Andrea J. Johnson - Craft Killer Fiction - ajthenovelist

Killer Courthouse Cozies Guaranteed to Renew Your Faith in Justice

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Tea With Jess Montgomery

Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to sit down with historical mystery author extraordinaire, Jess Montgomery, who pens the Kinship Series and hosts the very cozy vlogcast “Tea With Jess.” She invited me to chat about Poetic Justice and my love for the mystery genre. During our conversation, she asked what led me to create a heroine who is overcoming past demons, all while attempting to solve the murder of her mentor. As I told Jess, I figured…

“…putting a character who has a water phobia in a town that is on the water brings a very clear conflict to the beginning of the story and increases the tension—the will she solve the case or won’t she element of the tale—giving the audience a reason to lean forward and stick with the story. Plus, the fear of water, the aquaphobia, makes Victoria relatable and allows the audience to very quickly feel empathy for her and take her side during the challenges she faces as the story progresses.”

If you’re interested in hearing more about the Victoria Justice Court Reporter Mystery series or the other works I have on the horizon, click this link to hear me spill the tea.

Delmarva Life Appearance

Readers will be surprised to learn that the fictional town of Bickerton, Delaware, where the Victoria Justice Mysteries take place, is based on a real area called the “Delmarva Peninsula.” The term refers to the area of the East Coast where Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia meet. That section of land is boarded by the Chesapeake Bay on the west, and the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.

The culture of Delmarva vastly differs from the rest of the Mid-Atlantic region because it is driven by agriculture and commercial fishing, so there’s a sense of Southern hospitality throughout the community. The area also boasts unique traditions such as Return Day and the Apple Scrapple Festival. Watch the video below to hear me discuss them with Delmarva Life host Jimmy Hoppa. We also cover how region’s unique traditions play a role in the stories that unfold throughout the new series.

The Cozy Corner Interview

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the author of the Gethsemane Brown Paranormal Mysteries and the host of The Cozy Corner Podcast, Alexia Gordon, to talk about my new killer courthouse whodunit—Poetic Justice! During our conversation, she was kind enough to ask me why the book is marketed as a cozy thriller. As I told Alexia, we all know…

…cozies can be a lot of things, but I think the default mindset on the genre is that it’s all light and kooky, completely unserious with talking cats and relatively easygoing storylines. And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with any that, I didn’t want readers coming to my novels with those expectations because they’d be disappointed. Yes, my books have humor, but they deal with dark subjects in a very serious way. The first two books in the series open with a trial and for that reason it may feel like a legal thriller to some people. So I call them ‘cozy thrillers’ to temper expectations. I want readers to know that the courthouse and court reporting are going to be significant backdrops for the stories, BUT audiences are still going to get some of the other aspects of a good cozy like a difficult puzzle, a small town with a tight-knit community, high morals, no foul language—I even incorporate many of the genre’s tropes like Victoria falling for a guy in uniform and discussing her suspects over tea…but again, each storyline has bite.

If you’re interested in hearing more about my new Victoria Justice Court Reporter Mystery series or the other works I have on the horizon, tune into this riveting interview.

Audio courtesy of The Cozy Corner with Alexia Gordon

Profiled in The JCR Weekly!

One of the many things that makes Poetic Justice unique is that its characters and storyline are inspired by my work as a court reporter. During those years, my main source of support for a myriad of resources—education, certifications, insurance—was the National Court Reporters Association. The NCRA is an internationally recognized organization with over 14,000 members and is dedicated to supporting the careers of stenographers, captioners, and legal videographers. They were kind enough to profile me and my novel in their weekly online trade publication, The Journal of Court Reporting. I’d like to share that interview with you, and I hope it brings insight into how the novel came to life as well as the profession that inspired the tale.  

Click the “JCR” image below to find the interview online.

What is a Court Reporter?

A court reporter, court stenographer, stenotypist, shorthand reporter, captioner, CART reporter, or deposition reporter all use the same skill: MACHINE SHORTHAND.

Anyone who’s had jury duty has surely been captivated by the person who sits at the front of the courtroom taking down the verbatim record of the trial proceedings. We call that person a court reporter or court stenographer. The skill these highly trained professionals use is known as machine shorthand, or the method of using a stenotype to convert the spoken word into an abbreviated language that can later be converted back into English. This method allows information to be easily archived and later translated for readback or publication. This skill is also used for broadcast captioning or realtime translation services for the deaf and hearing impaired—also known as Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART).

Court reporters are keepers of the official record because they provide an impartial role within the legal process whether that be as deposition reporters during the discovery phase of civil litigation or providing trial transcripts for criminal appeal. While the term “court reporter” is used universally to describe all of the aforementioned occupations, you may find these professionals on the Congressional floor or at a news press conference.

According to Stenograph, the industry leader in court reporting products, “Miles Bartholomew invented the first successful shorthand machine in 1877. Improvements were later made to the machine and patents were obtained for it in 1879 and 1884. It was manufactured by Bartholomew’s company, the United States Stenograph Corporation of East St. Louis, Illinois, and was used as late as 1937 by official reporters. The ten keys could be depressed one at a time (a letter at a stroke) to create a series of dots and dashes, much like Morse code.”

Modern stenography machines have abandoned the concept of singular finger depression in favor of allowing the user to combine multiple keys into one stroke. In addition, today’s machines have been expanded to 22 keys with an optional number bar. This differs vastly from the QWERTY keyboard on your computer because in machine shorthand words are formed phonetically by selecting several keys in combination, reminiscent of playing a chord on the piano, allowing the stenographer to hit speeds of 225 wpm or faster.

And yet, people often wonder why court reporters exist in our high-tech world. Isn’t there a voice-recognition software that makes this 150-year-old art obsolete? Sure. But voice recognition can only handle one voice at a time. If several people speak at once or talk over each other, it becomes difficult to separate the language. Besides, voice recognition isn’t as accurate, especially when it comes to accented speakers, and it often fails to meet the level of consistency that comes with having someone in the room to ask for clarification, slow things down if conversations get jumbled, or prompt voices that go too low for the microphone. Depending on state guidelines, court reporters are trained to a 95 to 98 percent degree of accuracy on proceedings of two to four voices (although stenographers can do more as needed). Plus, court reporters have the ability to provide realtime feeds to those in the proceeding so that participants can view the words being captured in the moment.

To learn more about court reporting visit the National Court Reporters Association or read about the fictionalized life of a court reporter in the Victoria Justice Court Reporter Mystery Series.

Join Me for the Cozy Ink Podcast Summer Conference

Cozy-Ink-Podcast

Want a ton of FREE publication advice on everything from popular cozy mystery themes to querying and the business of book marketing?

Then join me on Saturday, August 1, 2020, at the Cozy Ink Podcast Writer’s Conference. The event starts at 10:00 a.m. (Central Time) and will take place entirely online so that you can work from home at your own pace. At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, I will cover the topic of “Dialogue in Fiction Writing,” expanding upon many of the ideas covered in my “Eight Dialogue Do’s” as seen below.

Eight-Dialogue-Tips

Here is the full list of speakers set for the event* thus far:

10:00 a.m. – Opening: Building a Brand – Leah Bailey, Jackie Layton, & Laina Turner

10:45 a.m. – Jackie Layton: Shifting Points of View

11:00 a.m. – Laina Turner: Writing as a Business

11:30 a.m. – J.C. Kenney: The Writing Process

12:00 p.m. – Kathleen Marple Kalb: Querying and Rejection

12:30 p.m. – Teresa Trent: Creating Lovable Characters

12:45 p.m. – Linda Norlander: Setting as a Character

1:00 p.m. – C.L. Bauer: Plotting Cozy Mysteries

1:30 p.m. – Nicole Asselin: Writing While Working

1:50 p.m. – Leah Bailey: Writing Short Stories

2:10 p.m. – Marilyn Levinson: Themes in Cozy Mysteries

2:30 p.m. – Andrea J. Johnson: Writing Dialogue

3:00 p.m. – James R. Mathis: Plotting versus Pantsing

3:30 p.m. – Heather Weidner: Social Media for the Writer

4:00 p.m. – Closing: Overcoming Obstacles for Authors – Leah Bailey, Jackie Layton, & Laina Turner

*Please note that the event will start 10:00 a.m. Central Time (that’s 11:00 a.m. Eastern and 8:00 a.m. Pacific).

Leah Bailey, Laina Turner, and Jackie Layton will co-host the opening and closing of the event, so it is bound to be fun and informative. You can register for the free event online HERE. Or if you need more information or want an updated schedule, visit the Cozy Ink Podcast website.