Mystery
Date Published: 03-01-2023
Publisher: Tekrighter, LLC
Return to the streets and alleys of Victorian London, where the game is afoot once again! The Great Detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and his steadfast companion Dr. Watson are back for ten new cases, spanning the length of the quintessential detective's illustrious career. Beginning while Holmes was still a green investigator in Montague Street, this collection encompasses the 1880s and the 1890s, up to the dawn of the new century. Walk with Holmes as he puzzles over the problem of a drunken teetotaler, celebrates an old English Christmas at the Red Lion, tracks down the Camberwell poisoner, and experiences the horror in King Street. If you've been pining for new traditional, canonical Sherlock Holmes tales, Ten Steps from Baker Street is the collection you've been waiting for.
What is the hardest part of writing
your books?
Plotting. I’m a pantser – that means I
don’t have a set plot when I write – I make it up on the fly. My plots are
character-based. I put a character in a situation, then ask, what will the
character do next? Sometimes it’s a challenge to get a workable plot that way,
but I always manage.
What songs are most played on your
Ipod?
I don’t have an Ipod, and I can’t play
music while I write because it’s too distracting. I have used a recording of
English change ringing as white noise for writing because there’s no
discernable melody.
Do you have critique partners or beta
readers?
I’ve been part of a beta readers group
for about five years now. There are three of us, and we meet once a month to review
each others’ works in progress. Our interests are varied – one is an historian,
the other a fantasy author. It’s an odd combination, but it works.
What book are you reading now?
A cookbook called Deep Run Roots, by
Vivian Howard. She’s a chef who returned to her home in North Carolina, not far
from where I live, to start a restaurant based on local food traditions.
How did you start your writing career?
I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I
used to write stories about my favorite TV characters, Napoleon Solo and Illya
Kuryakin from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in longhand in marble-backed copybooks.
My fiction writing took a fifty-year hiatus when I was working as a scientist
and technical writer, but after I retired, I pursued a lifelong dream of
writing a mystery series. Thus Natalie McMasters was born.
Tell us about your next release.
The eighth volume of the Natalie
McMasters Mysteries is entitled Shooters! It will feature a ripped-from-the-headlines
plot about a mass shooting.
About the Author
Thomas A. Burns, Jr. is the author of the Natalie McMasters Mysteries. He was born and grew up in New Jersey, attended Xavier High School in Manhattan, earned B.S degrees in Zoology and Microbiology at Michigan State University and a M.S. in Microbiology at North Carolina State University. He currently resides in Wendell, North Carolina with his wife and son, four cats and a Cardigan Welsh Corgi. As a kid, Tom started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt and Rick Brant, and graduated to the classic stories by authors such as A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, to name a few. Tom has written fiction as a hobby all of his life, starting with Man from U.N.C.L.E. stories in marble-backed copybooks in grade school. He built a career as technical, science and medical writer and editor for nearly thirty years in industry and government. Now that he's retired to become a full-time a novelist, he's excited to publish his own mystery series, as well as to contribute stories about his second-most favorite detective to the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories.
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