The Story of Scraps
of Paper
A murder mystery by Kathryn Meyer
Griffith
I’ve been writing for over forty-one
years and have gone through a lot of frustrating or downright infuriating
situations with publishers and editors. Since 1981 I’ve had eight of them. I’ve suffered 4%
royalties, dreadful covers, bad editing and shoddy proof-reading, confusing
statements, late royalty payments (or nonexistent ones) and other near-criminal
acts committed against me by publishers and editors I’d so naively put my trust
into over the years. Now days I like to look back at those occasions, write
about them; smile or even laugh over them, though they weren’t so funny when
they were happening. This is one of those smiling times…because the conception,
writing, publishing and, finally, self-publishing of my murder mystery Scraps of Paper has had such a long vexing
journey.
On January 15, 2013 I self-published it
as an eBook, for the first time, on Amazon Kindle Direct, after waiting ten
long years as it languished beneath a terribly unfair hardback contract with
Avalon Books that had a sell-off limit of 3,500 hardcopies. Ten years where
they claimed it barely sold (no joke…their asking price was ridiculously high
at $26.00) and that it didn’t sell one
copy in the last two years of its contract–though the book was on sale
everywhere on the Internet. I never received one royalty statement and had to
beg in yearly emails to be told how many copies had sold that year. Of course,
since the totals never got near the 3,500, , they said, I would get no royalty
statements. And I never did. Not one. Ever. Last month my book was finally mine
again and I was free of that atrocious contract and now, after a revision and commissioning
a new stunning cover from my cover artist Dawne Dominique, I’ve released it
into the world without the publisher’s shackles to imprison it. Fly little
bird, fly!
Originally I wrote it be the first of
a series set in this quaint, quirky little town I tongue-in-cheek called
Spookie. I mean, most of my books before were horror novels and I was basically
considered a horror writer, so the town’s name was the tip-of-the-hat to my
horror roots. It’d be my first venture into that genre, which I’d always loved.
Sherlock Holmes. Murder She Wrote. Detective Frost. Miss Marple. I wrote it and
then, quickly after, a second in the series All Things Slip Away for Avalon Books. I got a modest advance up
front for each one.
It was 2002. I’d come out of a lengthy
publishing dry spell. My seventh paperback novel, Zebra’s The Calling, a ghost story with an ancient Egyptian theme, had come
out in 1994. Then they dumped a lot of us mid-list horror writers, me included,
saying horror was dying; and for eight years I couldn’t sell another book. Well,
living my life got in the way during some of that time. I’d lost my long-time
good-paying graphic artist job in 1994 and had to find another one. The pay was
a lot less. No good for my budget or my standard of living, which really fell. I
went from one of five bad jobs to another over the next six years…each worse
and lower paying than the one before.
Each more demanding. I needed
to make money. No longer could I live with pie-in-the-sky literary dreams. I
had to face reality. So I stopped writing for a while.
When I finally came up for breath and
my head was back on straight again I decided to write something different…a
mystery. I’d always loved mysteries. I began writing Scraps
of Paper. About a woman, an artist named Jenny, whose husband has been
missing for two years, and who’s just learned he’s been dead all that time–a
victim of a gone-wrong mugging. She begins a new life and moves to a small town
full of fog, quirky townspeople and mysteries. And right away she’s drawn into one
of her own when she buys, renovates, a fixer-upper house and uncovers hidden in
it scraps of paper written by two young children who once lived there with
their mother, and who supposedly drove away thirty years before and were never seen
again. The town thought they simply went someone else; began a new life. But
Jenny suspects they never left the house; suspects they’d been murdered. Then
she finds three graves in the back.
Of course, with her history of a
missing husband she develops the overpowering urge to find out what happened to
them. The scraps of paper she continues to find makes the bond, the desire,
stronger. She forms a friendship with an ex-homicide cop, Frank, and together
they try to solve the mystery. Only thing is there’s someone still living in the
town that just as desperately doesn’t want them to. Someone who’d kill to keep
the murderer’s identity secret.
When done I was proud of it. Thought
it was good. I sent it to Avalon Books in New York. They loved it and bought
it. I signed the contract, though I didn’t like some of the things in it. But I
was desperate. I hadn’t had a book published in so long and, as my mom always
said, beggars can’t be choosers. I
sold them the second in the series, hoping it’d help sell the first. They got
great reviews. But I came to regret signing both those contracts more as every
year went by because I never received one
penny more for either book for the next ten years. I know, it sounds
impossible. But it happened to me. I’m sure it happened to a lot of their
authors. Probably one of the reasons Avalon Books sold themselves lock-stock-and-barrel
to Amazon Publishing in June of 2012 and, without their authors’ knowledge or
permission, including mine, sold away their authors’ contracts from under them as
well. I guess you live and learn.
I was just lucky Scraps of Paper’s
contract had run out. I took the book back.
But, all that is in the past, and my
revised Scraps of Paper-Revised Author’s Edition is now
available, on sale for $3.99 (much better than $26.00), at Amazon Kindle here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B1W4A2K And I hope people will have the chance to read it this
time around and like it.
***
Blurb for Scraps of Paper-Revised
Author’s Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Abigail
Sutton’s beloved husband walks out one night, doesn’t return, and two years
later is found dead, a victim of a long ago crime. It’s made her sympathetic to
the missing and their families.
Starting her
new life, Abigail moves to small town and buys a fixer-upper house left empty
when old Edna Summers died. Once it was also home to Edna’s younger sister,
Emily, and her two children, Jenny and Christopher, who, people believe, drove
away one night, thirty years ago, and just never came back.
But in
renovating the house Abigail finds scraps of paper hidden behind baseboards and
tucked beneath the porch that hint the three could have been victims of foul
play.
Then she
finds their graves hidden in the woods behind the house and with the help of the
eccentric townspeople and ex-homicide detective, Frank Lester, she discovers
the three were murdered. Then she and Frank try to uncover who killed them and
why…but in the process awaken the ire of the murderer. ***
***This book is the first of a series. The second
book, All Things Slip Away, where
Abigail and Frank’s sleuthing adventures continue is also for sale on Amazon.
About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...
Since childhood I’ve always been
an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for
newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began
writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had seventeen (ten
romantic horror, two romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time
travel, one historical romance and two murder mysteries) previous novels, two
novellas and twelve short stories published
from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation
Books/Eternal Press and Amazon Kindle Direct.
I’ve been married to Russell for
almost thirty-five years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and
Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which
is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats,
ghost cat Sasha, live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live
happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a
folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my
greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the
day I die…or until my memory goes.
Novels
and short stories from Kathryn Meyer Griffith:
Evil Stalks the Night
(Leisure, 1984; Damnation Books, 2012)
The Heart of the Rose
(Leisure, 1985; Eternal Press Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Blood Forge
(Leisure, 1989; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2012)
Vampire Blood
(Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
The Last Vampire
(Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2010)
Witches
(Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition 2011)
The Nameless One
(short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions; Damnation Books
Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
The Calling
(Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books Author’s Revised Edition, 2011)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon
Books Murder Mystery, 2006…Amazon Kindle Direct ebook & paperback 2013)
Egyptian Heart
(The Wild Rose Press, 2007; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011) My
self-made
Winter’s Journey
(The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
The Ice Bridge
(The Wild Rose Press, 2008; Author’s Revised Edition, Eternal Press 2011)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons
(Damnation Books 2010)
The Woman in Crimson
(Eternal Press 2010)
The Complete Guide to Writing
Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction)
4 Spooky Short Stories (Amazon Kindle 2012)
Telling Tales of Terror (I did
the chapter on Putting the Occult into your Fiction)
Dinosaur Lake (from Amazon Kindle Direct 2012)
Human No Longer (Amazon Kindle 2013)
Scraps of Paper –Revised
Author’s Edition (Avalon Books Murder Mystery,
2003; Amazon Kindle 2013)
My Websites:
***
