About Lori Ericson

An award-winning former reporter who is now trashing everything she learned about writing then, relishing the people she met and the stuff they taught her to write romantic thrillers, rom-coms and more.

Driving Under the Influence IS Attempted Murder

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Lori Ericson

There should be no second chance for driving under the influence. It’s an attempted murder the first time, but okay, people make mistakes. Learn from it, though, and don’t expect a second chance. If you’re charged with DUI more than once, it should be an attempted murder charge.

: Photo by Lori Ericson

Northwest Arkansas residents have witnessed repeated news videos recently of a local woman stumbling around after being pulled over driving under the influence. This is the same woman that ran over three men and killed one while driving intoxicated on excessive prescription drugs a few years ago. Over the past few months she has been arrested three times for operating a vehicle in a similar state. The judge has finally set a high enough bond to keep her sitting behind bars until she goes to court.

In 2011 she pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and two counts of third-degree battery, but had her driving under the influence charge dropped as part of the plea deal. Too bad, and too bad she wasn’t charge for child endangerment since her 12-year-old daughter sat in the passenger seat witnessing the horror of her mother’s plow through the construction site that sent bodies flying.

I think anyone can make a mistake, and I feel for those who suffer from an addiction so bad they lack the ability to make the decision to keep themselves from operating a vehicle. However, this woman is a perfect example of the fact that one mistake like this can kill.
There’s too much risk in letting drunk drivers get a slap on the wrist time and time again.
In some states, authorities never confiscate the driver’s vehicle and continue to let them off with the same consequences of a suspended license for a few months and a fine. Many don’t even require alcohol or drug counseling after an arrest.

Arkansas courts can require counseling, fines and suspension of license. But it takes four arrests within a five-year period to make it a felony with serious consequences of up to six years in jail and a $5,000 fine.

To be charged with attempted murder a person has to “deliberately, intentionally or recklessly with extreme disregard for human life” attempt to kill someone. Isn’t that what happens when you get behind the wheel drunk or under the influence?

I think there should be no exceptions, and no waiver after five years. The second time a person is found behind the wheel impaired to the degree they are endangering others, they should be charged with attempted murder.

I’m all for programs that pick up those who’ve been drinking and offer safe rides home. The cemetery I managed years ago had an advertising ploy that pulled double duty in shedding some light on the loss drunken driving can cause. It was an offer for a free burial space on New Year’s Eve to anyone killed by a drunk driver.

Thankfully, I have no personal experience of tragic loss of a close friend or family member, no vengeance I’m trying to exact, just a long held belief that the danger is there and the consequences can be deadly. I have had family and friends in my life with drug and/or alcohol issues, and would support this stance even if any of them faced such a charge. The punishment for risking the lives of others should be the same if you’d taken a gun out and aimed.

The storyline in my first novel out in December has a mystery based a real prison program in Arkansas that helps relieve overcrowding in the state prison system. Overcrowding is a big issue, but I think we need to make room for those who risk the lives of others by driving under the influence repeatedly.

Am I being too harsh?

Hell No, Dear Abby!

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Lori Ericson

Dear Abby recently advised someone to provide a review of a self-published book that would get around the fact that the book was not worth reading. She said to use the words “a real page turner,” although the book was very poorly edited. “Reader in The Southwest” said the book was filled with misused and misspelled words, and punctuation problems. The writer had even switched the names of two characters. “Reader” couldn’t even force herself to finish reading the book, but her friend’s husband had written it and her friend had edited it. She felt it was too late to say anything negative about the book because it was already printed.

Photo by Lori Ericson

Dear Abby was being asked what to do in response to pressure to write a great review on Amazon. Abby advised her to find something she liked about the book and mention that it was a “page turner” because the reader did have to turn the pages.
I often take note of these Amazon reviews in determining whether or not to read a book. Giving a false review and misleading those who may purchase the book is wrong. If you’re not impressed with a book, don’t write a review.
I also think this issue speaks to the facts of self-publishing. If you can do it and do it well, make money from your writing, all power to you. But if you don’t get your work properly edited and just put it out there, it’s doing an injustice to all the self-published writers trying to do it right.
As a newspaper reporter for nearly twenty years, I’ll be the first to admit I need an editor and so does everyone. By the time I’m done even writing this blog, I’ll read back through it and find things that need changing. Sometimes I’ll make those changes and add in new errors. It happens, and it happens to the best of writers.
Mary Farmer at http://merryfarmer.net blogged recently about self-publishing being a business and the steps she takes to get a book out. She’s doing it right, not relying on just herself. She has beta-readers, editors and a publicist.
For all those self-published writers who are simply having a spouse or friend read through their masterpiece and then putting their work out there for the world to try to waddle through, I say keep it to yourself. I also say you deserve any bad review you get! I’ve become angry at being ripped off every time I’ve tried to read a book that I came to realize was not properly edited and not vetted by anyone with a good eye for detail. So far, I’ve simply not provided a review. With this kind of advice from Dear Abby, I feel that maybe it’s time to say what I feel as nicely as possible but honestly.
My first novel is my baby. It’s being read now by a series of editors with a publishing company. I hope every single wrong detail, misspelling and incorrect punctuation mark is discovered. I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit on this first book. I’ve rewritten, edited and ran much of the book through my writing group, but I know there are still things to find, fix and improve.
How do you handle writing a review for a book you found lacking?

Why I Write

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Lori Ericson

At times I’ve wondered why I bother to write. The process is daunting and the finished product a distant uncertainty. I’ve written a novel expected to be published in January, but it took me years. If I include the idea and the thinking about turning it into an actual book,

Me signing my first publication contract with Oghma Creative Media. Photo by Casey Cowen, Oghma president.

I’d have to admit it took at least two decades. My daughter, now 29 with a child of her own, talks of waking up one morning as a teenager to find me half awake and upset. I told her I’d thrown out the novel I’d started. Yes, I did. I pitched it and started over. That wasn’t the last time either. Now it’s done. It’s hard to believe sometimes that it is.

The process was long, but through the stops and starts and restarts I turned into a writer.
I had planned to start a second in a series of mysteries with the same protagonist, but while finishing the last edit an idea for a thriller came into my head. I had to start writing it before I burst.
That’s just it. I write. I write not because I dream of publication (but nice reward and validation).
I write because it’s in me now and to stop would be denying a part of who I am.

Graveyard Images and Inspiration

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Lori Ericson

My husband says he never dreamed he’d marry a woman who loves to stop at cemeteries to take photos or just admire the surroundings. He doesn’t seem to mind our little adventures, and doesn’t seem to think I’m too crazy (or he doesn’t admit it aloud anyway).

Having lived in two cemeteries as a child and visited plenty of them along the way, I find them fascinating, peaceful, and even odd. The rituals of death and how we memorialize it are a puzzle. However, I think my main reason for wanting to stop, take a picture or simply look over the grounds is all about writer’s inspiration.

The character in my first novel, like me, grew up in a cemetery. I’ve got a couple of additional plots rolling around in my head for this same character and know I will get to them. However, I’ve started another novel, a thriller that doesn’t include this character. The plot came upon me like a sudden storm, and I had no choice but to start writing it.

Despite what I may be writing at any given time, I know I will likely continue to visit cemeteries and take photos. They inspire me in some weird way. I stare at the images of headstones and lawns dedicated to the dead. I wonder about the lives that were lived and those left behind.

What inspires you to seek your passion?

Photos by Lori Ericson

Writing Progress and New Business Cards

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Lori Ericson

May has been a good month for me as an aspiring novelist! I have new business cards to help promote myself. And (drum roll here) I can finally say I am done editing my mystery novel, and I am so very pleased with the outcome. I’ve even come up with a new title that fits it really well… “Indecent Liberty.” Even if it changes prior to publication, I’m happy with the progress.

Thanks to Russell Gayer and Robin C. Stuttle at Tyson Digital Print Services for the great job, quick service and good price on the cards!

Also, thanks to my husband Lloyd Ericson for all the encouragement, and for putting up with me and my writer life.

Now time to finish another short story and move on to the next novel. I already have a plot churning in my head.

Amazon Warriors and Mothers

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Lori Ericson

In the early 1990s a group of U.S.-Russian archaeologists found a 2,000-year-old burial mound near the Kazakhstan border that included the graves of warrior women buried with their weapons. According to the April issue of Smithsonian, the women were unnaturally tall for their time. The graves are believed to be evidence of the Amazon warrior women in so many stories carried down since mid-sixth century B.C.

Today’s mother isn’t an Amazon warrior, but the ones who are able to truly raise good kids in this crazy world are no less heroic.

My two girls and I celebrating my youngest daughter’s 21st birthday!

The U.S. Census Bureau released some statistics this week in honor of the Mother’s Day holiday. Some of those statistics included the following:

62.1 percent of women 16 to 50 who gave birth in the past year and are part of the labor force
29.5 percent of mothers who gave birth in the past 12 months have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
84.6 percent have at least a high school diploma
10 million single mothers were living with children younger than 18 in 2013, up from 3.4 million in 1970
5.6 million is the number of custodial mothers who were due child support in 2011
24 percent of married-couple households with kids under 15 have stay-at-home mothers, up from 21 percent in 2000

I’m no Amazon warrior, but sometimes felt like a negotiator, taxi driver, maid and cook as a mom. Yet, of all the things I’ve done in my life, I am with no doubt more proud of being a mother than anything. I have two wonderful daughters that continue to amaze me daily.

Crotch Machine to City Planning

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Lori Ericson

I’ve been known to say I’m on my third career, but there have been many jobs before and between. Those before and between jobs include waitress, carhop, bookkeeper and the toughest job of all, being a mother. Although running the crotch machine at a local pantyhose factory is fun to reflect on, my first official job was definitely the strangest.

I was a telemarketer back when most people had a home phone. I didn’t offer magazine subscriptions or carpet cleaning. Instead, the offer was a free burial space to anyone who’d listen to a sales pitch on pre-need planning for cemetery services. My father set me up doing it when I was just 17. I lasted less than a year. It was a tough sales pitch with many a strange reaction and plenty hang ups.

My dad became ill during my senior year of college, and I ended up back in that cemetery office dealing with grieving families, selling headstones and all that’s involved in making a cemetery run.

I eventually moved on to my second career and used my journalism/English degree as newspaper reporter for nearly twenty years. My third career started when a job came up for a city planning position on a beat I was covering as a reporter. I’d been writing about city and county planning for a long time and knew enough to take it on. I’ve spent the last seven years as a city planner, a job I never dreamed of, yet enjoy… most days.

My absolute dream job, fiction writer, is one I’ve worked at in my spare time for years. I’ve had a few short stories published and hope to eventually call myself a novelist. I’ll eventually retire from city hall and writing will be all I do, but I’m not sure I could ever call it “work.”

What’s the strangest job you’ve ever had? What’s your dream job?

Photo by Lori Ericson

Graveyard Theft

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Lori Ericson

Running from room to room, I searched for a source. An infant’s frantic sobs drove me to throw open each door along the endless hallway, only to find dust and cobwebs, and furniture draped in white sheets. The wood floor creaked, the sound mixing with the wails that were near, but then distant. The final tall wooden door called to me.

Sweat ran down my forehead blurring my vision and a rotten stench caught in the back of my throat. The brass doorknob was cold. It took both my hands to get it to twist. The door finally creaked open.

Tall windows bowed out in a semi-circle and rain pummeled against the glass. The frantic sobs came from a white crib shrouded in shear fabric in the center of the room.

Inching forward, fear snatched my breath. The crib shook with the wails of the child I couldn’t yet see. I pulled back the shear fabric with a shaky hand.

The baby’s bonnet-covered head was just a skull, empty eye sockets stared ahead, its open mouth ready to let out another wail. Skeleton arms stretched toward me.

I’m not sure if I screamed aloud or just woke from the fright of the recurring nightmare.

They’d been coming more frequently. I’m not sure which was worse, this one of searching for the crying baby, or the other of walking through the cemetery to find ghosts of babies wailing behind each tombstone.

I had to do something and soon. The guilt of what we’d done was eating me up. It was just four a.m. and too early for rising on a Saturday morning, but there was no going back to sleep. I would not rest another night without correcting this wrong.

Within an hour, I was on my way. The small statue of the shepherd wrapped in a blanket in the trunk. I could have disposed of it years ago, yet I hung onto it from guilt. Maybe I’d always known one day I’d make this trip of shame.

The gates to the cemetery were still locked for the night, the sun not yet up. But I knew exactly where I needed to go, and it wasn’t far beyond the marble pillars framing the iron gates. That’s what had made it easy the night I took the dare and stole the statue. The raised garden in the middle of what they called the “Babyland Garden” was easy to access, even when the gates were closed from dusk to dawn.

I thought it was cool, kind of funny, that night years before. Now, the stupidity of it all made me shudder.

Stopping next to one of the pillars, I popped the trunk and pulled the statue into my arms. Making my way around the gates and through the small grove of trees I prayed to not get caught. When I got to the raised garden, I doubted my mission for the first time that morning.

The statue had been replaced with a small marble angel. I hadn’t been back inside those gates since that night and had assumed the shepherd’s platform would still be empty.

“I’m such a dumbass,” I muttered.

There was no telling what the replacement statue had cost. There was no choice but to leave my guilt-ridden token there with its stand-in. I lowered the missing shepherd boy to the rock edge of the raised garden and walked away.

I could only hope my nightmares would now be over.

Most of the preceding story is my imagination. There was a statue of a small shepherd boy with a tiny lamb at his feet stolen years ago from the cemetery my parents owned. My brother and I found it returned one morning some five or six years later. It stood next to the angel statue that we’d bought to take its place.

I’m not sure if it was simply guilt or guilt-ridden nightmares that drove the thief to return the statue so many years after we noticed it missing, but I’d like to think that those who commit such crimes against the dead are tortured for their sins.

Is there anything you feel guilty about that may be invading your dreams? What sort of nightmares do you have?

PHOTO BY Lori Ericson

My Writing Process

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Lori Ericson

The wittiest writer I know, Russell Gayer, hooked me up on this blog tour. I’m thrilled to be included in his blog last week and honored to say we’re in the same writer’s critique group. His weekly Friday fiction story based on a photo prompt often has me rolling with laughter. Check out Russell’s blog at http://russellgayer.com

What am I working on? I’m finishing the editing, rewriting and what seems to be endless changes on a mystery novel about a young Ozarks reporter who’s trying to rebuild her career after being accused of libel. Danni Edens has a chance to repair that damage as she writes a series of articles on a corrupt jail program and a string of child murders; two investigations that have her butting heads with the wrong people who’ll do anything to stop her. But Edens’ personal life brings its own problems with a psychologically troubled mother and a father whose cemetery business is struggling with bad press alleging a ghost is roaming the grounds.

How does my work differ from others of its genre? Although my character is much different from me, she comes from a similar background. I grew up in the cemetery my parents owned, and I spent nearly twenty years as a newspaper reporter for both weekly and daily newspapers in the Ozarks of Northwest Arkansas.

Why do I write what I do? Writing mysteries is a passion for me because I love to read them. I enjoy the twists and turns my characters take, sometimes so unexpected they surprise even me. Some of my short stories lean more towards thrillers. I hope to eventually sharpen those skills enough to try my hand at a thriller novel.

How does my writing process work? Like any writer, my writing process starts with an idea. I keep notes on possible characters, clippings from newspaper articles that have sparked an interest and snippets of plot sketches for future stories. Before I start to write, I like to develop that plot sketch with some details about the characters and how they’ll deal with the troubles I’m throwing at them.

I’ve had some short stories published, but my biggest problem with a full novel is learning to let go and call it done! I keep finding things I want to change and not finding the time to get them done. This one has to end soon. My second story about reporter Danni Edens is growing in my head and roaring to get on paper.

I’m excited to pass the baton for this blog tour on to two very different and fantastic writers. Although one writes fiction and the other non-fiction, and they come from different continents, they share a last name. Alice White and I are members of the Northwest Arkansas Writer’s Workshop critique group together, and Sarah E. White and I once worked for the same daily newspaper. Please check out what they’ll have to say about their writing process next Monday, March 24, and the information below about them both.

When author Alice White married her best friend, who happens to be a Vietnam Veteran, and moved to the U.S. from England in September 2009, she never envisaged publishing her work until meeting Velda Brotherton; an already well established author from Northwest Arkansas. Velda became her neighbor, friend and mentor; teaching her how to publish to Kindle and helping to proofread manuscripts. Since then, she’s learned to use Createspace and tried to keep up with the ever-changing world of self-publishing. Check out her exciting time travel trilogy, The Blue Door, on Amazon and visit her website at http://alicewhiteauthor.webstarts.com/index.html and her blog at http://authoralicewhite.wordpress.com

Sarah E. White writes at Our Daily Craft (http://sarahewhite.com) a blog about crafting with and for kids and creativity for moms and other busy people. She also writes the knitting websites for About.com (http://knitting.about.com) and Craft Gossip (http://knitting.craftgossip.com) and is the author of two books about knitting, the latest of which, Quick and Easy Baby Knits, was published in August by Stackpole Books. She’s at work on another book for Stackpole, this time on color knitting, which should be out next year. When she’s not crafting or writing about crafts, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their four-year-old daughter.

How to Be Creative in 5 Steps with John Cleese

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Lori Ericson

Creativity is hard to grasp sometimes and other times it flows like hot lava. This is a good post on the issue of trying to keep it flowing. The blog is by Jamie Lee Wallace, an inspiring blogger on writing and marketing.

Live to Write - Write to Live

By charity elise on etsy

What is the secret to being creative?

Is it something you can learn? Is it something you are born with? Is it something you can practice? Is it something you can do on demand?

These are questions that plague artists of all kinds. We worry that we’ll never be creative, or – if we’ve had a creative breakthrough – that we’ll never be creative again.

I worry. You worry. Famous writers and artists worry. We all worry.

BUT … we don’t have to.

I spent part of this morning watching a video of John Cleese presenting on the topic of creativity. (Hat tip to @anna_elliott for her post on Writer Unboxed featuring a link to the video.) Cleese’s presentation is nearly forty minutes long, but SO worth the time. I really (really) would love for each of you to watch it because…

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