Author & Sewing Designer June McCrary Jacobs: ~ GREAT ESCAPES PEACHY SCREAM BLOG TOUR ~

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

~ GREAT ESCAPES PEACHY SCREAM BLOG TOUR ~

~ GREAT ESCAPES BLOG TOUR STOP ~

-- 'PEACHY SCREAM' --

AUTHOR ANNA GERARD

~Post Includes: Book Spotlight, Author Bio,

Unique Guest Post & Giveaway~

Peachy Scream: A Georgia B&B Mystery by Anna Gerard

About Peachy Scream

Peachy Scream: A Georgia B&B Mystery

Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (July 7, 2020)

Hardcover: 320 Pages ISBN-10: 1643853066

ISBN-13: 978-1643853062 Digital ASIN: B07XXBK3CX

To die, or not to die? Georgia B&B proprietor Nina Fleet turns amateur thespian to bring the curtain down on a Shakespearean actor's killer.

It's nothing short of inevitable that Cymbeline, GA, hosts an annual Shakespeare festival. But stage-struck Nina Fleet is about to learn that putting on an amateur theatrical production can be murder. Nina's anticipating showbiz glamour and glitz when a community Shakespearean troupe arrives for a two-week stay at her B&B. But the lights dim when she learns the company's director is her nemesis, struggling actor Harry Westcott--who still claims to be the rightful heir to Nina's elegant Queen Anne home.
Meanwhile, the troupe members are not content to leave the drama upon the stage. Accusations of infidelity and financial malfeasance make a shambles of rehearsals. And then, two days into the troupe's stay, the lead actor is found dead in Nina's formal Shakespeare garden. Natural causes...or murder most foul?
Nina uncovers evidence that something is indeed rotten in the town of Cymbeline. Too bad Harry is the only one who believes that she's not going completely off script. And exposing the truth isn't easy when the remaining troupe members say the show must go on...particularly when all of them seemingly had a motive for wanting their fellow actor to permanently exit stage right. Determined to keep the killer from making a curtain call, Nina and her trusty Australian Shepherd, Matilda, join forces with Harry to sleuth out the murder plot. Will they succeed before someone else shuffles off this mortal coil? Find out in Anna Gerard's delightful second Georgia B&B mystery.

About Anna Gerard

DIANE A.S. STUCKART is the New York Times bestselling author of the Black Cat Bookshop Mystery series (writing as Ali Brandon). She’s also the author of the award-winning Leonardo da Vinci historical mysteries, as well as several historical romances and numerous mystery, fantasy, and romance short stories. The first book in her Tarot Cats Mystery series is FOOL’S MOON, available in trade, large print, and Kindle versions. Her Georgia B&B Mystery series from Crooked Lane Books launched July 2019 with PEACH CLOBBERED, written as Anna Gerard and available in hardcover, e-book, or audio CD. Book 2, PEACHY SCREAM will be on the shelves July 2020.

Diane is a member of Mystery Writers of America and served as the 2018 and 2019 Chapter President of the MWA Florida chapter, receiving the “Flamingo” Chapter Service award in 2019. She’s also a member of Sister in Crime. In addition to her mystery writing affiliations, she’s a member of the Cat Writers’ Association and belongs to the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association. Diane is a native Texan with a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, but has been living in the West Palm Beach FL area since 2006. She shares her “almost in the Everglades” home with her husband, dogs, cats, and a few beehives. Learn more about her books at www.dianestuckart.com

On Tropes, and Being Pursued by Bears…

By Anna Gerard, author of PEACHY SCREAM

According to our friends at Wikipedia, literary tropes are commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works. In much simpler terms, tropes are a kind of writing shorthand that authors employ in the course of plotting their stories. While tropes can be themes or even writing styles, they most often tend to be character types and plot situations. For example, the popular “coward-turned-hero” protagonist, or the sitcom favorite, “misunderstanding between lovers that launches a succession of humorous consequences”. Done well, tropes generate a sly nod of recognition in the reader. Done poorly, tropes can sink a book. But for the most part, readers find comfort in their familiarity, never mind that they’ve read it all before.

The master of this technique was none other than William Shakespeare. In fact, if you didn’t happen to know that he originated some of our favorite tropes, you might accuse him of being, well, clichéd in his writing. But Shakespeare knew what resonated with his audiences on both the conscious and sub-conscious levels. And so he shamelessly wove these universalities of the human condition into his plays. And, it obviously worked. Why else would we still be reading and watching and performing his oeuvre centuries after his death?

My current Georgia B&B mystery, PEACHY SCREAM, is set against a Shakespeare festival featuring an amateur presentation of Hamlet. Thus, the discerning reader will find that I’ve incorporated several of the Bard’s most popular tropes into my story. Of course, we have the character who lapses into insanity…or is he only pretending to do so? And don’t forget the time-honored “enemies become lovers” (or, at least, friends). We even have “the play within the play,” which here is extended to “the play within the play within the play” (whew!). And we also have one of my personal favorites, the classic “girl disguised as a boy.” Don’t try to put a 21st century spin on this one when you see it. It isn’t a subplot about gender transitioning, but simply a timeless trope, as well as a sly reversal of the fact that young men commonly took female roles in Shakespeare’s day.

Though, sad to say, I didn’t get to use the very best trope of all. I refer to the always crowd-pleasing “Exit, pursued by a bear.” This trope began as a rather startling stage direction in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. With this line, the villainous Antigonus is sent fleeing from Karma in the shape of a vicious bear that dispatches the man offstage. Likely the ursine was meant to be symbolic, but the pursing bear idea took hold of writers’ imaginations, anyhow. Killing a baddie offstage—sometimes gruesomely, but always where you can’t see it—has become a popular way to rain down justice without violating community standards.

One day, I may succumb to temptation and let one of my cozy mystery murder victims meet this particular “bearly” acceptable fate. If reviewers complain, so what? I’ll simply tell them I stole the idea from that Shakespeare fellow, and that it worked for him!

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Author Links:

Website – www.dianestuckart.com / www.georgiabbmysteries.com

Facebook – www.facebook.com/blackcatmysteries

Purchase Links AMAZON BARNES & NOBLE