Nancy Keene Mysteries

Nancy Keene Mysteries is a series of cozy mystery novels inspired by the classic Nancy Drew series.

 Here are some key features of the series:

1. Protagonist: Nancy Keene, a teenage sleuth, is the main character of the series.

2. Genre: The series falls under the cozy mystery genre, which typically involves amateur sleuths, minimal violence, and a lighthearted tone.

3. Target Audience: The series is primarily written for women baby boomers who grew up reading and loving the Nancy Drew series.

4. Settings: Each book in the series takes place in a different travel destination, making them travelogues as well as mysteries.

5. Tone: The series is known for its humorous and PG-rated storytelling.

6. Standalone Stories: All five books in the series can be enjoyed as standalone stories.

The series currently consists of five books:

1. Ghost in the Plantation

2. Buried Treasure

3. The Stolen Masterpiece

4. The Stolen Mask

5. The Missing Bachelor Farmer

All the books in the series are available at Smashwords, Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Google Play, and Kobo. 

Here is the Amazon link for the books in this series:

https://amzn.to/3ZVCKsb

 

Louise Hathaway's Books

 

Books by Louise Hathaway:

All of our books are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo Books, Smashwords and many other online bookstores. 

 

Romance Novels:

 

High School Reunion: You Can Go Home Again

Torn Between Two Lovers: A Civil War Romance

Love Gets a Second Chance

Love Revealed

Watchin’ the Detective: A Mystery Dinner Romance

Five European Adventures

Honeymoon in New Orleans

 

Mysteries:

 

Death Among the Stacks: The Body in the Law Library

 

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

The Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

Honeymoon in Savannah: A Detective Santy Mystery

 

The Ghost in the Plantation: A Nancy Keene Mystery

The Buried Treasure on Route 66: A Nancy Keene Mystery

The Stolen Mask: A Nancy Keene Mystery

The Stolen Masterpiece: A Nancy Keene Mystery 

The Missing Bachelor Farmer: A Nancy Keene Mystery

 

Fighting Demons: A New Orleans Mystery

Deadly Promises: A New Orleans Mystery

50 Shades of Dead: A New Orleans Mystery

Ghosts, Witches and Voodoo with All That Jazz: A Supernatural New Orleans Mystery

 

Murder aboard the Coast Starlight

 

Murder aboard the Queen Mary

The Salacious Scribes Mystery

 

Time-Travel Fiction:

 

Travelers in Time Aboard the California Zephyr

Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

The Summer of Love: A Trip Back to 1968

 

Historical Fiction:

 

Hell on Wheels: My Adventures

 

Miscellaneous Titles:

 

Our First Year Raising and Training a Jack Russell Terrier (And Then Some)

The Forgotten Sister: A Sequel to Pride and Prejudice

England in the Footsteps of its Literary Giants

Chasing My Roots: New World Finally Meets Old World

Our Bluebird Family (free)

Planning a Vacation?  Why Not Chicago? (free)

 

These titles are literary essays:

 

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice.

The Oedipus Complex in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.

Nags, Sluts, and a Deep-breasted Soulmate from the Shining City:

The Women in Thomas Wolfe’s The Web and the Rock.

 

About Louise Hathaway:

 

Louise Hathaway is the pen name for a husband and wife writing team. They write in several different genres including murder/mystery, romance, travel, time travel, and literary criticism.

Here’s where you can find them:

 

Email: lewishathaway2013@gmail.com

 

Facebook Page: https://bit.ly/2wrXtbE

 

Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/Lewis_Hathaway

 

Please visit their blog at: http://louisehathaway.blogspot.com

 

Using Artificial Intelligence to Write Books

 

Should writers utilize artificial intelligence tools to write books?

I’ve been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and creative writing, so as a fiction writer, I decided to check out one of the more popular AI applications called ChatGPT that some of my writer friends recommended.

I’ve never used artificial intelligence while writing any of my 65 books, so I was skeptical about this new technology, thinking that a computer could never write a story as well as a human could, but I decided to go into the research with an open mind.

I was surprised by what I discovered. More on that in a bit.

First off, I want to explain how I used ChatGPT to generate fiction:

I brought up Chrome and in the search line I typed “chat.openai.com” and up came a page for ChatGPT. It prompted me to create a free account, so I answered a few basic questions and got logged in.

On the bottom of the webpage, there is a “send a message box” where you can pose all sorts of scenarios for stories and get some interesting responses. For my search, I typed in the message box, “Write me a story about” and then added the basic plot of one of my books, “Torn Between Two Lovers: A Civil War Romance”, which is about a wounded Yankee soldier and the Southern Belle who rescues him. My book is already published on Amazon, but I wanted to see what the chatbot would come up with. It came up with a two-page version of my 253-page novel.

After reading the AI generated version, I was surprised and impressed—not to mention a bit humbled because although AI’s version was only two pages, it was very well-written in some ways better than what I’d come up with.

I thought of more requests I could type in the “send a message box” and wrote, “Write me a title for a book that’s about a wounded Yankee soldier and the Southern Belle who rescues him.” After seeing the AI suggested title "Love's Redemption: A Union Soldier's Heart in Southern Arms", I had to admit that I liked my title better.

“This is fun,” I thought, so I wrote some more requests in the “send a message” box. I told it to write an outline for my book and then once again I wrote a short version of my book’s plot. ChatGPT came up with a nice outline that looked a bit like a script showing “Act 1”, “Act 2,” etc. and ending with an “Epilogue.”

ChatGPT can come up with themes for your story if you provide some basic information. All you have to do is type in the send a message box, “Write me some themes for…” and then describe your book’s plot.

I wrote a bittersweet love story and got the idea to change it into a romantic comedy with the chatbot’s help. So, in the send a message box I typed “Write me a story” and then described my idea for a new plot line. I was pleased by the results. The bot came up with several paragraphs of the new version from the beginning of the story all the way to the ending. It was a whole new take on my story, and it made me reconsider what I had written in my bittersweet love story. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite my sad story and change it into a Happily Ever After Romance.

I fiddled around some more and thought about the next request I could write in the send a message box; so, I asked myself, “What if I was writing a new story and hadn’t finished fleshing out the main character’s traits.” So, I typed in the send a message box, “Write me a description of” and then added a short description of my characters. It came up with a few paragraphs of very detailed character traits that I could focus on as I wrote my novel.

All in all, I was very impressed with the dialogue it generated for my stories; basically, the dialogue was well-written and sounded natural although I’ve heard some people complain that the dialogue it comes up with sounds stilted.

I thought some more about different scenarios for stories I might like to write and wondered would the chatbot would come up with, so in the send a message box I wrote, “Write me a story about a love triangle,” and it came up with two pages of a reasonably good story entitled “Entangled Hearts”.

If you have Bing on your computer or phone, it has an AI feature that writers can utilize while writing stories. On the top of Bing’s home page, there is a box that says “Search the Web”. On the right side of the box, you can click on the “Open Bing Chat” box. Then, click on “Choose a conversation”. After that, click on the box for “Style” and choose “More Creative.” There, you can pose prompts such as “Write me a story about…” All you need to do ahead of time is come up with a basic plot line. With Bing Chat, you don’t have to create an account since you’re already using Bing as a search engine anyway. It’s scary how simple it is.

Some of the metaphors in the AI-generated stories sounded trite and some were so bad that they made me giggle. I felt smug, thinking, “Aha! I’d never put it that way in any of my stories.”

Will AI-generated books replace those written by humans in the future? I don’t think so. Fiction writers can think of using Chat GPT and Bing’s chat features as starting points, never the final products. As every student learns in Creative Writing and English Literature classes, quality writers draw from several sources—either their own feelings and experiences, books they’ve read, people they’ve known, places they’ve lived, or dialogue they’ve heard. That kind of creativity can never be replaced by a computer.

A Civil War Romance

 "Torn Between Two Lovers: A Civil War Romance"

Excerpt:

A young Southern belle who has lost everything in the Civil War is so distraught that she tries to drown herself in the Mississippi River until she sees a wounded Yankee soldier floating on a coil of rope that was on the steamboat The Sultana before it exploded. She falls in love with him and when he goes into a coma, she takes him to a hospital in Memphis, where she ends up falling in love with his doctor. Much to her surprise, her Yankee soldier comes out of the coma and she finds herself torn between two lovers.  

Available on Amazon.com as an ebook and a paperback.

Buy the ebook on Amazon for $2.99.

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3H5WQ8a

Buy the paperback version on Amazon for only $4.54.

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3HavptD

 

A New Cozy Mystery That Takes Place on The Queen Mary

 

Murder Aboard the Queen Mary 

My husband and I wrote this cozy mystery and we just published it over the weekend. Join our book launch party, step aboard the Queen Mary, and find out whodunnit in this ghostly and romantic cozy mystery.

Book Description:

Why did a teenage girl get murdered aboard the Queen Mary during the Art Deco Weekend? That’s what 67-year-old amateur sleuth, Kathleen, tries to find out, along with the help of an attractive homicide detective who’s in charge of the case. Step aboard the legendary Queen Mary and find out whodunnit in this ghostly and romantic cozy mystery.

Purchase at Amazon for $2.99

https://amzn.to/3V5qwZU

Time Travel Adventure

 

Here's a time travel story that my husband and I wrote:

Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

Description:

Two sisters find themselves back in the 1860s during the building of the transcontinental railroad in search of their missing parents who are on a time travel quest of their own. Equipped with only their wits and a vague idea where they must go, this story puts a fresh spin on time travel and the strong unmistakable pull of family ties. Come along and find out if they can succeed in finding their lost parents or become lost themselves.

One of the characters in our time travel story is a married history teacher who has bipolar disorder. When she agrees to go back in time with her sister and friends, she presumes that her husband will be traveling back with them.

Much to her dismay, she finds herself without him, stranded on the railroad tracks during the 1860s. Unfortunately, her psych medicine did not travel back in time with her and she has to find a way to cope throughout all the time travel adventures that she will be experiencing.

Ultimately, she manages to cope quite well and even has some fun along the way.

Luckily, her husband travels back in time and finds her and together they attempt to find their way back home.

Purchase at Amazon for 99 cents. Also available in paperback at Amazon.

eBook link:

https://amzn.to/3B1r36X

Paperback link:

https://amzn.to/3cy1wZD

Also available at Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords, Google Play, and Kobo.

Purchase links:

Barnes and Noble:  https://bit.ly/3RvKzh1

Apple: https://apple.co/3B5b8V1

Google Play: https://bit.ly/3TxJPtK

Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3Q7FiLI

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3cGyeYP

Would you rather “listen” to a book?

 

Would you rather “listen” to a book?

 

When we tell our friends and family that we write and have published paperbacks and eBooks, some have answered, “I’d rather listen to an audiobook.”

Well…we’ve heard you and have recently published several of our stories as auto-narrated audiobooks. Auto-narrated? “What’s that?” you ask. Well, in our case it means using Google’s text-to-speech technology which creates amazingly realistic voices. And it’s free for writers to use.

Amazon requires writers to hire a professional narrator for a book.  It costs a bundle of money. For indie writers such as us, we simply can’t afford to shell out thousands of dollars for narrators. So now, we are creating audiobooks for our titles on Google Play.

Google allows writers to choose from several different narrators: Male or Female Americans, British Male or Female, or Indian Male or Female. We were surprised by how natural these voices sounded. We were also able to change the speed and pitch of the voices.

You can use one narrator for the entire book or choose a specific narrator for each character. It’s as simple as that.

We are also able to edit the pronunciation of words. For example: words like “Live and Live” have two different meanings. We could choose which pronunciation was the appropriate one.

As readers, would you like to know how to find and listen to our audiobooks? Here’s a quick how-to:

- On the device you'll want to listen to the audio book (iPhone, Android, etc), go to play.google.com/store/books. 

- Find the book you'd like to buy and pay for it

- Go to the Google Play App on your device and sign in with the same account you used to buy the book. (You can install the Google Play App from the App Store)

- Your book should be there waiting for you!

 Our audiobooks are all priced under $3.00 which is cheaper than most audiobooks.

Here are all our audiobooks currently available in the Google Play Store:

Hell on Wheels: My Adventures

Travelers in Time Aboard the California Zephyr

Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

Destination Europe: The Summer the Word Changed