The following review for my newest book is one of the best I’ve ever received on any of my books because of this: “When I read a cozy I like to try to figure out whodunit before the amateur sleuth or the law does. I was so, so WRONG this time. McKean had me fooled. (Palm to forehead when I look back at it!)”
As a writer of cozy mysteries, I endeavor to surprise the reader, but “All the Colors of Murder” does more than surprise. It also showcases love. The protagonist has never known love. Enter a man who accepts her even when she rejects him, even when she is rude to him, even when she mocks his beliefs, even when she engages in activities that he does not espouse. And that’s love.
All my cozy mysteries contain love stories, but “All the Colors of Murder” embodies the best description of love ever written within the lives and actions of the main characters. That description is found in the Bible. “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself; is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8. And that’s love.
The matchless example of love was set by Jesus. “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” John 15:12. And that’s love.
MaCoy and Hayden’s love story doesn’t reach the pinnacle of the love Jesus showed the world by dying for it, but my prayer is that it will engage the readers’ hearts in hope and expectation and encourage them to believe in a love that never fails.
One of my joys in life is helping in children’s church. I love finding an object lesson to tie in with each story. This time, I had found the perfect fit. The lesson was on gifts of the Spirit. Confidently, I held up a lemon in one hand and an apple in the other hand and asked the children which one they would rather eat. To my chagrin, ALL of them replied, “the lemon.”
Sometimes our plans fail.
My plan for the day was simple and fail-proof. I would write all morning.
The editor had promised to have my newly finished book back to me so I could make the final corrections. She didn’t.
I had my husband dressed and ready for the ambulance to pick him up for his trip to the cancer doctor across the water. At the last minute, he decided to change clothes. The phone rang and it was the vet’s office wanting our collie Savannah back for injections to treat her severe pancreatitis. The phone rang again. It was a gas engineer needing to check the boiler in our rental house. We weren’t expecting him, but he had already come across the water and needed to get into our house.
I helped my husband out to the ambulance in his wheelchair, took the wheelchair back to the house, and put Savannah into the car for her trip to the vet. I hadn’t had time to walk her yet, so I took her for a brief walk before I took her into the vet’s. She had diarrhea. Before the vet could take her temperature, she had to clean Savannah’s bottom.
I got back home to find a delivery from Amazon on the porch and the gas man waiting across the street in his van. The delivery contained a broken jar of dill pickles and pickle juice pooled at the front door. The gas engineer followed me inside, but the boiler is in the attic and I couldn’t find the thingy that opens the trap door to the attic steps.
The vet had asked me to take a photo of the label on Savannah’s food and email it to her so we could make sure the food wasn’t part of the problem. The memory card on the camera was locked. I couldn’t figure out how to unlock it. So I took Savannah’s food out of the freezer and copied the ingredients into an email to send the vet’s office. By this time, the engineer had found the thingy to unlock the steps and had inspected the boiler, but he couldn’t find the outlet for it. While searching, he slipped on the waterlogged back deck and almost fell. His foot went through a weak place in the wood. Fortunately, he was able to extract his foot without damage to either himself or the porch.
I hit the “send” key on my computer for the email to the vet, and went to help the gas engineer search for the outlet from the boiler. Neither of us could find it. The engineer needed to use the toilet before he left, and I realized much to my chagrin that I had never finished cleaning it yet—a job I had started at 6:30 a.m. when I got up. Because Alan can’t walk and has to use a bedside commode and I have to empty it into the toilet—the toilet needs to be cleaned rather often.
I heaved a sigh of relief when the gas engineer left and I could return to my plan. Spending the morning writing.
I glanced at the clock beside my desk. It was noon.
“A person’s heart plans their way, but the LORD directs the steps.” Sometimes He directs us into patience-building excursions.
My co-author gave me a book idea more than a year ago. Not just the idea. I wrote the entire first page…then quit. Fear whispered all the “can nots” to my mind—and my mind listened.
My protagonist, a female pastor of a church, confronted the pastor of another church—a church many feared was a cult. A missing teenage girl, a murdered teenage boy, attempts on her life, and the weekly conflicts common to all pastors and churches. Enough excitement to hook and keep readers…except…fear whispered. Except, my mind echoed. I was not a pastor. I have never been a pastor. How could I possibly use a female preacher as my heroine and make the story believable?
So for more than a year, I had the title, I had most of the characters—and I knew where the story was going…nowhere, unfortunately—because I continued listening to my fear. I finally wrote up to Page 53. Then I put it aside and wrote “Grey for Murder” instead. When Grey for Murder was published, I went back to “Grace for Murder.”
Some of my books have written themselves. No, actually, my co-author has written them and I have typed furiously to keep up. Not so with “Grace for Murder.” My mind stopped at the edge of fear. Even by the time I finally got up to the first 100 pages, fear rumbled: “how can you write about something you don’t know anything about?” “You’re not clever enough to do this. Give up.”
What nudged me to tromp over the edge of fear and keep going was the story of Moses in the Bible. When he turned aside in the desert to see why a bush was burning but not consumed by fire, the Lord spoke out of the fire and told Moses that He was sending him to tell the Egyptian king to release his Hebrew slaves and let them go. Moses argued. He told the Lord that he didn’t speak well; he stammered. God asked Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth? Have not I, the Lord? Therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.” Exodus 4:11.
Moses didn’t want to face Pharaoh. He was afraid. I didn’t want to finish “Grace for Murder.” I was afraid. But God kept His promise to Moses and I knew He would keep His promise to me. After all, He gave me the story. He’s my co-author.
“Grace for Murder” will be released within the next week or so.
When I was in sixth grade, my grandmother made a gorgeous yellow dress for me to wear at our school’s Easter program. Then I learned that I was to be excluded from the Easter program because…I can’t sing. When the song leader saw the tears of disappointment weaving down my cheeks he said, “You come to the program. You wear that dress your grandmother made. You stand up on the stage with your class. You open and close your mouth. But don’t let any sound come out.”
So I wore my lovely yellow Easter dress and stood proudly on the stage opening and closing my mouth—doing my best not to let any noise escape. Years later in college, our drama professor’s wife, who held a doctorate in music, told me, “Stephanie, everyone can sing. I have never met anyone who can’t sing. I’ll work with you for one hour a day for the next week. You might not be good enough to get the lead in one of the musicals, but you can at least be in the chorus.”
On the first day, Mrs. Estes worked with me for thirty minutes. She stopped. She looked as confused as a blind dog in a sausage factory. “Stephanie,” she finally said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I can’t help you. You really can’t sing.”
And I still can’t sing. It’s one of the many splendid failures in my life. Splendid, because I am about to publish book number 41. If I had been able to sing—the count would never have reached even one. I would have been pouring myself into singing and performing the way I pour myself into writing. I would like to believe that God has allowed me to use the life experiences—joys, sorrows, disappointments, achievements—and weird, unusual things like getting tossed to the ground and bitten by a lion—to write books that entertain folks who my life would never have touched if I had lived my dream of singing.
“All things work together for good to those who love the Lord.” Romans 8:28.
My father was an atheist. His code of life? If it was good for him, it was right. If it didn’t benefit him, it was wrong. Because money was tight, he ignored the State of Georgia’s traffic laws. He did not have our vehicles safety checked. Like our family, they were so dysfunctional they would not have passed.
One day when I was selling magazines to raise money for our senior class, I stopped at a house along a minor road. A man with an unbuttoned shirt and boxer shorts answered the door, an attractive blonde woman some ten years younger hanging on his arm. He curtly informed me that he did not want magazines and he didn’t appreciate his Saturday being interrupted by a panhandler. I made a few more stops along that road before turning onto the main highway. Oops! There was a Georgia State Trooper roadblock about a mile ahead.
There was only one dirt road between me and the roadblock, so—I took it. A highway patrol car left the roadblock and drove to the entry of the dirt road. The trooper sat in his car watching me. Attempting to hide the fact that I was quivering like pudding, I parked the car, got out, walked boldly to the door of the house and knocked. The man in the boxer shorts, still adorned with the blonde on his arm stared at me in disbelief before he bellowed, “You were just at my front door. Get out of here and don’t ever come back.”
I chanced a look back to the end of what I now realized was a long driveway—not a road. Yup. Highway patrol car still there. I gulped. “Do you mind if I go around the side of your house?”
“I don’t care how you go—just get!”
So I drove up a bank, across rocks, through a flowerbed and around to the front of the house to the main road and drove home watching the rearview mirror all the way.
Had I stopped at the roadblock, perhaps the old Cadillac I was driving would have been off the road before the frame broke in four places and the car fell down on the tires in downtown LaGrange when I was on my way to college.
Had our vehicles passed Georgia’s safety inspection, perhaps the brakes on the VW Beetle I drove after the death of the Caddie would not have failed at a traffic light causing me to jump the sidewalk and drive uphill into someone’s yard to keep from having an accident.
Then there was the tie rod end that broke at highway speed on the truck that replaced the Beetle. I wasn’t a Christian at the time and didn’t know that Jesus had saved my life, but the driver in the oncoming car did. He stopped and said, “Girl, someone up there really loves you. You could have been killed.”
Then there was the car that replaced the truck. It lost one front wheel—the entire wheel—at highway speed when I was taking my grandmother home from shopping. Flames shot up into the air over the roof of the car as it careened down the road on a metal rim. Poor Grandmother, who must have been in her seventies at the time, had to walk home with me—two miles on a dark road along a narrow shoulder.
There is usually a good reason for the roadblocks in our lives. It pays to stop.
Roadblocks direct relationships, too. After my husband’s cancer death, I fell in love with a man 10 years younger than me. We enjoyed being together so much that he hired me to travel around Texas with him selling merchandise. He proofread my second book. I went to his church. He went to my church. I met his family. They loved me. I loved them. When his dad—who was in his eighties—died, he would receive more than one million dollars. We discussed marriage. I told him I had to marry him—he was one of the few men I knew who didn’t say, “ain’t.” We sat down and disclosed everything about our pasts that might prove a roadblock. I told him about the childhood sexual abuse I had endured from my father and explained that as a writer—I might need to go public. That bothered him, but it wasn’t a roadblock. He still wanted to marry me. Then he admitted that he smoked pot regularly. I was shocked. He had never used it around me. That roadblock stopped me. While we were together, I had completed two books which were not yet published.
After we parted at the roadblock and I met my husband Alan and moved to Scotland, the first two books were published. I have now written 35 more and re-written the first two so I could self-publish them. That would never have happened on the road in Texas with the man who—however briefly—flung stars into my night sky and painted sunrises and sunsets in vivid colors. Quite a few of the books including the soon-to-be-published “Grey For Murder” are set in Scotland.
There is usually a good reason for the roadblocks in our lives. It pays to stop.
“For this is God, our God forever and forever, He will be our guide even to death.” Psalm 48:14.
I truly enjoyed reading an autobiographical book written by a Texas friend of many years and many seasons, “Struggling Against the Wind: Living With NF1,” written by educator Dan Zavorka. Dan’s diligent work with students and his dedication to teaching has resulted in Bandera decathlon team winning clear up to the state level against much larger high schools year after year.
The journey that Dan, wife Sheila, and daughters Sara, Gina, and Dana have shared is amazing, heartwarming—and at times—scary and heartbreaking. Shelia, Gina, and Dana all battle the genetic condition neurofibromatosis. They not only fight a private medical battle against NF, but reach out to teach others about it and spread awareness.
Additionally, “Struggling Against the Wind” is inspirational. Dan discovered and fell in love with one word early in his life: providence. Dan’s recounting of his family’s life experiences illustrate Divine Providence and the rewards of putting God first.
Dan is not the first author in the family. Daughter Gina has written a children’s book, “Andy’s Moustache.” Sara illustrated it.
Dan grew up on a farm in Wyoming and can look into a cow’s face and identify its breed. Using humor, Dan illustrates the problem with standardized tests for all students. When the word “taxi” hit him on a test, Dan had no idea what it was. He and his dad—who survived getting struck by lightning and later falling from three stories—knew about tractors and cattle, but city taxis were alien to them.
I related to that. I remember a visit to an upscale Dallas, Texas Restaurant many years ago. Like Dan, I was a country girl. When I went to use the restroom, I couldn’t get the toilet to flush. Embarrassed to leave the toilet without flushing it, I finally opened the door to the stall anyway. The toilet flushed and my long skirt, which was still trailing over the seat, got soaked.
Next the sink. I tried to get soap on my hands to wash them, but no soap came out. I pushed, prodded, shook, and tried desperately to get soap. Zip. Zilch. None. But when my hands came off the soap container and slipped under it as I was looking for the water—soap poured out and covered the countertop. Next was the water. Zip, Zilch. None. Then, when I bent down to look more closely at the facet (I had to have water—my hands were coated with soap), water poured out and wet my forehead. I jumped back from the streaming water and heard a “rumph, rumph, rumph” noise beside me. In horror, I found paper towels pouring out of the automatic dispenser and filling up my purse. By the time I got back to the table with my boss…I was a nervous wreck.
Country folks like Dan and I might get “caught out” in different situations, but the God we serve is never caught by surprise. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” Psalm 19:1-3.
Sometimes God’s gifts involve having the right people in the right places at the right times.
I just released my 37th Christian cozy mystery-romance. It would have been impossible for me to write had I not been in the right place at the right time. Bandera, Texas, “Cowboy Capital of the World,” is home of my heart. I set my newest book, “Paid for Murder” at a Texas Hill Country Dude Ranch. The location is fiction, but the flood event at the start of the book is real, based on the historic Medina River Floods of 1978, and 2002. Even though Bandera is home, I have left it several times over the years—most recently now. I am currently living in Scotland. However, God took me back home for the floods that shaped the opening chapters of “Paid for Murder.”
Approximately 15 years ago while I was working at a Bandera newspaper I was sent to interview a Scottish minister who had exchanged pulpits with a Pipe Creek pastor. I rebelled against leaving the newspaper office to do the interview. We were on deadline and I needed to write up my notes from a city council meeting, a county commissioners’ meeting, and a school board meeting. I did not welcome another story to write for that week’s edition. However, the person assigned to interview the Scottish pastor didn’t show up at work that day. The minister was leaving to go back to Scotland. It was the last chance to get a picture of him and interview him. So stomping, spitting, and feeling sorry for my overworked self—I went. The pastor was Alan T McKean, my husband.
I am reminded of the book of Esther in the Bible. Esther was a poor Jewish girl who was in the right place at the right time to become queen. When a jealous rival of her uncle’s planned to kill not only Esther’s uncle, but also the Jewish people, her uncle asked Esther to intercede. He said to her, “Who knows whether you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this?”
There was a law that anyone approaching the king when he had not called for them would be killed. The king had not called for Esther. She said to her uncle, “I will go to the king which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”
So Esther bravely went before the king and he not only accepted her, he accepted her people and turned the evil maneuvering of the enemy against himself so that he fell into the trap he had set for Esther’s uncle and the Jewish people.
God gives gifts. Each day of life is a gift from God. He daily loads us with benefits. Sometimes, it is just being in the right place at the right time.
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
One of the places we lived when I was a child was an old antebellum house in Georgia that survived Sherman’s march to the sea. A former carriage road ran in front of the graceful (but falling down) house which was serviced by an outhouse just off the carriage road. The house had no bathroom, no running water. A log cabin off to one side of the house and surrounded by a sea of yellow daffodils in the spring was the first slave cabin in our county. The house had history galore…but no comfort.
The highway ran behind the house instead of in front of it. Every school morning we had a long trek down the red clay driveway to the bus stop. Because the field surrounding the house was by default our front yard, one of my jobs was to mow it with a push mower. Mowing the actual front yard that adjoined the carriage road was a relatively quick and easy job except for twice—once when a swarm of bees took objection to the mower and once when I moved some debris out of the way and unknowingly disturbed a wasp nest. Mowing the three-acre back yard/front yard, however, was pretty much an all-day job.
No one else in the family—parents, grandmother, six younger siblings—wanted to mow. They rather questioned my sanity for enjoying the arduous task. That’s because they didn’t know my secret.
My secret was that even though I pushed the mower through grass and weeds, picking up rocks that were in the path, and avoiding harmless snakes and baby rabbits—I wasn’t just mowing the yard. I was building stories. With every forward thrust of the mower characters emerged and conversations evolved. Every time I tugged the mower to life with the pull rope and started through the enormous field—new stories, new conversations, new book plots materialized from the green expanse in front of me.
I don’t remember if I ever came in from mowing and wrote down any of the stories. I rather doubt it. I was probably too hot, too tired, too sweaty—and with no running water in the house and no bathroom—I couldn’t jump into the shower and wash off the sweat. With a household of ten and no privacy, baths were sponge baths in a basin and timing them right for the sake of modesty was challenging. Nonetheless, I loved to mow. I still do.
Any physical task that requires more brawn than brain is an ideal opportunity to people my head with characters, conversations, and story plots. It’s not work, it’s not a chore—it’s an exercise in imagination building.
The Bible says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might,” Ecclesiastes 9:10.
Work presents an opportunity for imagination building.
To borrow the title of a song from the 1968 musical with John Davidson and Lesley Ann Warren, ‘Bout Time. Bout time unborn children qualified for their Second Amendment Right under the Constitution of the United States of America – the right to Life.
Some folks believe they are perfect. Perhaps they are, but probably not. Perfection is a stress-inducing condition from which I can cheerfully proclaim I do not suffer.
I can’t imagine the burden of needing to always be right—or to have other people think that you are—or of never making a mistake (or thinking you never do). Some of the most miserable folks I know are perfectionists. Stress is a killer. It starts on the face by killing the smile and turning it upside down.
Some of my mistakes have been notable: spending an extra $100 from my bank account because I read the teller’s receipt wrong and thought the money was there (so did the bank—so the Lord saved me on that one); turning our wedding cake into body shield armor by cooking an artificial sweetener for the frosting instead of powdered sugar; showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time because I always get lost—the list is long. Most recently, it was the first of the two books I wrote while I was stuck in the hospital with an infection in a hip replacement. I decided that the title “Utopia House Murder” had more punch than my first choice, “Murder at Utopia House.” I sent the change to the cover illustrator, but not to my editor. Oops! The book came out on Amazon as “Murder at Utopia House,” but the cover was “Utopia House Murder.” Fortunately, most mistakes can be rectified and the title now matches in both places. Whew!
Utopia House Murder is—like most of the other books I have written—a Christian cozy mystery-romance-suspense, but at the same time—it is unlike any of the other books I have written. Sadly, I can’t differentiate between the two here because that would be impossible without dropping a spoiler. And for a writer—spoilers are unforgiveable mistakes.
We, as humans, make mistakes. “As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him.” Psalm 18:30.
Stephanie Parker McKean 