance to play cop.

Chester: Weren’t you a Metro Nashville policewoman at one point?
Jaz: Until my mother died and my father was nearly killed in a car wreck. I quit the force to help nurse him back to health.

Chester: Your career choices up to that point caused a bit of consternation with your family, didn’t they?
Jaz: You’re being kind. Actually, I was kicked out of the family. My mother was a snobbish Southern Belle. She went ballistic when I dropped out of college and joined the Air Force. I was young at the time and quite determined. I had been a star point guard on the basketball team. When they brought in a new coach who berated my style of play, I got mad and quit. In the Air Force I was assigned to the Security Police under a sergeant who was a former Golden Gloves champion. He worked out regularly with me in the gym. When I left the service, he offered to train me as a boxer. I went professional, and my mother erased my name from the family ledger.

Chester: Didn’t you become a lightweight champion?
Jaz: I did, but it didn’t pay enough to live on. That’s why I became a cop.

Chester: From the looks of this French Colonial mansion you live in, I’d say you weren’t hurting for money now.
Jaz: I’m doing okay. My dad came to Nashville as an ambitious young French Canadian. He built Welcome Home Stores into a lucrative business. When he regained his health after the accident, he asked me to come to work for him. I went back to school and got a computer science degree, plus an MBA. He left me controlling interest in the business when he died.

Chester: How do you find time to play cop, as you call it?
Jaz: I keep close tabs on the company, but I’m not involved in day-to-day operations.

Chester: Weren’t you responsible for getting Sid Chance in the PI business?
Jaz: I was looking for somebody to run an investigation for Welcome Home Stores, and a mutual friend told me about Sid. He had a wealth of experience in law enforcement but got shafted by small town politics. He’d run off to a cabin the woods and was playing hermit. I looked him up, talked him into coming back to take my company’s case. He did such a great job with it that I offered to help him get into the PI business.

Chester: Did you have anything to do with Sid’s taking on this toxic chemical pollution case?
Jaz: I recommended him to a lawyer who does work for my company.

Chester: It sounds like you think pretty highly of Mr. Sidney Chance. True?
Jaz: If you mean do I think he’s one very sharp detective, quite true. He’s also one gorgeous hunk of a man, a little rough around the edges, but honest as the day is long. He’s totally devoid of pretense, someone you can always count on to come through for you.

Chester: In addition to your helping with Sid’s case, he got pretty heavily involved with your problem at home, didn’t he?
Jaz: Yes, there’s a dear couple who lives with me. They’ve been family employees since I was a kid. When their grandson got into trouble, Sid came to the rescue.

Chester: Do I detect something a little more than a purely business relationship?
Jaz: We’ve become very close friends. And this part is off the record. I wouldn’t object to pushing the relationship to a new level, but I think Sid needs to find some inner peace before he’s ready to break out of his shell. He needs to come to terms with his past.

Chester: Didn’t you introduce him to some good law enforcement contacts?
Jaz: You refer to the Miss Demeanor and Five Felons Poker Club. We meet irregularly with a Metro homicide detective, a patrol sergeant, a retired newspaper police reporter, and a former Criminal Court Judge. They’re great friends, and Sid has found they can be quite helpful.

Chester: And what’s in store for Jasmine LeMieux as a private investigator?
Jaz: That depends on Sid. I’m only interested in working cases where he needs my help. I have resources he doesn’t possess, including computer savvy to dig out information not easily accessible.

Chester: I’m sure he’ll find ample opportunity to use your services in the future. Thanks for talking with us, Miss LeMieux. I wish you much success.
Jaz: Hey, speaking of which, you won’t mind if I succeeded in selling a few books, would you?

I guess I could use her help as well as anybody else's. Anyway, that's all for now.

Good, Bad and Murderous - a look ahead

A murderer turns good, a cop turns bad, a remorseless assassin turns on a man tracking him down. That in brief is Good, Bad and Murderous, the second Sid Chance mystery/thriller. It starts with a young black man getting out of prison at twenty-five for a murder committed at age twelve. When he's accused of another homicide, his grandmother hires PI Sid Chance to find the real killer. Sid's sometimes-associate Jaz LeMieux helps out on the case, and things get dicey when a woman who accused her of making racially disparaging remarks turns up dead. Do a pair of homicide detectives have an agenda of their own? Sid must navigate a maze of lawlessness involving drugs and Medicare fraud and contract murder that leaves him and Jaz in mortal peril.

That's the plot blurb for the new Sid Chance book that's nearing completion. When I started working on the plot, I decided to deal with Medicare fraud. I had seen a piece on CBS about FBI agents in Miami hitting store front operations that bill Medicare for thousands of dollars for durable medical equipment, then disappear. I did a lot of research on the subject and learned that new regulations provided tighter requirements for firms that  bill Medicare. However, some scammers still get around them, as my fictional company does.

Starting the story with a young black man being charged again with murder came out of a newspaper's coverage of what happens to child killers. The focus of the stories was on Nashville's youngest murderer, who had  been out of prison a couple of years after spending most of his life behind bars. I based my character on his experience. He had shot a man during a late night drug sale while he was twelve years old. Despite his age, he was tried in Criminal Court as an adult and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Efforts have been under way to have such juveniles go to Juvenile Court and serve their sentences in a correction program designed for youths.

As with the young man in the newspaper stories, my character came out of prison determined to change his life and become a productive citizen. However, a month or so after the newspaper article, the real former prisoner wound  up in jail for beating up a girl friend. My guy is more reliable.

Jaz LeMieux became a popular character with readers of the first book, The Surest Poison. She's a fun character to write, a young woman who overcame the odds and took over as board chairman of a national chain of travel centers. To give her a bit of a problem with this story, I had her accused of making racially disparaging remarks to a black company employee. When the woman is found dead, the tension ratchets up.

You'll have to read the book (hopefully it'll be out early this fall) to find out what else happens. I should have a cover to show shortly. Stay turned.

Creating Secondary Characters

Our main characters, the folks who are in charge of the story, have elaborate backgrounds that we bring out in various ways. They are described as they move through the pages, and we learn about relatives and friends, places they've studied, jobs they held, all sorts of interesting facts as the story calls for them. We insert a lot of this "backstory" in small doses to avoid slowing the pace.

But what about secondary characters? They can be just as crucial to the story, depending on the roles they play. So how much background should they have? I don't have rules for writing. That sounds too inflexible. But I have a modus operandi, to use a good crime-speak term, that I follow with below-the-top-tier characters.


a. Use some sort of physical description, not necessarily any of the usual height, weight, eye or hair color. Here's one I used for lawyer Arnie Bailey in the first Sid Chance book: "Bailey launched his short, chubby body through the door like a well-dressed groundhog storming out of hibernation."


b. Provide some background pertinent to the story. In A Sporting Murder, which involves a basketball franchise, I used this bit for Greg McKenzie's friend, Sam Gannon: "He grew up in a rural area south of Tulsa and met Wilma at the University of Oklahoma, where he played basketball."


c. Describe their relationship with one of the main characters. Sam Gannon's wife, Wilma, is the best friend of Greg McKenzie's wife, Jill. Here's a spot where I gave a little comparison of the two women: "The daughter of one-time missionaries to China, Wilma liked to say Jill was born with a silver spoon in her mouth while she arrived with wooden chopsticks."


d. If possible, show how they think, how their opinions differ or mirror those of the protagonists. Here's an example from The Surest Poison, where Sid reflects on his friend Patrol Sgt. Wick Stanley: "Without a feature unique enough to stand out in a crowd, he would have made a great undercover man, Sid thought. Wick had no interest in detective work, though. He liked to be out on the street, dealing with the rough and tumble of everyday life."


Walk-on characters who fill minor roles in the story need less description. When Greg goes to a delivery service to find out who sent him a bottle of Scotch laced with arsenic, I described the man he talked to this way: "An older man with an abundant white beard that made him resemble a character out of a nursery rhyme greeted us from behind the counter." The man, who had only three lines of dialogue, was described otherwise as squinting through large, round glasses.


As I said, these should not be taken as rules, just the way one mystery writer does the job. Other opinions may differ.

Cheap Sells Better

If you sell your ebook for $1.99, will the world of readers beat a path to your door? I've decided to find out. I reduced the price of The Surest Poison on Smashwords to the magic number. If you're not familiar with Smashwords, it's a website where  you can buy ebooks in various formats. They include .mobi for the Kindle, LRF for the Sony Reader, PDB for Palm reading devices, Epub for Stanza readers and others, HTML and JavaScript for online reading, PDF and RTF for downloads to computers.

You may be familiar with Joe Konrath, the author of the Jack Daniel mystery series, featuring a Chicago female cop. Joe is a promoter par excellence. He has a blog where he talks about book promotion. He contends that with books "cheap sells better." He's done a fabulous job selling his books for the Kindle on Amazon. Some people contend that his success results from the way he has promoted his name. He counters with this:

"When Grand Central released AFRAID as an ebook, they priced it at $1.99 for the first month. Keep in mind that Afraid was written by my pen name, Jack Kilborn, who had no built in fan base. In one month, Afraid sold 10,253 ebooks. Then, in May, they raised the price. Since then, it has sold only 3720 copies. If this were a name-recognition thing, the ebook would have continued to sell well. After all, the bestseller lists are filled with high-priced ebooks by name authors."

In another blog, Joe says his publisher sells about as many ebooks as print books, although statistically ebook sales currently represent only about 10 percent of total book sales. He clearly sees electronic publishing as the wave of the future. You can check out some of his thoughts at this link

His newest book on the blogsite is The Newbie's Guide to Publishing, which sells for for the Kindle at $2.99. He bills it as "over 360,000 words of advice." According to Joe, the 1100-page book is too large for a print copy. And if you don't want to spend the $2.99 for your very own ebook, you can download it to your computer for free at Joe's website.

Let's forget Joe for a moment. This is my little experiment with cut-rate bookselling. At this LINK  you can buy The Surest Poison for only $1.99. And HERE is the Smashwords page for the book, where you can read up to 30 percent for free. (If you read that much, you surely won't be able to wait to find out how it ends.) Tell all your friends and neighbors. This is scientific research, folks. Let's see what the month of May will bring. Heck, I may dance around the Maypole tomorrow if things look good.

Jazzing up Miss LeMieux

When I began working on the book that eventually became The Surest Poison, I wanted my PI, Sid Chance, to have a female sidekick. I found it advisable to change some of Sid's characteristics as I got into the story, and the lady who became his part-time associate underwent a bit of a metamorphosis as well.

Jasmine LeMieux turned out to be an interesting character who has been well liked by readers. My characters develop the same way as my stories. I have a vague notion about them when I begin, but they come to life with all their virtues and foibles as I start writing about them.

When the story begins, you learn quickly that Jaz is wealthy. She inherited controlling interest and serves as board chairman for a nationwide chain of truck stops (think Love's, Pilot, or Flying J) headquartered in Nashville. She has a bit of a checkered background brought on by falling out of favor with the family after she quit school to join the Air Force.

I wanted her to be attractive (pretty face and shapely figure) but tough. She had been a star basketball player in college and served in the Security Police under a sergeant who had been a Golden Gloves champion. He became her trainer when she went into women's professional boxing after her discharge. Although reaching the pinnacle of that profession, she soon realized that unlike the male sport, women's boxing didn't pay enough to live on. (That was an interesting point I learned while researching the book.) That's when she got a job as a Metro Nashville policewoman.

Although she really enjoyed it, she gave up police work to help nurse her father back to health after a serious accident. Her aristocratic mother, the chief architect of her banishment, had died earlier. Jaques LeMieux, a French Canadian import, taught her the ropes of the business, and she went back to school to earn two degrees.

Jaz still works out to keep in shape and spends stime at the range occasionally to maintain her firearms proficiency. Oh, and that house up at the top of the blog? LeMieux built a French Colonial mansion in a posh Nashville suburb, where Jaz still lives. I modeled her home after this one I found by Googling "French Colonial mansion."

She still retains a couple, now in their seventies, who had worked for the family since she was a girl. They lived in a small guest house behind the mansion until she convinced them that they should move into the big house. You'll have to read the book to find out how that fits into the story.

As for Jaz, she fits the plot like a stylish glove. And she'll continue to emerge in Book 2.

The marvels of chitchat

I got a reminder today of how a little chitchat can go a long way when selling books. I was doing a signing at one of my favorite Barnes & Noble stores (the third time in the past six months). You know it's a favorite when the manager tells you on leaving, "Come back anytime you'd like."

This store has two entrances. My wife stands at one to hand out my little promo folder, while I take care of the other entrance from my table near the door. Giving my usual spiel, I asked this woman if she read mysteries. She said she wasn't a mystery reader but stopped at my table to chat after learning I was a local author. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned going to school in Donelson, a Nashville suburb across the county from my home.

I knew Chester LaFever, a high school classmate of mine back in the early forties, had one been on the Donelson High School faculty. When I asked about him, she smiled and replied that he was assistant principal when she was there. She wound up taking one of my folders with her to the cafe. A little while later, she came back with the comment, "They really sound interesting." She bought both books I had on the table.

Only a couple of people came by who had heard of me. One had bought an earlier book and promply picked up the latest. But chatting with others netted four people who bought both books.

A man with a small girl was about to pass me by when I stopped him with my usual question. He said he didn't read mysteries, but his wife did. He asked which of the books would be better for a woman. I told him the Greg McKenzie book dealt with a man and his wife who were private investigators. He looked at his daughter and said, "I'll bet she'd like that one." I signed it to her, and he went off smiling with the comment, "Our anniversary is coming up."

Traffic was slow at times, but it was a pretty good day. We sold all the copies of The Surest Poison and more than half of The Marathon Murders, a total of 20 books. Bottom line--chitcht sells.

Making the news pays off

This article appeared in last week’s issue of the I-24 Examiner, a weekly tabloid newspaper in Cheatham County, Tennessee (the county seat is Ashland City):

Cheatham County
Public Library Hosts
Nashville Author
Chester Campbell
September 5

Years after a dangerous chemical is dumped behind a small plant outside Ashland City, its toxic effects ravage the small community below the hillside location. Placing the blame for what happens is the plot of The Surest Poison, a new mystery novel by Nashville author Chester Campbell.

The Cheatham County Public Library will host Campbell for a book signing on Saturday, September 5, from noon to 3 p.m.

The Surest Poison is the first book in the Sid Chance Mystery Series. Chance is a Nashville private investigator, formerly a Green Beret in Vietnam, a National Park ranger and a small town police chief. It was just voted best book and received the Falchion Award at the 2009 Killer Nashville Mystery Conference.

The state comes after the plant owner to pay the enormous cleanup cost, but the pollution occurred before he bought the property. Chance is hired to find who was responsible since the original company disappeared a dozen years ago. The guilty party doesn’t want to be found, however, and three murders occur, one of them an Ashland City man, as Chance pursues the investigation.

The book features many Ashland City locations. The main characters visit the newspaper office, and a news story leads to one of the main clues in solving the mystery.

The Surest Poison was published in April 2009 by Night Shadows Press. Campbell has also written four books in the Greg McKenzie Mystery Series, set mostly around Nashville. The books include The Marathon Murders, Deadly Illusions, Designed to Kill and Secret of the Scroll. They will also be available for purchase at the library signing.

Campbell is a former Nashville newspaper reporter, magazine editor, advertising and public relations writer. He retired as executive vice president of the Tennessee Association of Life Underwriters.

A portion of the day’s sales will be donated to the Friends of the Library. For further information, contact Library Director Brooke Mulligan.

End of story

The signing event turned out quite well. The newspaper story brought in several people, including one woman who had the clipping stuck in her pocket. The interesting part is that the newspaper printed the story word-for-word as I submitted it, right down to the headline (and the misspelling of the library director's name, which should have been Mullican). You may have heard this before and wondered, but here's living proof--small newspapers love to get ready-to-print copy. If you can write a decent news story, send it in. Note I began with the chemical pollution angle, a familiar subject these days.

If you're doing a small town signing, take advantage of the opportunity for a news story. It can pay off.

Library event stirs excitement

Don't you just love it when people get excited about a coming event? The toxic chemical spill that's the key plot point in The Surest Poison takes place behind a small plant just outside Ashland City, the seat of Cheatham County, just to the west of Nashville. I contacted the Cheatham County Library director a few weeks ago and asked if she would be interested in my doing a book signing there. She thought it was a great idea. We set it up for Saturday, September 5.

In the book, I had PI Sid Chance and his part-time associate, Jaz LeMieux, visit the newspaper in Ashland City to seek the editor's help. A story he runs in the paper provides one of the key clues to solving a murder. When I spoke to Brooke Mullican, the librarian, I asked if she had any contacts at the newspaper. She said the editor was a friend. I sent her a news story about the signing, mentioning the newspaper's appearance in the book.

I received an email today saying she had sent the story to both newspapers. Turns out there's another one in a nearby small town that has a larger county-wide circulation. She's also meeting with the Ashland City editor tomorrow. She asked me to send some bookmarks they can begin handing out to library patrons next week.

I don't do much public speaking any longer because of a vocal chord problem, but I enjoy talking with people about my books at signings. I haven't done many pure signings at libraries, but the few I've done have gone well. The Southwest Branch Library at Pensacola, FL is a favorite. I did signings there for each of my books until this year. We curtailed our travel because of the economy and gas prices. I'm looking forward to going there next year, however. The Friends of the Library leaders there are great.

One of the fun parts of being an author is visiting locations where they generate a lot of enthusiasm over your appearance. The trip to Ashland City should be a delight.

The Silver Falchion Award

I spent last weekend at Killer Nashville, the mystery conference co-sponsored by chapters of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, in cooperation with American Blackguard Film & Television and Clay Stafford, the originator. It was large enough to provide something for everybody, but small enough that most of the participants got to know each other.

The highlight of the event for me was the Saturday night dinner, where various awards were presented. One of them was The Silver Falchion Award, for the best book by an author attending the conference. It was voted on by the registrants. A lot of great books were nominated, so I didn’t count on being too successful. Lo and behold, the winner was announced as:

Chester Campbell, for The Surest Poison


The plaque displayed here is not the real one. The ballots weren’t counted until five o’clock that afternoon. After receiving the award, I had to give it back so my name could be engraved on it. Photos were made of the event, but I haven’t received one yet.

Another award was presented to my good friend and writers group colleague Beth Terrell, who also blogs with me at Murderous Musings. Beth received the Magnolia Award from the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It is presented annually to a member who has demonstrated outstanding dedication and service to the chapter. Beth has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help plan and coordinate programs for Killer Nashville.

The program featured a great mix of talks and panels covering four tracks—Writing, Marketing, Fans, and Forensics. Retired detective Lee Lofland gave several presentations on police procedures. Former ATF Agent Sheila Stephens and three Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents added to the insider information picture. A large array of published authors discussed a variety of writing and promotion topics. Two literary agents and an editor listened to pitches from writers looking for representation.

Another great feature was TBI Special Agent Dan Royse's crime scene, featuring a murder in the hotel boiler room. Registrants had the opportunity to visit the scene, check out all the forensic evidence, and complete a report identifying the murderer and how it happened. Lee Lofland said it was the most realistic crime scene he had encountered.


Panelists from left to right are Allan Ansorge, Stacy Allen, Jennie Bentley, Chester Campbell.

I served as moderator for two panels, one on Creating Depth Through Character Relationships, the other on A Writer’s Guide to Building Buzz. The panels ran nearly an hour and a half, giving plenty of time to cover the subjects.

A major feature of the conference was two sessions on Saturday afternoon that involved an interview and a solo presentation by J.A. Jance, author of 15 J.P. Beaumont books, 8 Joanna Brady books and 2 standalone thrillers. She did a great job. Then when she was presented her Killer Nashville Guitar as Guest of Honor, she sang a country song she’d written.

I highly recommend everyone attend Killer Nashville in 2010. It’s August 20-22 at the Cool Springs Marriott. See you there.

How to make big money with your book

I’ve found the answer to how to make big money off your book. When I read about it, I said to myself it’s so simple why didn’t I think of that? The story was in the London Telegraph last week. Taschen America, the U.S. affiliate of Taschen GmbH in Germany, has a new book out titled MoonFire, the Epic Journey of Apollo 11 that sells for a mere $1,000 per copy.

You wouldn’t need to sell a bunch to make a down payment on a nice repossessed mansion. Tell your friends if they want one, they’d better not tarry. The publisher is only printing 1969 (that’s the year of the moon landing). But the coup de grace lies in the last 12 copies. All the books are numbered, of course, and numbers 1958 through 1969 are described with this note:

“Each copy comes with a unique specimen of lunar rock, ranging in weight from a slice of the moon at 0.4 grams to 30.34 grams, one of the largest lunar meteorites ever found on Earth.”

These will cost an astronomical figure (pun intended) that hasn’t been revealed. According to the Telegraph story, "It will be thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars," Creed Poulson, the firm's public relations manager, told The Times.

The book itself, including the “cheaper” version, includes Norman Mailer’s three-part Life magazine depiction of the Apollo 11 mission, along with numerous photos from Life and NASA. The boxed edition comes with a Plexiglas-framed copy of the cover photo showing Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. It is signed by the retired astronaut, who recently suggested NASA skip planning another moon trip and head on to Mars.

Okay, you ask, how do you relate all this to your own situation? Good question. As those of you familiar with The Surest Poison (April 2009, Night Shadows Press) know, the book involves the toxic effects of an illegal dump of trichloroethylene behind a small plant outside Ashland City, Tennessee. I plan to create a limited commemorative edition that will come with a small vial of the chemical, better known as TCE, which you can place on the bookshelf or pour in your water supply to see what happens.

The numbered volume will include retired corporate attorney Ben Small’s exciting description of TCE cases he’s been involved in, and real-life Private Investigator Norma Mott Tillman’s breath-taking story of the actual TCE-dumping case that inspired my book. And I’m not greedy. It’ll sell for a mere $500. I can print 2009 (the year of publication), though, so the total will be a tidy $1,004,500. The printing and boxing cost should run somewhat less than that, so I’ll make out okay.

Don’t worry, I’ll give you plenty of advance notice on when to order your copy. Meanwhile, if you haven’t read the original book, that’s your first assignment.

Back to School (back to mystery)

The other day I heard a commentator say that the back-to-school shopping season was second to Christmas for retailers. As we’re responsible for a grandson, I can see why. His sixth grade school supply list runs a full page—notebooks, three-ring binders, folders, ruled paper, No. 2 pencils, erasable pens (whoever heard of such in years past), glue sticks, liquid soap, ad infinitum. He also needs a new roll-around backpack. The old one came apart at the end of school (I think they’re designed with that in mind).

He wants to buy a laptop, which he insists everybody in his class has. I believe that as much as I believe they all have a motorbike and a swimming pool. Anyway, we gave him $100 toward a laptop on his birthday, and he’s agreed to pay the rest out of his savings. We’ll get this and everything else we can find when Tennessee has a sales tax holiday next weekend. It should pack the malls with moms and dads and other fortunate (it says here) grandparents.

School kids need new shoes, shirts, pants, jackets, sweaters. Since grandson goes to a private school, we have to buy special items like shirts with the school logo emblazoned on them. Then there are miscellaneous items like lunchboxes, which aren’t necessarily boxes anymore.

Where’s Obama when you need him? We could use a little back-to-school stimulus. Of course, the stores will love it. But as a mystery writer, how do I get in on this retail bonanza?

We received an email a couple of days ago (I don’t think you can have a kid in school without email) with a 2009-2010 Summer Reading list. That’s right, Summer. After all, it’s only ten months till that magic time rolls around again. And guess what’s first on the list for Seventh Graders?

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For Eleventh Graders, the book is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Okay, they’re classics, but they’re mysteries. If these high schoolers learn to read mysteries, someday they might pick up one of mine. Meanwhile, their parents need to hold back a little of that back-to-school cash to spend at the bookstore on The Surest Poison. That'll support the local economy.

How to develop a series character

When I started writing The Surest Poison, I set up my protagonist, Sid Chance, as a former Metro Nashville cop who got shot in the line of duty and, after recovering, took a job as police chief in a small town south of Nashville. I had him divorced by a wife who couldn’t take the stress of wondering if her husband would survive the next shift.

After I was a few chapters into the manuscript, one of my critique group members made a remark that struck a nerve. She said she was tired of reading about all the PIs who were sama-samo wounded ex-cops pining over a lost love.

Back to the drawing board. I looked at the plot, which involved a toxic chemical spill behind a plant in a rural area. What kind of background would make a guy really concerned about such a situation? I also needed him to be trained in law enforcement so he would qualify for the police chief job. In doing research for Designed to Kill, my second Greg McKenzie mystery, I had interviewed a ranger at the Gulf Islands National Seashore on Perdido Key, FL and knew they were graduates of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center near Brunswick, GA.

I had my answer. Sid Chance became a veteran National Park Service ranger who was wounded in the line of duty after 18 years on the job. He became a rugged outdoorsman who had earlier trained in living off the land as an Army Special Forces soldier. I did away with the wife and left him a lifelong bachelor.

As the story developed, a key part of the plot involved his experiences as chief of police in the fictional town of Lewisville, TN. I covered that facet of his background extensively. His role as a Green Beret in Vietnam merited a few mentions, with one relevant incident recounted. Sid’s ranger job provided only a couple of peripheral details, mainly as motivation for his intense interest in the pollution case.

In the next book I will develop his background as a National Park ranger as part of the plot. All I know at this point is that he was shot while working on an inter-agency drug operation. Since he had a reputation as something of a maverick, some of the higher ups took advantage of the opportunity to rule him unfit for duty because of the injury. That was when he applied for the police chief job. Before I get to that, I need to make a journey to Gatlinburg and interview a ranger at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park headquarters.

That’s how I develop characters in a series. Each additional book provides opportunities to explore new facets of a character’s life, bring out experiences that helped shape how he or she approaches the world around them. It helps readers make those comments:

“I can’t wait for the next one to come out.”

City Paper review of The Surest Poison

Here's a review of The Surest Poison from The Nashville City Paper by Staff Writer Ron Wynn:

Nashville author Chester D. Campbell’s newest creation is private investigator Sid Chance, both a former police chief and a National Parks ranger. In The Surest Poison, Chance’s love for the outdoors and his knowledge of procedure prove advantageous when he decides to investigate a chemical dump located in a small rural community just west of Nashville.

Surely this is merely another cause of official neglect, and Chance figures it won’t be hard to track down either the person or corporation responsible for this environmental blight.

But Chance discovers that there’s much more to this case than just some after hours dumping. He’s soon right in the middle of what looks like a string of unrelated murders.

Besides having no suspects, Chance is being threatened and followed. He enlists an ally in another former cop, Jaz LeMieux, and her involvement immediately makes her a target. The duo must pool their resources, experience and contacts and trace this all the way back to the case that ended Chance’s previous career as a police chief.

In addition to including plenty of places and characters that savvy Music City readers will recognize and enjoy, Campbell’s crafted a mystery that seems easy to solve, but instead has plenty of twists and turns. Chance and LeMieux are smart investigators, but they find themselves facing a more organized and tough conspiracy than they thought.

He also uses the story to inform readers about some of the dangers regarding landfills and waste sites, a perennial environmental problem that plagues many small towns and poor communities across the nation.

Campbell has already won plenty of praise among mystery fans for his series about senior detectives Greg and Jill McKenzie. His newest character Sid Chance seems destined to generate the same kind of excitement and anticipation for future adventures thanks to the quality of The Surest Poison.

End of review

You can order the book from your local bookstore, Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.

Tale of a Launch Party

Stealing ideas is what writers do best. You’ve heard the old adage, there are no new plots under the sun, only variations of ones that have been around since some cave dweller learned to draw pictures on the wall. Well, I pilfered an idea from old friend Marilyn Meredith, who recently wrote about launching a book at her church.

A week ago Sunday, I did my formal launch party for The Surest Poison at City Road Chapel United Methodist Church in Madison, TN. Formal sounds a little too . . . formal. I wore no top hat and tails, but I did have a party cake with the book cover screen-printed in icing. This was my step-granddaughter’s idea. She and her mother handled the catering.

The only problem with a fancy cake like that is nobody wanted to cut the cover. So we ate off both ends and wound up taking the cover part home intact. We got even, though, and took it back to our Sunday School class last Sunday. It is now no more.

A launch party is something I’ve only tried with the last two books. Neither has been a big sales event. I haven’t had much luck in getting media notice. The Nashville City Paper ran a nice review but never mentioned the party. The major daily remained totally silent. I did manage to get notices in some of the online event calendars, but the only people besides church members who showed up were two fellow Sisters in Crime.

We had a nice group of friends on hand and chatted about my books and writing. One happy buyer sat to the side and made a good start at reading the book while his wife conversed with some of the others.

We sold a decent number of books, more than enough to pay for the cake and punch and cookies. I’m following up with three consecutive Saturdays of Barnes & Noble signings, so hopefully it will all wind up as a successful extended launch.

Maybe I’m not thinking big enough. The new book I’ve started working on, a fifth Greg McKenzie mystery, involves pro basketball and hockey, NBA and NHL. I could do a book launch on the ice at the Sommet Center, invite thousands of fans who normally cheer the Predators. I dunno. Somehow I think that might cost a bit more than the cake.

P.S. My blog tour for The Surest Poison ends Friday at Julia Buckley’s Mysterious Musings. All those who have left comments during the tour will be eligible for a drawing for (1) an autographed copy of The Surest Poison, and (2) the Grand Prize of all five of my books, including four Greg McKenzie mysteries.

And the winners are . . .

We've passed the mid-point in my blog book tour for The Surest Poison. It's time to draw names out of the hat from those who made comments on the various posts my hosts kindly put up for me.

First, a few statistics. During the eight stops on the tour, there has been a total of 124 comments on the blogs. Today's post is at There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room. I question whether I'm writing murder mysteries or mysteries about murder. Sound a bit obtuse? You'll have to read it to see the point.

Okay, you want to know who are the winners of autographed copies of The Surest Poison. We'll get to that in a minute. First here are the remaining stops on my tour:

Saturday, April 25 – Writers Plot – social issues
Monday, April 27 – Murder by 4 – using sub-plots
Tuesday, April 28 – Poe's Deadly Daughters – interview
Wednesday, April 29 – Acme Authors – Miss Demeanor and Five Felons Poker Club
Thursday, April 30 – Write First, Clean Later – multiple POV
Friday, May 1 – Mysterious Musings – Sid Chance (protag) interview

Okay, now let's open the envelope. What envelope? Sorry, this is a drawing. Okay, here it is, the first winner (drum roll):

Maryann Miller, who left a comment on Marilyn Meredith's blog

And the second winner:

Mark Troy, whose comment appeared on Helen Ginger's blog yesterday (you just sneaked in, Mark).

Congratulations to the winners, and remember, there's a final drawing on May 1. Good luck and keep those comments coming.

A day at the BookFest

I intended to put up a new post this morning but ran out of time last night and have been gone all day to the Southern Kentucky BookFest in Bowling Green. So let's talk about that and other such venues.

At the SoKyBookFest, which is how it's abbreviated at their website, 150 authors of all kinds of books, fiction, non-ficvtion, children's, whatever, were seated at rows of tables in the Sloan Convention Center. When we arrived for the 9:00 a.m. opening, our tables were crowded with books ordered by the local Barnes & Noble store. Across one end of the hall were larger tables for 20 Featured Headliners, including Kevin Clash, the man behind Elmo, and Jill Conner Browne, author of six Sweet Potato Queen books.

The marathon book signing session went on until 4:00 p.m. The crowd was decent but didn't seem as large as the last time I was there. I saw several buyers with armloads of books, but a frequent lament I heard was "I can't afford to buy much."

One woman told of being laid off from work last year and saving her pennies to pay her bills. Others said they saw lots of books they would like but had to pass them up.

My last two books, The Surest Poison and The Marathon Murders, were available at my table, a total of 30 books. One woman was a reader of the DorothyL listserve who said she had read about me there and had to get a book. Another had seen my books at the Kentucky Book Fair last November but failed to get one. Quite a few took bookmarks and will look for a book later, hopefully.

A woman who said she preferred to read a series in order marked down the first three Greg McKenzie books and said she would order them on-line. I sold 11 books, but I didn't feel bad when I saw the stacks of books left at tables across from mine.

All-in-all, it wasn't a bad day, though it certainly could have been better. Following my standard signing routine, I ignored the chair and stood behind my table all day. I like to look people eye-to-eye. Plus I can lean forward and converse with them better while standing. My gravelly voice doesn't carry far, making it difficult to be understood at times.

Sunday is my book launch party for The Surest Poison. It will be from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at my church, City Road Chapel United Methodist Church in Madison, TN. It'll be a real party atmosphere, complete with a cake bearing the book cover in icing. I'll post a picture of it.

I'll sit the whole time for the signing. You can do that with a captive audience.

Like to win copies of my books? Visit the sites I'm guest blogging during my Blog Book Tour through May 1. For where I'll be and details of the drawings, scroll down to my April 6 post Win Books on The Surest Poison tour.

Check out my book covers at the left side of the page and click one for more information, including where to buy, opening chapters, and reviews. And if there's a book fair or fest in your area, be sure to go. They're great for finding new books and authors.

"A top rate mystery" - Crimespree Magazine

If you're a subscriber to Crimespree Magazine or can get it at your local newsstand, check out the book review of The Surest Poison by the editor, Jon Jordan. Assuming you aren't lucky enough to have a copy, here is what it says:

"Chester Campbell’s latest, THE SUREST POISON introduces a new character, PI Sid Chance and his side kick Jaz LeMieux. Sid lives just outside Nashville and is a former Police Chief who wanted to just retire and get away from it all. His friend Jaz works her magic and talks him into taking a case and becoming a PI. With this book opening she has pulled some strings and gotten him another case. A local lawyer is representing a business owner in trouble with the authorities because of a chemical spill at his plant caused by the previous owners. Unfortunately the previous owners are more than a bit elusive. The further along Sid gets, the stranger things become and it soon becomes clear these are people who want their privacy. Something very hinky is going on.

"Chance is a great character, 59 years old, Viet Nam vet, ex cop and relentless. Campbell’s work here is his best yet and the book has a natural rhythm that moves the story along at a nice pace. The people who populate the book are realistic and nothing feels forced, its as if Campbell is just telling their story without embellishing, which I found refreshing. A top rate mystery by a gem of a writer."

What more can I say? Go here and buy the book?

Win Books on The Surest Poison tour

I’ve been absent the past few days working on the dreaded Form 1040. I’m back now, and just in time for the launch of The Surest Poison. The official release date is this Friday, but it’s already available here. I’m doing a Blog Book Tour from April 15 to May 1, skipping Sundays. Like God, I rest on the Sabbath. Well, maybe an afternoon nap.

I’m giving away books in two drawings during the tour. If you make a comment on one (or all) of these blogs, you’ll get one chance for each comment you leave. The drawings will be held at the mid-point, April 23, and the last day, May 1. In the first drawing, two winners will get copies of The Surest Poison. The final dip into the hat will bring up another two winners, one for a copy of the new book and the grand prize of all five of my mysteries, which includes four Greg McKenzie books.

To pique your interest, here is the tour schedule with date, blog link, and subject:


Wednesday, April 15 – Book Roast – book excerpt
Thursday, April 16 – Joanna Campbell Slan – Coming Out with The Surest Poison
Friday, April 17 – The Stilleto Gang – The Surest Poison's Jaz LeMieux Talks
Saturday, April 18 – Bob Sanchez – Make the Setting Come Alive
Monday, April 20 – Murderati – Cultivate Your Writing Style
Tuesday, April 21 – Silver Rush Mysteries – Writing the Private Eye Novel
Wednesday, April 22 – Marilyn Meredith's Musings – A Look at Dialogue
Thursday, April 23 – Straight from Hel – Electronic Rights to Books
Friday, April 24 – There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room – Is It a Murder Mystery?
Saturday, April 25 – Writers Plot – Keep the Mystery Free of Sermons
Monday, April 27 – Murder by 4 – Using Subplots in Mysteries
Tuesday, April 28 – Poe's Deadly Daughters – An Interview with Chester Campbell
Wednesday, April 29 – Acme Authors – Miss Demeanor and Five Felons Poker Club
Thursday, April 30 – Write First, Clean Later – How Many POVs Do You Need?
Friday, May 1 – Mysterious Musings – An Interview with Sid Chance

Get ready to follow along and learn all about the book and its characters and my views on writing. But don’t wait to buy the book hoping you’ll win one. If you’re a winner and already have the book, let me know and I’ll substitute another (or you can give, your winner as a gift to a friend).

What brings people to websites?

I check the stats for my website infrequently and then only glance at which pages are most read. When I took a look today at the month almost over, I found I was averaging about ninety unique visitors a day, which is no great shakes but not all that bad. That's 2700 people in a month.

What I found most intriguing, and makes me wonder about people on the internet, is the search term that appears most often by people who arrive at my site. Are you ready for this?

Charles Manson.

Yep, THE Charles Manson of Sharon Tate murder fame. Back in 2004 I was asked to write an article for Web Mystery Magazine. The editor suggested I take an old murder case and give it a new slant. After doing considerable research, I wrote "The Bizarre Case of Mass Murderer Charles Manson." My chief source was prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, which ranks as the publishing world's top-selling true crime book.

My article pointed out the bizarre aspects of the case and the trial, which took five weeks to seat a jury. It began on June 15, 1970, and the lawyers' summation lasted from Dec. 21 to Jan. 15. The article gives highlights of the murders and background on Manson and his lethal "family." They were sentenced to death, but the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty a year later. You can read the article here.

Scrolling down the long list of search terms that had brought people to my website proved quite fascinating. They included numerous descriptions of authors by state or sex, which no doubt led them to my Links page. One search term was "this is to be taken facetiously." That one probably landed on my F.A.Q.'s page (Facetiously Answered Questions).

Somebody apparently Googled "Meriwether Lewis was poisoned on the Natchez Trace." Why, I have no clue, but that speculation was mentioned in my new book, The Surest Poison. The longest search query, which appeared with "+" between each word, was this:

"advice someone setting out alone to visit an isolated area of sea or land before the trip."

To paraphrase Art Linkletter, "people ask the darndest things."

Getting ready to tour the blogs

I’d seen so many mentions about blog book tours, or virtual book tours as they were first known, that I decided late last year to do one for The Surest Poison, my new Sid Chance mystery coming out next month. It is all but nailed down with only one stop left to settle on, the final day of the tour.

The Surest Poison tour will run from April 15 through April 30, with two Sunday’s off. If God could rest on the Sabbath, I figure, so can I. I’ll be visiting fourteen different blogs during that time, writing about various subjects, at least tangentially related to the book. There will be interviews and lots of cool stuff.

As soon as I’ve confirmed that last date, I’ll give the schedule here with the places I plan to visit and the subjects of the blogs. To make it fun to follow, I will be giving away copies of the book to lucky people who leave comments on my posts.

Although the official pub date isn’t until April, the book is already available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. To check out some great reviews, go to The Surest Poison page on my website.

And don’t forget to watch for my tour. You’ll learn all sorts of interesting stuff about the story, the characters, and how it all came together. There will even be interviews with the main characters, Sid Chance and Jaz LeMieux. Stay tuned.