This Week At The Tiki Hut - Ryder Islington

This week at the Tiki Hut, we welcome mystery and suspense author Ryder Islington as she pops in during her blog tour! The full list of Ryder's blog tour stops can be found at LL Publications and Ryder's Blog.

A graduate of the University of California and former officer for a large sheriff’s department, RYDER ISLINGTON is now retired and doing what she loves: reading, writing, and gardening. She lives in Louisiana with her family, including a very large English Chocolate Lab, a very small Chinese pug, and a houseful of demanding cats. She can be contacted at RyderIslington@yahoo.com or visit her blog at http://ryderislington.wordpress.com/.


Writing Mystery and Crime

Mystery and crime are not mutually exclusive, but they are very different beasts. Mystery is all about keeping the truth from the reader until the right time while giving them plenty of truth, along with a few red herrings. I love a good mystery. The best advice I ever got regarding mystery was to make the truth of the matter so plain that the reader would be saying, “Naw, it can’t be that easy.” To do that, you have to make sure there is a logical explanation for why it can’t possibly be that easy. Supplying just enough information, and creating characters the readers trust and believe in, can really divert the truth. As readers, we want the good guys to win, the bad guys to suffer, and the truth to be our own truth.

Writing crime is all about making the reader understand what really happened to the victim, and the truth behind the criminal’s motivations. First, you have to understand the nature of the crime. Kidnapping may be defined differently in one state than in another, so you have to do your homework regarding the definition and elements of the crime you’ll be writing about. If you have characters who work in law enforcement, you have to learn some of the codes they use, which again, vary from state to state.

Then there is the victim. Who is she? Why was she there? Why was she chosen? What was she thinking? What did she go through? How many times does she get close to getting away? Does she even try, or is she too afraid to move?

And finally, the criminal. Is the kidnapper the father of the victim? Or a boyfriend? Or a crazed maniac looking for fast cash? Is he big enough to overpower the victim? Or did he have to compensate with a weapon? Is he a coward at heart? Was he once a good guy that had terrible things happen, things he couldn’t cope with? Is he smart enough to plan the crime, or does he have someone else pulling his strings?

I personally like to write about the psychology of the victim and criminal. I like to get into their heads and make the reader feel some compassion for the bad guy, and some negative feelings about the victim.

And then you have to decide about the gore factor. If you’re writing a cozy, the crime is over with and the scene scrubbed. But I like the gritty stuff, so when a young boy sticks a hunting knife into the gut of a pervert, I want the reader to feel the knife going in, the blood running over his fist. And when the boy smiles and says, “Ooo, warm. Velvety,” I want the reader’s face to scrunch up as if she’d just bitten into a dill pickle.

While revising Ultimate Justice, A Trey Fontaine Mystery, I kept returning to the gory scenes, upping the ante, spilling the guts, and then going to the psychological response to the gore, trying to make it disgusting but at the same time, believable. This is the stuff of real life. This is what officers all over the country face regularly. It’s not all tickets, and hauling drunks in to sleep it off. Every day there are murders, kidnappings, rapes and other violent crimes occurring. I’m hoping that reading my book will give you a glimpse into what can shape people into psychopaths, and how ‘normal’ the bad guy can seem.

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ULTIMATE JUSTICE by Ryder Islington

A Trey Fontaine Mystery

Special Agent Trey Fontaine has his hands full as he tries to juggle three different sets of cases in his hometown. While healing from a bullet wound, and on limited duty, he is charged with helping find out what's happening to young women who are disappearing without a trace. But that's just the beginning. Someone is beating and raping women in town, women who are related to his godfather, Detective Russell Coleman. And then the bodies of men start showing up, eviscerated. Are the crimes related? Or are has the town become a haven for all sorts of criminals?

Wile, Rocky, and Drew, three children from a violent home, take matters into their own hands and soon the small town of Raven Bayou, Louisiana is brimming with dead bodies. But the only victims are those whose background proves them to be deserving of such justice.

Can Special Agent Trey Fontaine stop the violence? Or will he only figure out the truth after someone he loves is dead?

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Anne Hamilton's Tiki Hut Winner

Thanks to all of you who stopped by to visit with our special guest Anne Hamilton as she talked about the inspiration for her new book A BLONDE BENGALI WIFE.

Congrats to Sandy B. - your name was drawn as our winner! Anne's publisher, LL Publications will be contacting you for your information - thanks for leaving your email address!

This Week's Special Guest Anne Hamilton

The Story of A Blonde Bengali Wife

There’s a torn billboard along the urban sprawl that links Zia International Airport with the dusty clamour of downtown Dhaka; it has the tag line “Come to Bangladesh before the tourists do.” I, the so-called Blonde Bengali Wife did just that and in doing so framed the story of a three month journey through the landscape and culture, the people and places, the humour and highlights of a little-known Bangladesh.

Whilst the book invites you to swim at Cox’s Bazaar, the longest sea beach in the world; to trek rare tigers amidst the earth’s largest mangrove forests in the Sunderbans National Park; to refresh your taste buds beside Srimangal’s verdant, rolling tea gardens, and to watch the sun rise and set at the same most southerly point in Kuakata, it is so much more than a travel memoir because A Blonde Bengali Wife has inspired, and is supporting, a UK based charity called Bhola’s Children.

It all began with my first (of eight and counting) visit to Bangladesh as a volunteer for a Non Government Organisation (NGO) when I fell utterly in love with the country. Draft after redraft followed until it was read by literary agent Dinah Wiener. It wasn’t remotely commercial, Dinah said, but it made her want to visit Bangladesh, and that was enough for her to agree to represent it—and to make a trip to Bangladesh herself. By chance, there she met Howlader Akkel Ali. Ali, orphaned at the age of eight and with forty years’ experience of caring for disabled children, had a dream of a home and a school where children and young people with different disabilities could live, learn, and work together.

Ali comes from the Barisal district of Southern Bangladesh in which lies the island of Bhola, jutting out to the Bay of Bengal. In Bengali, bhola means “forgotten” and it was on this “forgotten island” that Ali had found the property that is now called Bhola Garden. Together with some orphaned and disabled children and staff, he carried out basic renovations, and then began encouraging families all over the island to send their disabled children to daily lessons. Dinah discovered that Bhola Garden took the traditionally grim notions of orphanages, third-world poverty and disability, and simply knocked them on their heads. Full of life, love, and colour, the word Dinah used to describe it was “magical.” Thus, the charity Bhola’s Children was established by Dinah and registered in March 2007 with a commitment from all of the Trustees, of which I am one, to nurture and progress everything that makes Bhola Garden what it is today and what it can be tomorrow.

Bhola Garden is now a home to about forty children and a school for another fifteen, with many more waiting in the wings. In practical terms, Ali and the children live in very basic conditions. They bathe, swim, do their laundry, and breed fish all in the same pond. Their staple food is rice, with meat or fish a couple of times a week; milky, sugary sweets are a rare treat. They grow most of their own vegetables. When they receive gifts, they are delighted with toothbrushes, plastic combs, and hair oil. There is little to spare for visits to the doctor, the dentist, or anything unexpected.

Outreach work, that is teaching the community about disability, is part of daily life. Ali oversees hospital arrangements in Dhaka for the many infants whose frightened parents agonise over cleft palates and club feet. Better, he says that these are prevented—and educating people about the need to reduce inter-marriage and avoiding very young pregnancies is the best way forward. Better, too, that families learn there is no stigma in their child being blind or deaf and sending them to school, rather than hiding them away, will significantly improve their life chances.

As well as the day-to-day financial support, the charity’s first purchase was a Toyota microbus so that, for the first time, outings and picnics and trips to appointments didn’t rely on public buses or rickshaws. The initial major project was to complete a properly-built, two-storey hostel for the children, staff, and Ali to live in year-round safety and far greater comfort than the tin shacks that barely protected them from monsoon, floods, and hurricanes. Two years on, the current scheme involves updating the equally primitive sheds in which carpentry and tailoring are taught. Proper workshops mean these will grow into businesses creating much needed income. Longer term, the grand plan is for a dispensary and health clinic that will meet the needs of not just Bhola’s Children but the surrounding community too. Ultimately, of course, it relies on successful fundraising and charitable donation.

All money earned from A Blonde Bengali Wife goes direct to Bhola’s Children. Not because Dinah or I are particularly generous or kind people, but because once you’ve been to Bhola, you just can’t not be involved. A Blonde Bengali Wife it isn’t about Bhola, but it is a tribute to my journeys into Bangladesh and all the friends I have made there. Most of all, it is the story of the country that inspired Bhola’s Children.

BIO
Between her travels, Anne Hamilton currently lives in Scotland where she is working on a novel whilst studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. Anne and her husband celebrated the birth of their first baby in August 2010.

A Blonde Bengali Wife is available in print and in several ebook formats. It can found at http://www.ll-publications.com, www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, as well as many other print and ebook retailers.

WIN - Leave Anne a comment or question this week at the Tiki Hut and your name goes in the hat for your choice of either a print or ebook of her new book, A BLONDE BENGALI WIFE. To be entered, you must leave your email address, so we can contact you if you are this week's winner - Good luck!